how about bombing shit out of a city (say, dresden) with conventional bombs? how about "shock and awe"? why do we say, killing a few dozen on a bus (or a few hundred in a business tower) is terrorism, while killing same hundreds in an air strike is "collateral damage"? how about killing civilian collaborators during the war (like, eg in USSR, France and Italy during the WWII)? how is that different from killing civilian collaborators in Iraq now? how is that different from killing civilians who support the regime that's waging the war? what about hostage taking?
my understanding is that attacks on military targets (even if some civilian population dies) is not a terrorism. everything else is. if you look this way, ETA blowing up police stations are not terrorist acts. neither are iraqi bombings of checkpoints. but WTC, "shock and awe", recent london attacks, hiroshima, dresden and coventry certainly are. this classifications is clearly differs from the one used in press and on political tribunes. mishka > Bombing a city to remove its production from the enemy's supply > chain and to cripple the enemy's economy is ... well, morally > questionable at best, and definitely _ugly_, but at least > recognized as a part of war. Blowing up a few dozen (or a few > score) of commuters to provoke a reponse is terrorism. Setting > traps for enemy soldiers in your homeland is something I wish > wasn't happening, but isn't terrorism. Demonstrating the > previously unheard of destructive power of a new kind of weapon > to intimidate the enemy into surrender by destroying two cities > in the blink of an eye is in the grey area. (Note that we had > Good Motives there. And that my casting it as "grey" doesn't > mean I disagree with the decision, only that I can see it > legitimately being argued either way.) > > > Yours for more precise speech, > -- Glenn > >
