TS: War vs Terrorism

doesn't seem very accurate!

the idea of war as a rule-governed conflict, which did more or less obtain in europe from the 17th-19th centuries, never applied universally -- ie in the colonies.

but it's unhistorical to call anti-imperial violence 'terrorism'. i think that primarily symbolic attacks, or attacks that are desgined to get media attention, etc, are a better definition.

They are terrorists, we are... what? (dunno)

one man's birthday clown is another man's wife

etc. etc.

xpost

So it's a close-run thing, but I'd opt for war as the lesser of two evils.

I do like the BBC's file names sometimes... Check out the last word before JPG.

also, do you have a beard?

xpost

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

To who? The people I'd shot?

Not "okay" no*. As I said above, I'm giving war the edge as an ever-so-slightly lesser of two pretty shitty evils. You're analogy is a bit screwy, anyway, unless the tins were carrying out acts of ethnic cleansing or somesuch.

Apparently more US soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11 than died in America that day, too.

*At Asda it'd be fine.

-- Dave B (dave.boyl...), September 12th, 2006.

not if the 92469 were all terrorists though...

yeah well that why it's like: accidental death, involuntary manslaughter, manslaughter, murder 2, murder 1.

usually people take motivation into consideration when judging someone's actions.

eg ww1, ww2, the war against revolutionary france, etc.

i agree, but in this case i talking about the more specific did they mean to kill the civilians formulation. what the terrorists are up to tends to be murder 1 - while armies are generally in the manslaughter spectrum, with frequent forays into murder.

hard to say - do i get to pick which war and which terrorists? terrorism's tends to have the more vile intentions, but wars are more destructive. war is occasionally necessary - terrorism, likely not so. if my my decision actually had an effect on the world and i could pick one to eliminate forever, i'd have to pick war because of the scope of the thing.

so there you go - terror wins.

although in the absence of war i suppose terror could grow to the size of the largest wars, in which case, i'd take war.

but then in most wars civilians are purposely targeted anyway - firebombing of tokyo etc.

also, terror: more or less a form of war, no?

can't decide... lesser of two evils... uhhh...

I think it would be misleading to classify terrorism as "the tactic of the smaller group against the larger group" though. Islamic terrorism could at least theoretically be a quite large and effective movement. The fact that it doesn't appear to be so at the moment is partly due to some of the better-considered war on terror tactics (i.e. NOT the invasion of Iraq), and partly due to a regrouping and change in strategy by jihadis.

I think the idea of taking a "side" between these two things is morally abhorrent. War does do far more collective damage ultimately and is an awful thing. But terrorism aims specifically to achieve only one of the worst consequences of war - the killing and maiming of civilians. The difference in the number of civilian deaths is only a function of power, not of morality.

lesser of two evils - go!

Size is not the deciding factor, but the relative strength and war-fighting capacity of the two sides certainly is.

The classic "terrorism" situation is where one or more countries occupies another country or else politically dominates it (or a specific group of people). The occupied country or dominated group is not strong enough to expel the occupier or defy the dominator through direct means (i.e. fighting a war and winning it). The best alternative strategy is to persuade the foe that the profit to be gained from their occupation or domination does not offset the cost. The means of perusuasion is to raise the cost through acts of violence. The desired goal is for the foe to voluntarily disengage, as a rational act of cutting its losses.

Under this strategy, the most valuable acts of "terror" are the ones that exact a high psychological cost, because exacting a high enough financial cost is usually not within the war-fighting means of the terrorists. That is why bin Laden didn't attack grain silos in the midwest.

Bin Laden's approach is purely within this tradition. In this case the dominated group he believes he is fighting on behalf of is rather grandiose - all Muslims everywhere. That is also a reason why his stated war aims are extremely vague. He is still in a stage where all that matters is the psychological effect of al Qaeda on the West and the Islamic world.

The chances are good that they won't ever progress beyond this stage, but if not, the next stage would be the overthrow of western-oriented Islamic regimes and replacing them with Taliban-like governments. For this to happen, the West must be so war-weary and disgusted with engagement in the Islamic world that they refuse to intervene. It could happen.

Possibly, but not necessarily. After all, a powerful country could certainly finance or support seemingly "independent" terrorist groups to advance its aims because war is not an option for political reasons.

How about destroying forever the term "terrorism" full stop? It would make thinking about these things 1,000,000,000 times easier.

Hell, maybe the guy even happens to be a serial killer AND a civil rights activist, but that doesn't mean there's no truth at all.

Was Timothy McVeigh nothing more than a warrior for the weaker side of a conflict?

Fighting from a position of weakness does not automatically make you morally superior. It just means you are weaker and must fight accordingly, if you fight at all. The fact that, for example, Al-Qaeda is far weaker than the US and NATO armed forces, does not mean that they are therefore victims of US power with whom we ought to sympathize. The weak aren't always the innocent.

After all, a powerful country could certainly finance or support seemingly "independent" terrorist groups to advance its aims because war is not an option for political reasons.

This may be true, but when a stronger country employs a weaker group as a proxy army, such as the USA using the Contras in Nicaragua to fight a proxy war against the Sandanistas, their proxy is deceptively weak on the surface, but actually backed by strength in depth. As a matter of fact, the Contras were as well armed and supplied as their opponents, so this is not an especially good example of proxy terrorism employed by a state-sponsored weak group vs. much stronger opponent.

The more typical examples of using terrorist groups as proxies, where the sponsoring power wishes to avoid open warfare, might be Egypt or Syria using terrorist proxies against Israel. These examples still tend to occur where the sponsoring power is weaker than the targeted opponent. I'd argue that even Iran using proxies against Israel can be lumped into this category of weak against strong - because Israel is a nuclear power.

http://www.tax.ok.gov/plates/GWOT_apr07.jpg

Enh, i don't like the desert coloring. Can I get the urban/snow camo instead?

oh hell yes

Oh jesus delete America. From a state that had its own homegrown terrorism incident in recent memory, too, ffs.

WHY TEH EAGLE IS NOT CRYING??????

So the people who choose to fight by war are having a HUGE war against those who choose to fight with terrorism?

Terrorists live in the apartment below mine. They always have their blinds open and they walk up and down the highway a lot. They have their terrorist plans on huge pieces of paper on the floor in their apartment.

eagle is pissed off