Bill O'Reilly sez you're unpatriotic if...

[Last Conformist]

I'm still not getting why people tend to believe that terrorist and freedom fighter are mutually exclusive.

Being a freedom fighter is about your goals - you want to free something or other.

Being a terrorist is about your methods - you kill and destroy to scare people into acting your way.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that a freedom fighter might use terrorist tactics. The Chechen insurgents provide a contemporary example.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ramo
Hiroshima is definitely an example of terrorism.

Yes, by all means, let's all put on pimply lima delta pedant mode, and ignore the fact that military and civilian targets were inseparable in Japan, or that prolongation of the war over winter would have resulted in mass starvation and epidemics (due to critical shortage of medical supplies) that would have killed millions, or that many of the military leaders of Japan seriously considered complete ethnic and national suicide as a response to invasion.

If ten times more people starve and die of disease due to prolonging a war, it's ok, because it's passive and we can all satisfy our neo-leftist limp dicked sense of "morals" rather than taking the only feasible action to immediately and decisively end the war.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Agathon
There simply isn't any reasonable dispute about it, so it strikes me as odd that O'Reilly should think that patriotism necessarily requires commitment to an obviously false belief.

Its not odd if you remember its Bill O'Reilly talking.

[Kidlicious]

Last Confromist,

When you cross that line into terrorism you lose legitimacy for your cause.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Legitimacy, like history, is determined by the winners.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Legitimacy, like history, is determined by the winners.

Still, it makes your propaganda weaker when people know it's crap.

[GePap]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bill O'Reilly sez you're unpatriotic if...

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


You mean like that time frame when technology was way ahead of international law and the laws and customs of war, so that killing of civilians could be done on an unprecedented scale?

I wonder if the reaction to that had anything to do with all those different treaties and conventions on international law and the conduct of war that arose after WW2?

Well, in theory then nuclear war would be banned outright, given that such weapons are utterly non-discriminating- one wonders then how anyone could get away with having them?

I don't think this type of indescriminate bombing is now banned- certainly at least those from the powerful players get to do what they want. I mean, the Russians levelled Grozny wihout consequence.

[Imran Siddiqui]

My view is that the point was to scare the USSR.

Ain't my view.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Legitimacy, like history, is determined by the winners.

Unfortunately, that isn't true. Ask a Jew for a second opinion.

[Last Conformist]

MichaeltheGreat:

Yes, by all means, let's all put on pimply lima delta pedant mode, and ignore the fact that military and civilian targets were inseparable in Japan, or that prolongation of the war over winter would have resulted in mass starvation and epidemics (due to critical shortage of medical supplies) that would have killed millions, or that many of the military leaders of Japan seriously considered complete ethnic and national suicide as a response to invasion.

I don't see what anything of that has to do with the question whether it was terrorism or not.

Kidicious:

Last Confromist,

When you cross that line into terrorism you lose legitimacy for your cause.

And that relates to what I said how?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bill O'Reilly sez you're unpatriotic if...

Originally posted by GePap


Well, in theory then nuclear war would be banned outright, given that such weapons are utterly non-discriminating- one wonders then how anyone could get away with having them?

Actually, nuke doctrine is/can be pretty discriminating. There's a reason we keep our land based missiles in the boonies, and not in the middle of major cities, and even the Godless Commies^TM did the same.

In the 50's, the Zel'dovich / Sakharov team and Wheeler / Colgate teams worked on arbitrarily powerful "superbombs," but that work fell aside for more accurate delivery systems and smaller warhead packages to allow for MIRVs. You could still target population centers, but the goal was to constantly counter the other guy's deterrent, seeking to make sure the other guy couldn't gain an advantage in a potential first strike.

Even though there's no law banning nuclear conflict, such a law would be meaningless with a regime like the DPRK, and equally meaningless with relatively mature, responsible governments who have overriding strategic reasons for not escalating to nuclear conflict.

I don't think this type of indescriminate bombing is now banned- certainly at least those from the powerful players get to do what they want. I mean, the Russians levelled Grozny wihout consequence.

It's not banned, but the popular acceptance of taking the war to the civilian means of production is now long since superseded. We don't have or need tens of thousands of aircraft and tanks and a million riflemen to do damage to the enemy, so disruption of manufacturing capability is meaningless. As far as Grozny goes, that's just one more act of global gutlessness. We don't want to piss off the Russkies, so we let them commit mass murder. No "law" would have any meaning if no party has any desire to apply or enforce it.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

Kidicious:

Last Confromist,

When you cross that line into terrorism you lose legitimacy for your cause.

And that relates to what I said how?

The two need not be mutually exclusive to be different.

[Sandman]

Whenever people are asked to define terrorism, they always seem to call it 'trying to scare people so as to achieve some political goal'. I think that this is a silly definition; is a gang of paramilitary thugs intimidating voters terrorism?

Whenever people use the word 'terrorism', 90% of the time they're talking about covert operatives blowing stuff up. That is the definition we should use. Leave all the moralising and legitimising at the door, so we can actually understand what we're up against.

[Last Conformist]

I did not think it needed mentioning that you can be a terrorist without being a freedom fighter, and vice versa.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I'm still not getting why people tend to believe that terrorist and freedom fighter are mutually exclusive.

Being a freedom fighter is about your goals - you want to free something or other.

Being a terrorist is about your methods - you kill and destroy to scare people into acting your way.

It seems perfectly obvious to me that a freedom fighter might use terrorist tactics. The Chechen insurgents provide a contemporary example.

Both are not 100% mutually exclusive - yes, freedom fighters may use terrorist tactics. OTOH the sentence "one man's blahblah..." is IMO overused, and it does not mean that every bastard who is killing civilians is indeed a freedom fighter, even if he claims he is - nearly every terrorist org uses that as justification (and it reminds me a bit on "Life of Brian" where they discuss the kidnapping of Pontius Pilatus' wife - sure it's all the Romans fault ), but it does not mean it is always true.