There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. According to expert Walter Laqueur, "the only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence."At its core, the definition of terrorism is not so much a description of a particular kind of violence, like bombing or assassination, but a way to characterize an act of violence relative to the speaker, and their point of view. (parts taken from) http://sl.cometsystems.com/r?u=http...aff=&v=21&origin=asearch&src_id=312&tmpl=1Ben
What a stupid question! Just a little history knowledge and you have the answer. Of course there is that discussion if nation = government, but in a democratic country it's by definition so. Of course if the USA (you ment the USA not some other country in Americas, yes?) doesn't have a democratic regime, i.e., the rule of the nation/citizens, then the answer possibly changes.
Uhhh... How exactly is America a supporter of terrorism/terrorist nation? The U.S. attacks countries, (maybe wrongly) but not to terrorize them, but to get some footing in that particular country to influence the rest of the region, i.e. Iraq. Oh and let me guess, every other counrty out there is a saint and America is the only wrongdoer. Give me a break.
No. The United States does not go out killing noncombatants just for the sake of killing noncombatants. If we wanted to do that, it would be one of the easiest things in the world. We might do it accidentally or when they are mixed in with combatants, but not when we can help it.
Noam Chomsky makes a strong case for yes. Q: Your comment that the U.S. is a “leading terrorist state” might stun many Americans. Could you elaborate on that? A: I just gave one example, Nicaragua. The U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. It continues international terrorism. That example’s the least of it. And there are also what are in comparison, minor examples. Everybody here was quite properly outraged by the Oklahoma City bombing, and for a couple of days, the headlines all read, Oklahoma City looks like Beirut. I didn’t see anybody point out that Beirut also looks like Beirut, and part of the reason is that the Reagan Administration had set off a terrorist bombing there in 1985 that was very much like Oklahoma City, a truck bombing outside a mosque timed to kill the maximum number of people as they left. It killed eighty and wounded two hundred, aimed at a Muslim cleric whom they didn’t like and whom they missed. It was not very secret. I don’t know what name you give to the attack that’s killed maybe a million civilians in Iraq and maybe a half a million children, which is the price the Secretary of State says we’re willing to pay. Is there a name for that? Supporting Israeli atrocities is another one. Supporting Turkey’s crushing of its own Kurdish population, for which the Clinton Administration gave the decisive support, 80 percent of the arms, escalating as atrocities increased, is another. Or take the bombing of the Sudan, one little footnote, so small that it is casually mentioned in passing in reports on the background to the Sept. 11 crimes. How would the same commentators react if the bin Laden network blew up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? Or Israel? Or any country where people “matter”? Although that’s not a fair analogy, because the U.S. target is a poor country which had few enough drugs and vaccines to begin with and can’t replenish them. Nobody knows how many thousands or tens of thousands of deaths resulted from that single atrocity, and bringing up that death toll is considered scandalous. If somebody did that to the U.S. or its allies, can you imagine the reaction? In this case we say, Oh, well, too bad, minor mistake, let’s go on to the next topic. Other people in the world don’t react like that. When bin Laden brings up that bombing, he strikes a resonant chord, even with people who despise and fear him, and the same, unfortunately, is true of much of the rest of his rhetoric. http://www.monthlyreview.org/1101chomsky.htm
Does the US then support terrorist regimes? do they throw smokescreens when these Goverments behave immorally?Do they supply arms and aid to terrorist regimes?
I see. But it does intentionally kill civilians. Here's a logical sequence of thoughts. 1. Falluja is heavily populated with civilians. 2. Hence, if we drop a bomb, we will inevitably kill civilians. 3. What the hell, we'll do it anyway! In fact, let's initiate many aerial strikes, and artillary bombardment! 4. We know that we will kill civilians by doing this, so our actions are intentional. Also, if America is not defined as a terrorist nation, then the word 'terrorism' has no meaning. From The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041206&s=schell Read that extract, especially the bolded bits. My my, do I smell hypocrisy??? And this, which is far more despicable... America has a habit of supporting terrorists, and turning a blind eye to atrocities. It supported Saddam, even when he used chemical and biological weapons against Iran. It supported Osama and his fight against the Soviet Union. And it established the School of Americas, which churned out terrorists by the dozen. It complained about the way American POW's were treated by Iraqi insurgents, yet said nothing about the 'abuse' (why not just call it torture???) of Iraqi prisoners. America a terrorist nation? DEFINITELY.
If given one bomb and a choice of where to drop it, a terrorist will choose the most densely populated spot. America will choose the spot where the combatants are or the weapons are stored. An American strike may kill noncombatants, but that is not the goal. Some death is inevitable in any war and it is foolish to expect otherwise. All we can do is try to minimize it while still managing to get the job done.
a terrorisist in the old form of the word would do that yes, but a terrorist in our day would do what the americans are doing now, they may not be deliberately killing civilians(yeah right, there snipers shoot unarmed civilians trying to flee combat areas and bury their dead). but they are stopping at nothing to impose their will
If trying to impose one's will through force is the definition of terrorism, then you have just nullified the existence of EVERY GOVERNMENT THAT HAS EVER EXISTED. From what I see, modern terrorists are still using the 'maximum civilian casualties is good' brand of philosophy.
To me, Noam Chomsky has revealed a plethora of ignorance..... "don’t know what name you give to the attack that’s killed maybe a million civilians in Iraq and maybe a half a million children, which is the price the Secretary of State says we’re willing to pay. " Million? Chomsky here is just making up numbers out of his head and sounds like an idiot doing it. Loses all credibility right here. "Supporting Turkey’s crushing of its own Kurdish population," Kurds will now have more rights then they have ever had in Iraq.... "How would the same commentators react if the bin Laden network blew up half the pharmaceutical supplies in the U.S. and the facilities for replenishing them? " Yes, we are believing Sudan when they say thats what happened. Ignore the genocide for two decades on their own population. "The U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. It continues international terrorism." Hugh??? Now hes having schizoid delusions.....
*sigh* Oh don't worry. I am getting used to it by now. I just figure these people are ranting at their percieved image of the US, and not the US itself. Apparently America looks a lot different on TV than it does up close.
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it. --60 Minutes (5/12/96) Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's quote, calmly asserting that U.S. policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children, has been much quoted in the Arabic press. It's also been cited in the United States in alternative commentary on the September 11 attacks (e.g., Alexander Cockburn, New York Press, 9/26/01). But a Dow Jones search of mainstream news sources since September 11 turns up only one reference to the quote--in an op-ed in the Orange Country Register (9/16/01). This omission is striking, given the major role that Iraq sanctions play in the ideology of archenemy Osama bin Laden; his recruitment video features pictures of Iraqi babies wasting away from malnutrition and lack of medicine (New York Daily News, 9/28/01). The inference that Albright and the terrorists may have shared a common rationale--a belief that the deaths of thousands of innocents are a price worth paying to achieve one's political ends--does not seem to be one that can be made in U.S. mass media. It's worth noting that on 60 Minutes, Albright made no attempt to deny the figure given by Stahl--a rough rendering of the preliminary estimate in a 1995 U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report that 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five had died as a result of the sanctions. In general, the response from government officials about the sanctions’ toll has been rather different: a barrage of equivocations, denigration of U.N. sources and implications that questioners have some ideological axe to grind (Extra!, 3-4/00). There has also been an attempt to seize on the lowest possible numbers. In early 1998, Columbia University's Richard Garfield published a dramatically lower estimate of 106,000 to 227,000 children under five dead due to sanctions, which was reported in many papers (e.g. New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2/15/98). Later, UNICEF came out with the first authoritative report (8/99), based on a survey of 24,000 households, suggesting that the total “excess” deaths of children under 5 was about 500,000 http://www.fair.org/extra/0111/iraq.html While British government ministers have repeatedly described the no-fly-zones as "humanitarian cover" for the Kurds, the pilots' unease has become an open secret in the United States. Last October, the Washington Post reported: "On more than one occasion [US pilots who fly in tandem with the British] have received a radio message that 'there is a TSM inbound' - that is, a 'Turkish Special Mission' heading into Iraq. Following standard orders, the Americans turned their planes around and flew back to Turkey. 'You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions,' [pilot Mike Horn] said. 'Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended.' When the Americans flew back into Iraqi air space, he recalled, they would see 'burning villages, lots of smoke and fire'." Last December, more than 10,000 Turkish troops invaded northern Iraq, killing untold numbers of civilians and fighters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK. British and American aircraft "protecting" the Kurds did nothing to prevent the invasion; indeed, most patrols were suspended to allow the Turks to get on with the killing. Inside Turkey, the Ankara regime has destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages, displaced more than three million people and killed tens of thousands. Racist laws prevent Turkish Kurds from speaking their language; parliamentarians and journalists who speak out end up in prison, or assassinated. http://www.firethistime.org/targettingcivilians.htm Doubts over evidence The 'compelling' evidence that Washington and London said at the time proved the link between the pharmaceutical plant and Osama Bin Laden has never emerged. There is now a consensus among observers that the plant was mistakenly targeted by the United States. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/378185.stm The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America was a case heard by the International Court of Justice in which it was alleged that the United States had violated international law by supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The Court ruled in Nicaragua's favor, but the United States refused to abide by the Court's decision, even though it was obligated to do so under international law. After the Court's decision, the United States withdrew its declaration accepting the Court's compulsory jurisdiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States
What is Terrorism? Well that brings us back to the question, what is terrorism? I have been assuming we understand it. Well, what is it? Well, there happen to be some easy answers to this. There is an official definition. You can find it in the US code or in US army manuals. A brief statement of it taken from a US army manual, is fair enough, is that terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear. That’s terrorism. That’s a fair enough definition. I think it is reasonable to accept that. The problem is that it can’t be accepted because if you accept that, all the wrong consequences follow. For example, all the consequences I have just been reviewing. Now there is a major effort right now at the UN to try to develop a comprehensive treaty on terrorism. When Kofi Annan got the Nobel prize the other day, you will notice he was reported as saying that we should stop wasting time on this and really get down to it. But there’s a problem. If you use the official definition of terrorism in the comprehensive treaty you are going to get completely the wrong results. So that can’t be done. In fact, it is even worse than that. If you take a look at the definition of Low Intensity Warfare which is official US policy you find that it is a very close paraphrase of what I just read. In fact, Low Intensity Conflict is just another name for terrorism. That’s why all countries, as far as I know, call whatever horrendous acts they are carrying out, counter terrorism. We happen to call it Counter Insurgency or Low Intensity Conflict. So that’s a serious problem. You can’t use the actual definitions. You’ve got to carefully find a definition that doesn’t have all the wrong consequences. http://www.zmag.org/GlobalWatch/chomskymit.htm
If the United States wanted to use terrorist tactics to accomplish its goals then it would use napalm indiscriminately. We would destroy entire cities with carpet-bombing and artillery strikes. The United States has the capability of causing massive casualties without involving ground troops. We would burn the crops and prevent the international aid from even landing. We do have the capability to permanently impair a countries ability to feed itself if and I am afraid when we are forced to use terror as a weapon we will horrific in the amount of terror that we are capable of generating. We are not a terrorist nation that is why we spend so much time effort and manpower doing things the hard way.
Repo Man! Thank you for your relentless vision and efforts. I was beginning to loose hope, but you DO exist (counter-terrorist) But we've got to scream HARDER, just make shure you don't get caught under the auspices of the 'UN-PATRIOTIC-ACT' Greetz fuku
Well that would be true except that I have lived in the US all my life (except when in the military) but why not try to refute the evidence being put forth? It is you who is delusional my friend :m:....You kinda remind me of our Nations feelings towards Iraqi's........anyone who disagrees MUST be an insurgent (or in your case a foreigner)....dont think that my critisism is towards the American people (of which i am one) but it's towards US policys abroad
Been to Vietnam lately? Been to Fallujah? When you compare how many Iraq's have died compared to how many US soldiers have died the US is doing just that How long did it take to let the Red Cross into Fallujah? Why were prisoners in Abu Grahib hidden from the Red Cross?
