Some people are jerkfaces.

SunTzu · Post by **SunTzu** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:22 am

...huh? Where have i ever said such a redicilous thing such as "any war is a terrorist act"?

Ive made it VERY clear what i consider a terrorist act, and that is the intentional targeting of civilians as a scare tactic. I believe BOTH 9/11 and Hiroshima were terrorist attacks, even though i consider Hiroshima to be far more justified.

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:28 am

I think that, due to the similarity of your grasping handicap, I was confusing you with this:

[quote="AzraeL";p="519399"]terrorists ... are a group who try to forward their political agenda with the use of force. so technically, america terrorized vietnam and iraq...[/quote]

SunTzu · Post by **SunTzu** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:36 am

Tss, Deac, starting to get old? Troubles keeping track of things?

Darkhan · Post by **Darkhan** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 12:45 am

So lemme get this straight, when two countries have declared war on each other, the victor is the terrorist cause he used the biggest bomb? That's nothing like a small group with no official backing from any country attacking civilians.

SunTzu · Post by **SunTzu** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:07 am

...No. The terrorist is whomever aims weaponry at the civilian populace in an effort to coerce the government to surrender to spare their citizens.

BTW i thought the Taliban were supporting Osama?

Skuzzo · Post by **Skuzzo** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:07 am

Terror derives from the Latin meaning to frighten - and perhaps that is the key difference here. I have previously had difficulty seperating, say, Pearl Harbour, and 9/11, as both being designed to kill lots of people... military, civilian, whatever, by flying planes into them. But if the purpose is to frighten; to terrify; then the difference is clear.

Pearl Harbour is an act of war, a strategic target - 9/11 and London were designed to terrify, casualities were incidental (I don't mean to be flippant, but they were).

Hiroshima is a strange case. Although primarily an act of war, the driving force behind it wasn't to level Hiroshima, it was to terrify the Japanese government into surrender. It did. It probably saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese and American lives, it (with Nagasaki) ended the war...but I still think it's an act of terrorism in the purest sense - because it's purpose was terror, not massacre.

SunTzu · Post by **SunTzu** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:08 am

[quote="Skuzzo";p="519547"]Terror derives from the Latin meaning to frighten - and perhaps that is the key difference here. I have previously had difficulty seperating, say, Pearl Harbour, and 9/11, as both being designed to kill lots of people... military, civilian, whatever, by flying planes into them. But if the purpose is to frighten; to terrify; then the difference is clear.

Pearl Harbour is an act of war, a strategic target - 9/11 and London were designed to terrify, casualities were incidental (I don't mean to be flippant, but they were).

Hiroshima is a strange case. Although primarily an act of war, the driving force behind it wasn't to level Hiroshima, it was to terrify the Japanese government into surrender. It did. It probably saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese and American lives, it (with Nagasaki) ended the war...but I still think it's an act of terrorism in the purest sense - because it's purpose was terror, not massacre.[/quote]

Hurray! Exactly my take on things.

Phong · Post by **Phong** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:20 am

[quote="SunTzu";p="519546"]...No. The terrorist is whomever aims weaponry at the civilian populace in an effort to coerce the government to surrender to spare their citizens.

BTW i thought the Taliban were supporting Osama?[/quote]

Sherman was a terrorist? Clausewitz was a terrorist? All war could be TECHNICALLY defined as terror if the goal is to cause the enemy to surrender. Which means (by your definition) that any war which is not inteted for straight conquest is an act of terrorism.

Skuzzo · Post by **Skuzzo** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:33 am

The majority of battles within a war aren't fought with the hope that the entire other side will surrender if they lose. Some historic 'last stand' battles work this way, most don't. That's why war, as a whole, isn't terrorism. Individual acts within a war can be classed as terrorism, without defining the entire war as terrorism.

Phong · Post by **Phong** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 1:51 am

Uhm, no you're getting it backwards, "Last stand" battles aren't fought to win the whole war, they are fought to survive, and fight another day. If the goal of a war is to induce the enemy's surrender then every move your army makes is to weaken the enemy, to cut off his supplies, to scare his people, to destroy his armies moral so that ultimatly they are afraid that if they continue the war they will lose EVERYTHING.

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:17 am

Skuzzo, it wasn't to terrorize the populace so they'd rise up and demand societal, religious, or idealogical goals. The goal was to hurt Japan so bad and threaten to do more that they had no choice but to surrender. A land invasion was considered at the time (and still backed up by historians) to be a meat grinder to end all meat grinders. Iwo Jima would've been a pencil sharpener in comparison. MANY lives would've been lost on the Allied side, and many MORE lives would've been lost as the Japanese civilians took up arms to defend their homeland against the invaders. Surrender, giving up, admitting that you'd lost wasn't really an option for the emperor. At least not until he HAD to do it or risk his entire country being utterly destroyed and its population wiped out. You think that they weren't weighing all options before killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and troops alike? Hiroshima was a major supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. It wasn't just a peaceful town where people frollicked on the hillsides all day and milked cows. They didn't bomb downtown Tokyo.

Wikipedia wrote:At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of considerable military significance. It contained the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. It was chosen as a target because it had not suffered damage from previous bombing raids, allowing an ideal environment to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb. The city was mobilized for "all-out" war...

Read all about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bom ... d_Nagasaki

It was not a terrorist attack. It was a death blow to the heart of the Japanese' military and no-surrender attitude.

Skuzzo · Post by **Skuzzo** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:29 am

I prefer this part from the beginning of the same Wikipedia article, which more accurately portrays the reasoning behind the bombing, rather than just why Hiroshima was selected:

Truman's officially stated intention in ordering the bombings was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction, and instilling fear of further destruction, that was sufficient to cause Japan to surrender.

Although, yes, I agree, while you're doing that you might as well pick a place that also weakens them militarily. I stand by the fact that the primary goal was to inflict terror in regards to this new weapon of mass destruction.

Phong · Post by **Phong** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:43 am

What the everloving FUCK is your GODDAMN point?

I'm sorry but what does this have to do with ANYTHING? It doesn't fucking matter, when people say terrorist they are not talking about The United States, they aren't talking about Britain, they aren't even talking about Iran and Iraq it is not a term which is ever used to apply to NATIONS.

And it frankly doesn't matter which bull shit sea-lawyer reasoning any of you come up with, or which definitions you care to throw around. It simply isn't how it's USED.

Deacon · Post by **Deacon** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 3:06 am

The purpose of ALL war is to cause the other to surrender out of fear of destruction. But was it "with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature" after all? No. A group of redneck militia people didn't drop a bomb in downtown Tokyo to scare the Japanese into converting to Southern Baptists or make some kind of ideological point or to sway an election. The US was attacked by Japan, and the two nations' militaries fought each other. The decision to drop the bombs was made by US President Harry S. Truman, and followed over 3½ years of direct involvement of the US in World War II, during which time the United States had suffered about a million casualties. Truman's officially stated intention in ordering the bombings was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction, and instilling fear of further destruction, that was sufficient to cause Japan to surrender. That so many civilians were taken out with the targets of the bombs was an unfortunate circumstance that only served to make the point harder and deeper. Japan's military had no choice but to surrender. It was not even intended to cause a societal uprising against the Japanese government. One could much more easily paint the actions of the Japanese in China with a terrorist brush than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That it shook up (let's even say "terrified") the Japanese government and military enough to incite a surrender is not enough to call it a terrorist act any more than the recent bombings in London were an act of war. Just because both contain elements of one or the other does not mean they are the same, especially when the most vital part of what differentiates a terrorist from a soldier and a terrorist act from an act of war is ignored altogether.

Skuzzo · Post by **Skuzzo** » Wed Jul 13, 2005 3:11 am

What is your basis for how "Terrorist" should be properly used... CNN? BBC? Al-Jazeera?

History speaks of terrorism being used as a tactic over the last few thousand years. It is a vital, and important, instrument of virtually any war in history - and virtually every nation has used it. It's not some new cool word which describes modern-day Muslims extremists in the pursuit of their cause.

As a recent example, 20 years ago, nobody gave a monkeys about Muslims. Self-described communists like Carlos the Jackal (who, for the record, was a South American) ruled the terrorist roost.

Real Life Forums

Some people are jerkfaces.

Who is online