Talk:Terrorism/Archive 10

I don't believe the following is true, so I removed it:

but it is a criminal offense under nearly every national or international legal code (see Hague Regulation of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949).

Firstly, many countries still don't have specific legislation against terrorism, although often terrorist offences can be prosecuted as ordinary criminal offences such as murder or destruction of property. Secondly, talking about "nearly every national legal code" is strange, since many states don't have codes. Talking about "nearly every international legal code" is even stranger, since what is an international legal code? A treaty? It certaintly isn't illegal under nearly every treaty, because most treaties have nothing to do with terrorism. And referencing the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions is also strange. Their provisions might have some application in cases of terrorism, but they primarily deal with international armed conflict between states (i.e. wars), not isolated acts of terrorism. But there are several whole conventions, which unlike the Hague Regulations or Geneva conventions actually deal specificially with terrorism. A list of the main ones is already in the article.

I also can't make sense of the following paragraph, so I removed it as well:

Many governments have also taken a direct hand in terrorist activities against their own or other countries' peoples. Victims include the Jews in Germany, the Soviets under Stalin, China and Japan in China, Armenians in Turkey, Chileans under Pinochet, East Timor under Indonesia, Palestinians under Israel, and Americans under COINTELPRO in the United States.

This passage seems to use a potentially overly broad definition of terrorism. Genocide, killings by death squads, and forced famines are not generally considered to be terrorism, though it depends on who you ask. -- SJK

They're just as bad, if you ask me. There is so much evil in this world that it helps us good folks to name the various categories. And don't bother to ask me to take the NPOV on this, my opposition to evil is implacable. Ed Poor

The definition says: "Terrorism refers to the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence, often against the civilian population, to instill fear in an audience for purposes of obtaining political goals."

In other words, there's a motivation behind terrorism.

The article then goes on to name some famous terrorist acts. Have all of these acts been proven to be carried out in order to instill fear? The page Terrorist incidents at least uses the phrase 'claimed to be terrorist by some people', which is unfortunately vague, but considering that the motivation of the people causing the attack cannot always be reconstrued, it seems a logical description.

Also a question: is every non-governmental attack that is mainly aimed at innocents a terrorist attack?--branko

I would say it would have to be for a political goal. --Robert Merkel

By the way, couldn't you argue that say, the French Resistance, was a terrorist organisation by the definition at the top of the page? If so, should it be considered so? If so, are terrorists always "evil", or is terrorism a legitimate tactic in some circumstances? --Robert Merkel

The resistance was indeed categorized as "terrorist" by the Nazis. DanKeshet, Friday, March 29, 2002

Were there acts in the French Revolution against civilians or just against those who made up the government at the time? However we would probably say that it was a terrorist organisation. Of course, I myself, wouldn't defend them as "good" --rmhermen

I was talking World War II, not the revolution. If you read the definition at the top of the parent page, it doesn't say you *have* to attack civilians to be considered a terrorist organisation. I also believe the Resistance dealt with "collaborators" fairly summarily. --Robert Merkel

My bad. French and terrorist seem to describe the Revolution so well. However the Resistance is of course a different question. The main purpose of the Resistance was to hinder the Nazis and the Petain government, not to terrorise the French populace. Perhaps you could say that they tried to terrorise the French government into changing policies that supported the Nazis but I don't really know enough about the Resistance actions to say. We usually call the groups guerrilla groups if they are directly fighting the government but terrorist if they attack targets, military or civilian, in order to inflict terror on the populace and thereby get the government to change policy. Say the guerilla group controls the interior of Columbia and attacks any government forces in range preventing them from governing the area, while the various Palestinian terrorist groups attack civilian and military targets to show the Israelis that no one is safe anywhere unless you make peace with us. Even the military cannot protect you. Does that explanation work? --rmhermen

Guerrilla describes tactics, while terrorist describes motives. Guerrilla is a pretty objective term, but terrorist is subjective. In listing terrorist groups, instead of debating whether or not we should consider a group terrorist, we should look to the historical record and see if the group were ever called terrorists, and by whom. --TheCunctator

Is the Earth Liberation Front really a example of a religious terrorist group, isn't the ELF more of a terrorist group relating to environmentalism? If that's true why is it on the list of religious terrorist groups together with groups like Al-Qaeda? - Peter Winnberg

The ELF just doesn't fit the official US DoD definition, although the FBI has called them that. I moved them up to the front to illustrate the subjectivity of the definition. I also made note of the BBC non-use of the word, and added the Jewish Defense League (two of whose members were arrested for planning to blow up mosques and the office of an Arab-American congressman) to the list of groups. Perhaps that's unfair as they are not yet convicted? It would be nice to have a standard for this type of thing.

Even though we aren't contrained in what we can report about criminal activity as the British press and others are, I'm still inclined to think that some formal designation or conviction would be good to have. After all, if someone simply removes "JDL" from the list (as I strongly suspect someone will), we can argue about it ad nauseam and get nowhere, because saying "X is a terrorist" is inherently subjective. But if the text of the article says "Goverment X has designated organization Y as a terrorist group" or "Group X has been convicted of action Y", then they have far less standing to remove such statements, as they can't be reasonably argued--they are clearly true or false. --Lee Daniel Crocker

I agree and plan on removing the list of groups from this page. (Please object now if you're going to object as I do this.) We can use terrorist groups as a place to list groups and whom they were designated as terrorists by. DanKeshet, Friday, March 29, 2002

Of course there can't be a standard definition, sorry for my dumb suggestion, and that's why the BBC doesn't use the word... but no I don't think that it's inherently subjective if avowed members of a group who have never been distanced by other members are convicted (not necessarily just "arrested") of planning to bomb mosques and Congressmans' offices with them in it... I would question the definition if it was clear that the group wsa only blowing up the *place* with no one in it... but as I understand it that was not their intent...

I absolutely agree that we should stick to BBC standard if we can, and use the objective language you describe: "Goverment X has designated organization Y as a terrorist group" or "Group X has been convicted of action Y", and nothing but. I don't know about you, but I get creeped out by things on TV like "convicted pedophile" (no such thing, the crime is "sexual assault" or "child molesting") or "known Communist" - which sounds much like labelling someone as a way to make attacking or hating them socially "okay"...

But maybe we are thinking of this wrong - maybe it's a way to get publicity and lots of well-funded help? Maybe we should officially invite all governments and terrorist groups to hack at this definition, each adding their own propaganda refinements and each other's agencies to the list, until they are all defined as the moral equivalents they sometimes are...

As each group is wiped out or government is defeated, over time, they will no longer be adding their particular slant, and we'll be left with an amazing historical record of the "War on Terror" and how its propaganda ebbed and flowed and waxed and waned... plus whatever other articles the whole CIA or all of Al Qaeda could contribute... just think of the stuff those guys know...

Bryce asked "how do we approach describing the CIA's involvement with terrorism?" - I gave it a shot in assassin where I think it belongs.

---

The short list:

Examples of State-sponsored Terrorist Groups:

Hezbollah (Lebanese proxy, sponsored by Iran through Syria)
Abu Nidal Organization (Iraq)

Makes a strong point that Iraq and Iran are the only one.

Conta (USA upto Iran Conta affair)
Rote Armee Fraktion (GDR upto unification)

And others should be added.

harrystein

Now how is it possible that "States widely classed as 'terrorist'" list includes Cuba (when was the last time they were doing executions of random people for no reason and stuff like that) and doesn't include Israel ? Taw 13:48 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I really disagree with including Nagasaki and Hiroshima here, and especially with including the amounts of deaths and calling them the most terrorist deaths in history. By the decree of the Japanese government itself, all civilians were expected to take part in fighting to keep the United States from invading the island, and millions of civilians and US forces would have died if the US had been forced to do a landing on the islands. The Japanese government even continued to refuse to surrender after the dropping of the first bomb, and continued to call for civilian resistance. So tell me, which would have resulted in the most deaths -- the dropping of the two bombs, or the invasion and island-to-island, house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat which would have ground on for months? RickK

Bah. If terrorism is the deliberate targetting of civilians then these arguably qualify. An NPOV version might say "some consider acts X and Y to be terrorism" etc... Evercat 01:18 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Besides, your argument is essentially "it's not terrorism if it prevents deaths." - but there's nothing in the definition of terrorism to say that it can't do so. Evercat 01:20 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

By definition of the Japanese government, these people were combatants. RickK 01:21 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The Japanese government speaks for everyone in Japan, does it? Anyway, I expect most American civilians would have resisted an invasion of the U.S. So targetting American civilians is OK? Of course not. Evercat 01:23 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Evercat is wrong, sorry Evercat. The nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not acts aimed at civilians - both these cities were significant military targets, with industries turning out offensive naval craft and large numbers (50,000+) soldiers. The US in fact took extraordinary steps to try and warn the civilian population to leave the target areas. This is documented fact. MarcusVox

Washington contains significant military targets. So, if al-Qaeda detonates a nuke in Washington, it won't be an act of terrorism?

Anyway, who's right or wrong here isn't important, we have an NPOV policy whereby both arguments can be presented. :-) Evercat 18:13 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Marcus - may I suggest that you describe the military and ethical justifications at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, respectively. Alternatively, you could spin off new articles at bombing of Nagasaki and bombing of Hiroshima. There's a fair bit of work involved, but it sounds like you have a handle on the relevant facts and figures that would really help clear up the issue. Personally, I'd be very interesting in reading such an article. :) Martin 10:20 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

that goes for RickK too! :)

This is my comment from the VFD page. USER 62.212... make an identity please -- theres no good reason not to, and there are dozens of reason for it, like having a talk page where people can respond to you. I take issue with both parties here -- both are making a polarist issue out of something, and both are representing their pov as npov. Neither one of the two is NPOV. I do not oppose including these figures as a *comparison within a terrorism article -- it would be POV to state that only certain events fall under the category of terrorism, while others do not.-豎眩sv

I should also comment, having read some few recent discussion entries. Using a more recent example, George Bush first called those who died on 911 "innocent victims," and later refered to them as "the first soldiers to die in the war on terror." (or similar). The ridiculous assertion, by some that those civilians killed by Nagasaki or Hiroshima, is based on a terrible ignorance of the facts, namely that the reasons for bombing each were strategically different, and that the reports urging an attack on civilian targets was ramrodded through to Trumans office --without a complete or human description of the terrible harm they would inflict. Truman in fact went to his grave with some terrible guilt at the fact that he had had inflicted such destruction, and attempted sometimes vehemently to deny it.

To say that "this is black" and "this is white" is simply the height of moral and intellectual dishonesty. True, the Japanese killed millions in China, -- these were military atrocities. That the US could say 'Mrs. Akiko and her four small children' should pay for the warcrimes of 'young ashigaru, Mr. Morimoto', or whomever -- was and still is a moral outrage. The fight against terrorism is a moral argument -- not a practicalist one. The moral standards must be kept, or honor is lost. The fact remains, in war only a quarter of all deaths are actually combatants. Does this mean that acts of killing innocents cannot be compared? -豎&#30505sv

P.S. And then someone explain Hirohito's US-sanctioned survival?

The real point with terrorism is the motivation and intent of the act. The US bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not aimed at killing civilians, although this was an outcome of the act. The US was seeking to destroy the naval facilities at Nagasaki and the large army bases at Hiroshima, and thus encourage the Japanese to surrender. That's why these cities were selected as targets. If the US had simply wanted to kill civilians in order to achieve a political end, it could have nuked Tokyo. That would have caused a maximum amount of civilian loss of life - and it very probably would have fitted the criteria for an act of terrorism.

To address the comparison made above by Evercat: "Washington contains significant military targets. So, if al-Qaeda detonates a nuke in Washington, it won't be an act of terrorism?" If al-Qaeda sought to destroy military targets in Washington, and not merely to kill civilians, then this would be an act of war. In that case, al-Qaeda would be a bonafide revolutionary force fighting against its perceived enemy, the United States. Its non-terrorist status would be even stronger if al-Qaeda took some steps to minimize civilian harm by issuing warnings, etc., of its impending attack and by centering its attacks on military targets only. But this is not, to date, the style of al-Qaeda: the attacks on the World Trade Center, for example, were classics acts of terrorism, not warfare. MarcusVox

No, Im afraid you're wrong. The US did "intend" to kill civilians when they dropped their bombs on civilan targets. To say otherwise would be to call these people blind, dumb and stupid. Once again, the moral standard you (or anyone who attempts to defend any atrocity) is the same meaningless sliding scale.

Lets put it the other way... Al Qaeda has said (I think) that their intent wasnt to kill civilians, rather that as agents of 'Americas financial empire' anyone who worked in those building wasnt a civilian. Compare this to your rather weak argument. OF course was an outrage for Al Qaeda to say that "civilians werent the real target" in the 911 case -- so too was it an outrage in Nagasaki and Hiroshima....and Tokyo too, if you want to go there. (Tokyo had already been bombed in excess of both these cities by conventional bombs -- 90 thousand dead in one night alone.)

Not too long ago there was the Israeli rocket attack on an apartment that killed around a dozen people. 8 of them were kids, only one or two were actual targets. According to your logic, "thats what these kids get for bein' where the bombin' is." It would seem, morally that your position, that of the hawks, typically, and Al Qaedas -- are similar, if not identical. War indeed makes strange bedfellows. -豎&#30505sv