Subject:
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Re: More on Palestine
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 10 Oct 2001 04:02:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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490 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Ross Crawford wrote:
> > I agree that there's no single "catch-all" definition of terrorism. There's • a
> > bit of a discussion about it here
> > http://www.terrorism.com/terrorism/bpart1.html.
> >
> > A quote from there: "The essence of terrorism is the intent to induce fear • in
> > someone other than its victims to make a government or other audience change
> > its political behavior."
>
> Hmm, I'm not sure this is a workable definition.
Neither am I. I don't think the Terrorism Research Centre intend it to be
either. As I said, I don't think there is a single "workable" definition of
terrorism.
> I think this is the
> general purpose of most military action (just about no military action
> expects to eliminate much more than a fraction of the enemy forces, what
> it seeks to do is eliminate enough to strike fear into the rest that
> they surrender or flee. The overall attempt of course is to force the
> enemy leaders to give up their cause).
However most military action is directed at military targets. I don't think
Hiroshima & Nagasaki could be thought of as such. Remember the entire cities
were targetted, not just military installations.
> One thought I have as a way to characterize terrorism vs.. normal
> military and political activity is that it's conduct does not expect
> normal diplomatic channels to have any validity.
Would you have had that thought before 11 Sep (wrt Palestine, Israel etc)?
> I don't think bin Laden
> expects us to invite him to sit down and work out our differences. On
> the other hand, we expected that by dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki that the Japanese would come to the table.
>
> I think by this definition, there is a real difference between bin
> Laden's actions, and at least some of the Palestinian's actions. I think
> at least some Palestinians do want to get Israel to come to the table in
> earnest. I'm even willing to believe that Arafat has such desires
> (though I'm not sure he's willing to make the hard choices which will
> need to be made for peace to occur).
I think no matter whether or not he wants to talk, the methods used by the PLO
etc are still terrorism.
> To your other comment on the effectiveness of the bombs, from everything
> I've read, the U.S. fully expected to have to fight house to house if
> conventional means of bringing the war to Japan were to succeed. The
> expected casualties were many times the actual casualties from the
> bombings. Also, the resulting Japan would probably have been so ravaged
> as to be much harder to bring back into the fold, and it's people far
> more resentful. What the bombs did was demonstrate the absolute futility
> of continuing the fight (never mind that we had just played our only
> trump cards). I'm also not convinced that we truly understood the scope
> of damage which would be caused (remember, prior to these bombs, only
> limited tests had been conducted).
I think the fact that we dropped them indicates we expected a large amount of
damage. We were also careful to detonate them at the height we'd calculated
would do the most damage. Or maybe it was just the final, conclusive test of
the new technology? If that's the case, then I guess it doesn't really fit my
notion of terrorism, but doesn't make it any less barbaric, either.
> Dropping a bomb in an unpopulated
> area also would not have been effective since it would have used one of
> the bombs, and not really shown anything [wow, you kicked up a big cloud
> of dust...]).
>
> Were they the only choice? No. Were they the best choice? Maybe not.
> Were they a good choice? I think so.
I think irrelevant. The choice was made. IMO it was terrorism.
ROSCO
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: More on Palestine
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| (...) Hmm, I'm not sure this is a workable definition. I think this is the general purpose of most military action (just about no military action expects to eliminate much more than a fraction of the enemy forces, what it seeks to do is eliminate (...) (23 years ago, 10-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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