6 ms·

A big difference, in fact, the critical difference, between a 'rebellion/revolution' and 'terrorism', at least between a just rebellion and an un-just rebellion

• scarmig 11y ago
  Can you name a rebellion or revolution that didn't target civilians? There aren't any, and I think that distinction ultimately reduces to "terrorism is what's done by bad guys, revolution/rebellion by heroes!"
  • Aqueous 11y ago
    The American Revolution was primary a fight between the Continental Army (a military) and the British infantry in the colonies. This is not to say that all of the English that were killed were military, and I'm sure you'll come back of examples of terrorism committed by the Contintental Army or associates, but the strategy of the Contintental Army was to push the British army out of the Americas. And it worked.
• kuschku 11y ago
  > Terrorists attack unarmed civilians. One of the most striking stories my grandmother always told about WWII (she was born in '34) was how, when she walked to school, very often US fighters shot at the children walking there. There was no way this was a mistake – they were still children, the road only led to the school, no one else was walking there at the time. And still, every few days fighters shot at them, and they had to jump in a drainage canal, or similar to hide. Seeing your friends from school being shot by fighters in front of your eyes can hurt a child a lot. Many old people here still hold a grudge towards the allies, despite all the amazing things they did after the war to rebuild. But if attacking civilians is the measure, then the US is a terrorist state. And has been for decades. ---------------- EDIT: I’m not saying the US is bad, or good, I’m trying to say there is no "good" side in a war. No one in a war is innocent. There is a side that gasses jews, and a side that nukes civilians. There is a side that bombs hospitals, and a side that blows themselves up at a concert in Paris. There’s a side that massacres disabled people, and a side that shoots children. We can’t compare, or even weigh up the sides against each other, and doing so would miss the point. But we can’t say "only terrorists kill civilians".
  • jules 11y ago
    Do you have a public source for that?
    • kuschku 11y ago
      Sadly, no. My grandmother never published it, because it was nothing special – most people from that time had similar stories. And, as she died in 2000, the possibility to publish anything is long over, too. You can surely find many similar statements from old people from the war, though.
  • Aqueous 11y ago
    If true, those soldiers were criminals and terrorists and they were acting against orders, at least the orders of the high command. The US has accidentally killed plenty of civilians, of course. In the past (in World War II, for instance) they've also killed civilians deliberately. I'm not arguing that the US's hands are clean. But the US also recognizes (now, at least) that it is extremely counter-productive to kill civilians. That's why they order soldiers not to and why it is officially against the law of the United States as well as international law, and a war crime, to target civilians. It is not part of the official US strategy to target civilians - in fact it is part of the official US strategy to not target civilians. On the other hand, it is part of the official, stated strategy of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organizations, to intentionally murder civilians in the most visible way possible. *Edited to acknowledge current reality vs our past
    • opinali 11y ago
      We also accidentally dropped two nukes in Japan, and accidentally made Napalm and Agent Orange rain into the Vietnamese, with enormously high and vastly-civilian casualties in both cases. And these are just easy cases where direct responsibility can be tracked all way up to the commander-in-chief, so please no BS about no official strategy. And then of course, the military chain of command is exceedingly good at diluting responsibility -- generals will demand results implying but not writing down how far commanders can go; soldiers and commanders will cross many lines which no colleagues will report() and no immediate superiors will punish; the press will be strictly managed to not see anything that "national security" doesn't need us to see so our own civilian population will be morally appeased that we're being righteous, everyone is happy. () A few will do, and then they're jailed for life as traitors.
• wmeredith 11y ago
  That is a very good point. Thanks for pointing it out.
• nicolapede 11y ago
  Under this classification what makes the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima different from any other terrorist attack? I mean, who is to decide under which circumstances unarmed civilians are a legitimate military target?
  • mtgx 11y ago
    What's interesting is that there are louder voices about the US's need to be "more ruthless" towards ISIS. Obviously they don't mean "killing ISIS less nicely" or anything like that. What they mean is the US shouldn't care if it kills say 10 civilians for every known ISIS member. If that's what brings them the win (maybe) then they should do it.
  • cwyers 11y ago
    Technically, there was a military target for both of those. The firebombing of Dresden was designed to deprive the German army of materiel by bombing strategically important industrial factories. With Hiroshima, there was several Army headquarters and key logistic facilities. (Hiroshima probably fails to be justified on the grounds of proportionality; the military objectives there probably could've been achieved with conventional bombings.)
    • kuschku 11y ago
      Dresden was not done for industrial reasons – in fact, Dresden was chosen because it had next to no industry. The concept was "morale bombing": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
      • cwyers 11y ago
        The Wikipedia article you cite there mentions that Essen, which is on the other side of the country from Dresden, was the primary target of that campaign, and that it ended in 1943, when the firebombing of Dresden didn't begin until 1945.
        • 11y ago
• cwyers 11y ago
  That's not really true, there's plenty of recorded instances of terror attacks on military targets (the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, for example). What distinguishes the Rebellion from terrorism or insurgency is not just the choice of military targets, but its goals and methods. The definition of terrorism is the use of violence or intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. Terror attacks against military targets are designed to sow fear. The Rebel Alliance attacked the Death Star to deny the Empire the use of their planet-killing weapon, it's not so much that it was a military target as it was a military OBJECTIVE. Also, if you look at the Rebels -- they're a military organization. They wear uniforms. They have bases. They aren't hiding among the civilian population. They're fighting the Empire in straight-up space battles, they aren't loading civilian ships down with explosives and blowing up Imperial bases with them.
  • DennisP 11y ago
    Frightening the enemy is almost always an important part of military tactics (e.g. "shock and awe"). And what war doesn't have political aims?
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    • cwyers 11y ago
      At the time the Millennium Falcon was captured by the Death Star, it was a civilian transport. The use of enemy uniforms was to facilitate escape from captivity, note that they sabotaged the tractor beam preventing them from escaping, not any other part of the Death Star.
      • azmarks 11y ago
        And stole a hostage and killed several soldiers.
        • cwyers 11y ago
          First duty of a prisoner is to escape.
• icegreentea 11y ago
  I think this is a really weak distinction. One of the key transformations in the thought of wars that occurred through the 19th and 20th century (at least in western thought) is that nearly all wars have an element of 'total war'. Sherman burnt down Atlanta. We bombed Dresden. We bombed Tokyo. We pretake in psyops, we nominally follow 'hearts and minds'. Strict civilian vs military distinction was a fiction invented and maintained by European powers leading into the modern era. It's a fiction that disintegrated once defeating field armies was no longer sufficient to ensure victory.
• camelNotation 11y ago
  That's a manufactured narrative. In actual war, the US attacked civilians all the time. If nothing else, we constantly bombed entire cities and strafed civilian populations during World War 2. Attacking civilian populations during war is meant to place pressure on the government to surrender. It serves the exact same purpose that a "terrorist" is seeking to achieve by attacking civilian populations. It's ridiculous that the only way Americans can justify their violence is through caricatures of their own behavior and through propaganda about their enemies. It should be really, really easy to justify attacking Al Qaeda or ISIS without the linguistic gymnastics, but America is so culturally bankrupt that they can't make a simple argument for an obvious good without manipulating the public.
  • Aqueous 11y ago
    It is also a manufactured narrative to argue US foreign policy has not evolved considerably. We no longer firebomb entire cities. We have not dropped an A-Bomb since 1945. In fact the US has lead the way in nuclear disarmament. In drone strikes, we take great care to identify targets with armed combatants as opposed to civilians in them. In the last 8 years we have de-escalated military operations in the Middle East. You don't see US soldiers wandering into a random concert hall and machine gunning hundreds of unarmed innocents and then blowing themselves up - especially not on orders from the high command.
    • ashark 11y ago
      This is only because we and our allies don't face an existential threat from our adversaries. It'd likely be much more effective to, say, ruthlessly hunt down and murder the extended families and friend networks of known terrorists or insurgents to discourage terrorism and uprisings, but the diplomatic cost of such actions in what amount to wars of choice is too high, and it would do too much damage to our narrative of "good guys versus bad guys". We're bad at fighting these types of groups because we choose to be bad at it, because the narrative matters more than winning—the cost of losing, or at least of a perpetual draw, isn't nearly as high as the cost of winning using effective but brutal strategies. In a "real" war, that likely wouldn't be true. Give us an actual threat and we'll go right back to flattening cities and firebombing civilians in no time. (note: I'm not advocating these tactics, I just think our relative restraint is a consequence of our position in current geopolitics, not of some ethical enlightenment on our part)
• DennisP 11y ago
  And yet, government sources and media routinely describe attacks on the U.S. and allied military as terrorist attacks. First I found with a quick google: "France foils terror attack on Toulon naval base" http://www.france24.com/en/20151110-france-foils-terrorism-attack-toulon-naval-base-jihad http://www.france24.com/en/20151110-france-foils-terrorism-a...
• coldtea 11y ago
  That's not really the difference. For one legitimate countries and their state agents also attacked unarmed civilians all the time. And of course traditionally rebels have also attacked non-military targets. The main difference between rebellion/revolution and terrorism is, besides intent (e.g. getting freedom for an occupied country) who gets to do the naming.
• backtoyoujim 11y ago
  Why do US Americans always skip right past the live-fire reality of the Vietnam War?