[WikiEN-l] Sep 11

Fri Jan 16 09:23:17 UTC 2004

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:
>
>>Well, what /was/ the purpose?  Given the NY attacks, terror is likely.
>>As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral 
>>damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed 
>>forces? 
>>
>No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian 
>population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments 
>cannot commit terrorism. 
>
We are far from unanimity about that element in the definition.

>One reason why terrorism is often seen as being 
>worse than atrocities committed by governments, is that there is no clear 
>thing to retaliate against when it is committed. 
>
Terrorism by government is no less atrocious.  Destroying the homes of 
innocent Palestinians is done with the intent of terrorizing them even 
when the troops are careful to make sure that there is no-one in the 
house when it is blown-up.

>At least in the Cold War we 
>could rely on the concept of mutually assured destruction to keep the Soviets 
>from nuking us (and vice versa). We cannot rely on that for terrorist acts 
>since the organizations the perform terrorist acts do not have nearly as much 
>to loose as a nation performing the same act would. 
>
Of course, a country that depends on the application of massive force to 
achieve victory finds it difficult to comprehend why small groups of 
people would ever want to continue to use their meagre weapons to secure 
their freedom..  Perhaps the way to prevent them from engaging in 
terrorist acts would be to give them something to lose.

>>Actually, I know people that claim that the Gulf War /was/ terrorism!
>>But we're not going to put that into the article title.
>>
>And rightly so since that violates our common name naming convention. 
>
Ahh! then our common name naming convention depends on who is taking the 
"terrorist" action.  

Ec

>