Terrorism: Good Strategy or Crime against humanity?

Well, then if the elected Hamas sanctions it, that makes the suicide bombings acts of war. Except they use live bombs instead of airborne artificial ones.
 
S.A.M. said:
Well, then if the elected Hamas sanctions it, that makes the suicide bombings acts of war. Except they use live bombs instead of airborne artificial ones.
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Hamas is not a legitimately recognized government, SAM.

Baron Max
 
When has terrorism ever worked? It has a huge PR problem. Look at Iraq. The terrorists once had free reign there, but the people became disgusted by them and sided with the Americans.
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The Sunni in Iraq are enjoying the gains of terrorism now, as the Americans have agreed to supply them with weapons and training and other support against the Baghdad Shia in return for cessation of hostilities against Americans and cooperation against AQ.

I read a summary report a while ago, a think tank publication IIRC, that counted about 70% of the terrorist campaigns that had ended in the recent past as having ended because they had "substantially achieved their goals".

baron said:
Sure. They revolted against the British.
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No terrorism involved, though. We used an army against their army, plain and simple.
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Thousands of Loyalists and suspected Loyalists in the US were shot, hung, beaten, burned out, and so forth, by terrorists. Entire communities were wiped out, like the Highland Scots in the Carolinas, driven down the river to the port for Europe with their homes and fields destroyed and their menfolk murdered.

Tens of thousands of colonial civilians became refugees, boat people crossing the Atlantic in winter to the safety of law and order.

Something like 10% of Canada's population is descended from the refugees of Revolutionary terrorism.

Or as the contemporary rhyme put it: "Tories with their brats and wives should fly to save their wretched lives".

Meanwhile, OT: AFAIK the warlords in Somalia who are protecting the pirates are the ones the US favored for their anti-Islamist stance and cooperative business attitude. Are they still favored ?
 
S.A.M. said:
Army? You mean illegal insurgents? You were under British law, remember?

Terrorism: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."

Yup, it fits.

;)
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When the American patriots declared their independence, they did so with written notification and they signed their names to the document. John Hancock signed it so large you could see it from across the room so "king George could read it without his spectacles". Terrorists don't do that. They cower in the shadows never owning up to their actions.

The American revolution was fought by an army. It was a declared conflict, and they attacked military targets. THEY WERE NOT TERRORISTS.

Terrorists don't wear uniforms, they don't take personal responsibility for their actions, and they don't field armies to attack the enemy.
 
"The American revolution was fought by an army. It was a declared conflict, and they attacked military targets. THEY WERE NOT TERRORISTS."

It must seem a lot like the Israeli War of Independence to you, as related by sloppy revisionist bigots.
 
madanthonywayne said:
When the American patriots declared their independence, they did so with written notification and they signed their names to the document. John Hancock signed it so large you could see it from across the room so "king George could read it without his spectacles". Terrorists don't do that. They cower in the shadows never owning up to their actions.

The American revolution was fought by an army. It was a declared conflict, and they attacked military targets. THEY WERE NOT TERRORISTS.

Terrorists don't wear uniforms, they don't take personal responsibility for their actions, and they don't field armies to attack the enemy.
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Like the al Qaeda, they wanted foreign troops out of their country and recruited volunteers from as far away as France [ie the Marquis de Lafayette] to do so. The funny part is, unlike the Palestinians and Saudis, the "Americans" themselves were taking the land from the natives.

Even during the US civil war, the Union govt reruited European mercenaries to fight against the confederates. Umm, like the "foreign" insurgents in Iraq.

George Washington committed untold atrocities against indigenous Americans and was a wanted man

georgewashterror.jpg


According to the definition of terrorism adopted by the FBI, George Washington was a terrorist. Indeed, so were Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and all the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Moreover, all Confederate soldiers, statesmen, and sympathizers were terrorists. Not only that, but the Nazis in occupied Europe during WWII were not terrorists, but the members of the various resistance movements were terrorists. Similarly, the many communist governments that followed WWII were never terrorists, but any anti-communist groups that advocated violence were terrorists. Lastly, all of the Jews who fought the British prior to the formation of the State of Israel were terrorists. All of this is true by FBI standards.



In keeping with federal regulations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a set of criteria that defines who is and who is not a terrorist. These criteria are:



1) Terrorists commit or support illegal acts involving the use of violence.



2) These acts are intended to intimidate or coerce.



3) These acts are committed in support of political or social objectives.



1) Since the legitimate government of the American colonies at the time of the American Revolution was Great Britain, the independence movement was highly illegal. Indeed, it was legally treason, and was a capital offense. As Benjamin Franklin said to his colleagues, “We must all hang together, gentlemen; or—most assuredly—we shall all hang separately!” In meeting the last part of this first criterion, I don’t think many people would fail to characterize the Revolutionary Was as involving force and violence.



2) The stated purpose of the Revolution was to intimidate and coerce the government of Great Britain into granting the American colonies their independence.



3) The Declaration of Independence clearly states that the movement had political and social objectives.



Quod erat demonstratum: George Washington and the rest of the Founding Fathers were all terrorists!
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madanth said:
When the American patriots declared their independence, they did so with written notification and they signed their names to the document. John Hancock signed it so large you could see it from across the room go "king George could read it without his spectacles". Terrorists don't do that. They cower in the shadows never owning up to their actions.

The American revolution was fought by an army. It was a declared conflict, and they attacked military targets.
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So the AQ forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and so forth,

whose emissaries launched attacks against warships, soldiers, the military operational command center, the headquarters of the commander in chief, and the center of the financial support of the foreign military operations

after declaring their open hostility in numerous documents and videos, and establishing a training center for their organized military,

were not terrorists ?
 
S.A.M. said:
The funny part is, unlike the Palestinians and Saudis, the "Americans" themselves were taking the land from the natives.
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They were not Americans. There was no such thing as an American at that time. The 'natives' did not own or live on ALL the land that is now America. Probably a tiny part of it. They 'natives' came from someplace else as well.

None of this has anything to do with the OP.
MOD NOTE: Good point. I'm moving all of these posts to a new thread
 
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john said:
The 'natives' did not own or live on ALL the land that is now America.
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Most of it.

If there were no Americans, there certainly were Delaware and Seneca and the other members of the Iroquois Confederacy - a sort of United Nations of America, if you will - and they thought they owned all the land of the Ohio River drainage. They fought very hard for it, the only truly significant Indian Wars of the continent, and the outcome was in doubt for a while.

Terrorism was of course a common tactic, of red and white alike. And it worked, for the whites.
 
Native Americans thought nothing of terrorism, torture, slavery and genocide, either. Frankly, human rights is a modern invention.
 
No, both belligerence and tolerance are more ancient than it's easy to realize. But with a long gaze backward, you can see the fortunes of organized belligerence clearly and consistently declining. I suspect your opinion that human rights are a modern innovation is symptomatic of the underlying trend.
 
iceaura said:
they thought they owned all the land of the Ohio River drainage. They fought very hard for it, the only truly significant Indian Wars of the continent, and the outcome was in doubt for a while.
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And do you know which American General kicked the Indians ass in the Ohio River Valley? It was none other than General Mad Anthony Wayne, most notably at the battle of fallen timbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fallen_Timbers
 
spidergoat said:
Native Americans thought nothing of terrorism, torture, slavery and genocide, either. Frankly, human rights is a modern invention.
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They certainly seemed comfortable with going to war and knew how to fight in wars.

Hype links to the first page he can google that may support his argument. Written by a high schooler.

I would like to know how this could even remotely be known and who counted them:

Probably one of the most ruinous acts to the Indians was the disappearance of the buffalo. For the Indians who lived on the Plains, life depended on the buffalo. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were an estimated forty million buffalo, but between 1830 and 1888 there was a rapid, systematic extermination culminating in the sudden slaughter of the only two remaining Plain herds. By around 1895, the formerly vast buffalo populations were practically extinct. The slaughter occurred because of the economic value of buffalo hides to Americans and because the animals were in the way of the rapidly westward expanding population. The end result was widescale starvation and the social and cultural disintegration of many Plains tribes.
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Since there are few factual accounts or records then it is hard to say what happened. Most of this is exaggerations and folklore or based on movies.
 
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