>No, a terrorist is a terrorist. What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terroris

>No, a terrorist is a terrorist. What ISIS and many other terrorist organizations do in the world are is terrorism, crucify, behead and stone people is terrorism, shooting up nightclubs and blowing up restaurants is terrorism, relativism has no place here. Good. What about states that backup these groups? This is basically a high-school where every girl calls the other "slut" for doing exactly what she herself does. If any other state does it, it's terrorism. But if I overthrow regimes, invade sovereign countries with bogus reasons, financing and training militias overseas, etc. it's freedom and democracy. With which mental mechanism someone could truly think they are righteous doing that, but others are not? One cannot have the luxury of sloppiness here: if you are okay with your Government doing that all over the world, just for the sake of being rational, you have to accept the possibility of retaliation. It doesn't mean you like it. It just means that you understand what's at stake and don't act surprised not knowing why someone is attacking you. >And while I sympathize with your experience I don't think you have the whole picture either Never claimed I did, and actually claimed I didn't. >While you did made some points against basically "arm chair generals" you also fall into the same logical fallacy, living through a conflict rarely provides you with considerable insight into the local and global geopolitics of it. On the contrary. Sorry I haven't expressed myself very well: I was saying that most people have clear cut opinions about it while being distant. Then said that if there was someone who'd fit the posturing anti-terrorist cliché, I'd come close to that cliché. I meant that I don't buy into thinking I get the whole picture. That was to say that despite being close to the thing, I don't claim to understand everything the way most people who are not close to it seem to think they do. Contrary to what a lot of people post online after a bomb: "OMG! I can't believe it! I was there a year ago" and somehow become subject matter expert just because something happened somewhere they visited a year ago. >Overall the civil war was a good examples of the risks of throwing elections into the pits of new democracies especially those which have large portions of the population with antithetical views to democracy and towards of the ruling party. And that is something typical to say. It's a luxury I can afford today, too. Some people said that back in the day. Intellectuals/jurists, etc. "Why not let the Islamists win the elections and we'll win next time?". The others warned: There will be no next time. The Islamists are telling you explicitly* that the first thing they will do after winning the elections is cancel the constitution ("No constitution, no charter" aiming for whatever they consider "Sharia") and never have an election again and submit everyone to whatever messed up religious views they had. It's 2016 and it's a nice conversation, but just for the sake of argument: would you really be willing to be so democratic with someone who's telling you exactly what he's going to do and the way he's going to impact your life. They'd probably kill you if you didn't show up at a mosque five times a day, rape your daughter and wife, etc. And you can't oust them or vote. It is the difficult questions those in Government, as good or bad were they, had to deal with. This situation was the result of very poor management and a harsh economic context. I remember food lines (for a limited choice of items in number and choice) and rations. I didn't suffer from that really and I can't imagine how the people lived. It was at that time the joke went around that you'd gain more knowing a cashier at a store than a Government official. The most organized will win the elections. Islamists are known to be extremely well organized. You can see that in Egypt, and you could see it here at that time. They target sensitive domains: education, welfare, religion, health. They gave money to that. Money the government didn't give. There was a void and they filled it. There was only one political party, the others weren't allowed, but the Islamists maneuvered not as a party but as a hive (from mosques, etc). The Government let them be because they were afraid of the "real" political entities (Socialists, Labor, etc) wanting to become official so they used this to counter that. When the decision was made to finally open up, who had already a shop on the street? Who has been giving away food and helping others all that time? Who had a popular base? Who knows that people will vote for them because they were on the streets every single day? Who was "nice" to people when the Government was absent? It wasn't Islamist radicals who voted. Even people who didn't have anything to do with religion voted just to screw with a Government they didn't like because now they could in a "it couldn't be worse than that" mentality. It just happened to be the Islamists but it could have been anyone who had that level of organization and done what they did. They'd have the support of the people just for a change of the daily misery. Of course after that everyone showed their true colors and people understood that it in fact could be worse. >Terrorism has a definition which is the use of violence and fear in order to further your political goals Isn't that the definition of war? >and often unlike it is being described it's not a tool of last resort but the first thing you grab when the situation doesn't go your way. This assumes that the other entity acknowledges your way in the first place, something people almost never do when they have a dominant position. People tend to be nicer when they have an incentive to be, like when they're in a position of weakness or fear, or have more to lose than you. For the record, I don't claim to be right or something. I'm just asking questions and formulate what seems to make sense and am delighted reading about others' points of views.