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> The number of allowable civilian casualties can vary with the importance of the target. A fascinating insight into the mindset behind a terrorist organizatio

> The number of allowable civilian casualties can vary with the importance of the target. A fascinating insight into the mindset behind a terrorist organization. The complete devaluation of innocent human lives in order to achieve the group's objectives.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
Unless the primary goal is propaganda by violence it's not terrorism. It seems pedantic but "terrorism" has somewhat of a definition, devaluation of lives isn't the key component, it's the purpose of the action. It sucks and is morally wrong, but it isn't terrorism unless you want to argue that the main purpose of these strikes it to terrorize the civilian population. That may be the case but it seems they really just want to kill certain people and collateral damage is accepted.
- m_eiman 9y ago
  Terrorism isn't about propaganda, IMHO. I agree somewhat with Wikipedia: Terrorism is a term used in its broadest sense to describe the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror or fear, in order to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim. But I'd say it's not just indiscriminate violence, targeting e.g. members of political or judiciary organizations is often used too.
Dylan16807 9y ago
> The complete devaluation You misspelled "valuation". Edit: Flagged? Putting a price on people's lives and deciding what threshold is acceptable is extremely different from deciding lives have zero value. It's just a pun. Note that "valuation" and "devaluation" are not opposites.
apsec112 9y ago
"terrorist organization" Please don't call names like this. "The complete devaluation of innocent human lives in order to achieve the group's objectives." Any war will inevitably, and predictably, lead to some number of civilian deaths. Should we disband all militaries? If so, how would we deal with groups like ISIS?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
Terr_ 9y ago
That's like... like calling a purse-thief a serial-killer, because "they don't care about the people who are hurt." There's still an important difference between the two categories which you have chosen to ignore.
- fiblye 9y ago
  If the purse thief's actions are resulting in death, are they still just a thief?
jlg23 9y ago
The "complete devaluation of innocent human lives" is at the very core of war, not just of terrorist actions. Harold Pinter nailed it down in a chilling play, "Precisely"[1], 35 years ago: The body count is the result of negotiations between 2 parties who sit comfortably with a scotch in their hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisely_(sketch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisely_(sketch)
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Tell that to Winston Churchill who was on the front lines..
- throwanem 9y ago
  That's an awfully convenient perspective, don't you think? Was it worth Dresden to end Bergen-Belsen?
  - m_mueller 9y ago
    The question you should ask yourself is whether saving concentration camp victims was the main reason for entering the war.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Of course not; at that time few or none among the Allies knew the camps existed, so they could not possibly have been the reason. But many lives were saved from those camps, nonetheless, in direct consequence of actions such as Dresden which made it eventually impossible for Germany to continue to prosecute the war. So the question still merits asking - and answering.
      - arethuza 9y ago
        I'm not sure that Dresden is a great example - it was late in the war and strategically probably achieved very little. The attach on Hamburg earlier in the war (July 1943) probably had more impact but even then the Allied air raids on Germany actually achieved disproportionally little given the huge resource allocated to them.
Shivetya 9y ago
far different than in the days when bombing cities to demoralize the nation at war was an method used to end the war. civilians were always targets in wars, the intent to take the will to fight out of the population and therefor not support the government that got them into it. With regards to your statement, you need to realize the Air Force is trying to minimize the casualties while the real terrorist are doing their best to exploit those civilians as a shield. There are numerous examples of this in every day activities among these groups in the Middle East, from the putting weapons on the roofs of schools and hospitals to putting armed men into regular households for shelter. I am not sure what the best plan is, I would prefer to just leave but the world doesn't want to be at peace or at least a large section is still trying to determine who or what will be in charge
azernik 9y ago
Terrorism generally involves targeting of civilians, not just causing their deaths incidental to other objectives. That latter can still be a war crime if it is not "proportionate to the military advantage gained", but that seems to be exactly the judgment these rules are trying to make.
throwanem 9y ago
That is a frankly astonishing misapprehension of the case. A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. One of the realities of warfare is that civilian casualties can't always be entirely avoided, and a war still be prosecuted with meaningful hope of success. But the failure to avoid civilian casualties, however necessary, is regarded as a failure nonetheless, and weighs heavily on those involved - perhaps you overlooked the mention of an increased need for anti-suicide counseling after strikes in which civilian casualties occur. One does not often find "the complete devaluation of innocent human lives" coincident with contemplation of suicide as a potentially proportionate response to having taken them. A terrorist organization, such as its current adversary, has no such scruples, and indeed will often seek to inflict as much atrocity on innocents as it can manage. The incentives, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage, for irregular fighters, are such that the involvement of civilians - not just as targets, but also as human shields and as a sort of moving camouflage in which to conceal oneself - is an utter necessity, because there's only one way for a stand-up fight between a regular military and a guerrilla band to end. The typical fashion in which such bands misuse innocents by default would weigh heavily on their members as well, which is why one finds such a heavy investment in ideology among these groups, whether it be religious as in the current case or secular as in the case of last century's "Communist revolutionaries". You have to have some story to tell yourself that makes your flagrant abuse of civilians seem righteous - in other words, to devalue innocent human lives enough that you can live with the things you do to them. To casually equate such wanton violation of every civilized standard of conduct, with the extreme if admittedly at times imperfect care that military forces exercise to avoid behaving even remotely similarly, strikes me as something that must be motivated either by arrant ignorance of the facts underlying the case, or by some sort of ideologically motivated disinterest in them. Neither seems to me terribly useful in developing an accurate apprehension of reality.
- hasenj 9y ago
  > A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. This has only become the case officially after WWII. And frankly I think the only reason this even matters is the media. Civilian lives meant absolutely nothing and were considered fair target during war. Millions died in WWII from intentional fire bombing campaigns on urban areas by the allied forces. Same in the Korean war. Same during the Vietnam war. Civilians were purposely targeted to "demoralize the enemy" and force them to surrender. The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once the objective is reached then the killing should stop.
deleted 9y ago
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zxcmx 9y ago
I get it, I think. On the other hand I don't think South Korea would exist without intervention. My grandfather spent the rest of his life after the Korean war (as an an anzac, artillery, ironically I guess) in a mental hospital, "shellshock" as they called it then. My grandmother and my mother were terrified of him. He got let out a couple of times and always got put back in. I don't really know what it means to intervene in things, I suppose we would have to talk in some way about the moral value of South Korea existing even if that is unpalatable. My point I guess is that you are talking about our yes, corrupted set of moral objectives, without maybe considering what happens if we do nothing.
- Gibbon1 9y ago
  > I don't really know what it means to intervene in things Most of the time where I thought maybe intervention was a decent idea, it wasn't. The way I think of it now is you can't throw sticks of dynamite in a flower bed and expect roses. All the things war is damages civil society.
  - zxcmx 9y ago
    Well maybe we shouldn't have intervened. I sort of say "we" in a loose way since family. I dunno. Maybe it would have been better if they'd just worked it out themselves. That said, do you know any Koreans?
    - Gibbon1 9y ago
      It's kinda interesting but the US intervention in Korea wasn't in isolation. Before that was the Japanese conquest. And even before that the Chinese were messing with them.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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aaron-lebo 9y ago

Unless the primary goal is propaganda by violence it's not terrorism. It seems pedantic but "terrorism" has somewhat of a definition, devaluation of lives isn't the key component, it's the purpose of the action. It sucks and is morally wrong, but it isn't terrorism unless you want to argue that the main purpose of these strikes it to terrorize the civilian population. That may be the case but it seems they really just want to kill certain people and collateral damage is accepted.

m_eiman 9y ago
Terrorism isn't about propaganda, IMHO. I agree somewhat with Wikipedia: Terrorism is a term used in its broadest sense to describe the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror or fear, in order to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim. But I'd say it's not just indiscriminate violence, targeting e.g. members of political or judiciary organizations is often used too.

Dylan16807 9y ago

> The complete devaluation You misspelled "valuation". Edit: Flagged? Putting a price on people's lives and deciding what threshold is acceptable is extremely different from deciding lives have zero value. It's just a pun. Note that "valuation" and "devaluation" are not opposites.

apsec112 9y ago

"terrorist organization" Please don't call names like this. "The complete devaluation of innocent human lives in order to achieve the group's objectives." Any war will inevitably, and predictably, lead to some number of civilian deaths. Should we disband all militaries? If so, how would we deal with groups like ISIS?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

Terr_ 9y ago

That's like... like calling a purse-thief a serial-killer, because "they don't care about the people who are hurt." There's still an important difference between the two categories which you have chosen to ignore.

fiblye 9y ago
If the purse thief's actions are resulting in death, are they still just a thief?

jlg23 9y ago

The "complete devaluation of innocent human lives" is at the very core of war, not just of terrorist actions. Harold Pinter nailed it down in a chilling play, "Precisely"[1], 35 years ago: The body count is the result of negotiations between 2 parties who sit comfortably with a scotch in their hand. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisely_(sketch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precisely_(sketch)

goldenkey 9y ago
Tell that to Winston Churchill who was on the front lines..
throwanem 9y ago
That's an awfully convenient perspective, don't you think? Was it worth Dresden to end Bergen-Belsen?
- m_mueller 9y ago
  The question you should ask yourself is whether saving concentration camp victims was the main reason for entering the war.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Of course not; at that time few or none among the Allies knew the camps existed, so they could not possibly have been the reason. But many lives were saved from those camps, nonetheless, in direct consequence of actions such as Dresden which made it eventually impossible for Germany to continue to prosecute the war. So the question still merits asking - and answering.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      I'm not sure that Dresden is a great example - it was late in the war and strategically probably achieved very little. The attach on Hamburg earlier in the war (July 1943) probably had more impact but even then the Allied air raids on Germany actually achieved disproportionally little given the huge resource allocated to them.

Shivetya 9y ago

far different than in the days when bombing cities to demoralize the nation at war was an method used to end the war. civilians were always targets in wars, the intent to take the will to fight out of the population and therefor not support the government that got them into it. With regards to your statement, you need to realize the Air Force is trying to minimize the casualties while the real terrorist are doing their best to exploit those civilians as a shield. There are numerous examples of this in every day activities among these groups in the Middle East, from the putting weapons on the roofs of schools and hospitals to putting armed men into regular households for shelter. I am not sure what the best plan is, I would prefer to just leave but the world doesn't want to be at peace or at least a large section is still trying to determine who or what will be in charge

azernik 9y ago

Terrorism generally involves targeting of civilians, not just causing their deaths incidental to other objectives. That latter can still be a war crime if it is not "proportionate to the military advantage gained", but that seems to be exactly the judgment these rules are trying to make.

throwanem 9y ago

That is a frankly astonishing misapprehension of the case. A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. One of the realities of warfare is that civilian casualties can't always be entirely avoided, and a war still be prosecuted with meaningful hope of success. But the failure to avoid civilian casualties, however necessary, is regarded as a failure nonetheless, and weighs heavily on those involved - perhaps you overlooked the mention of an increased need for anti-suicide counseling after strikes in which civilian casualties occur. One does not often find "the complete devaluation of innocent human lives" coincident with contemplation of suicide as a potentially proportionate response to having taken them. A terrorist organization, such as its current adversary, has no such scruples, and indeed will often seek to inflict as much atrocity on innocents as it can manage. The incentives, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage, for irregular fighters, are such that the involvement of civilians - not just as targets, but also as human shields and as a sort of moving camouflage in which to conceal oneself - is an utter necessity, because there's only one way for a stand-up fight between a regular military and a guerrilla band to end. The typical fashion in which such bands misuse innocents by default would weigh heavily on their members as well, which is why one finds such a heavy investment in ideology among these groups, whether it be religious as in the current case or secular as in the case of last century's "Communist revolutionaries". You have to have some story to tell yourself that makes your flagrant abuse of civilians seem righteous - in other words, to devalue innocent human lives enough that you can live with the things you do to them. To casually equate such wanton violation of every civilized standard of conduct, with the extreme if admittedly at times imperfect care that military forces exercise to avoid behaving even remotely similarly, strikes me as something that must be motivated either by arrant ignorance of the facts underlying the case, or by some sort of ideologically motivated disinterest in them. Neither seems to me terribly useful in developing an accurate apprehension of reality.

hasenj 9y ago
> A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. This has only become the case officially after WWII. And frankly I think the only reason this even matters is the media. Civilian lives meant absolutely nothing and were considered fair target during war. Millions died in WWII from intentional fire bombing campaigns on urban areas by the allied forces. Same in the Korean war. Same during the Vietnam war. Civilians were purposely targeted to "demoralize the enemy" and force them to surrender. The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once the objective is reached then the killing should stop.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

zxcmx 9y ago

I get it, I think. On the other hand I don't think South Korea would exist without intervention. My grandfather spent the rest of his life after the Korean war (as an an anzac, artillery, ironically I guess) in a mental hospital, "shellshock" as they called it then. My grandmother and my mother were terrified of him. He got let out a couple of times and always got put back in. I don't really know what it means to intervene in things, I suppose we would have to talk in some way about the moral value of South Korea existing even if that is unpalatable. My point I guess is that you are talking about our yes, corrupted set of moral objectives, without maybe considering what happens if we do nothing.

Gibbon1 9y ago
> I don't really know what it means to intervene in things Most of the time where I thought maybe intervention was a decent idea, it wasn't. The way I think of it now is you can't throw sticks of dynamite in a flower bed and expect roses. All the things war is damages civil society.
- zxcmx 9y ago
  Well maybe we shouldn't have intervened. I sort of say "we" in a loose way since family. I dunno. Maybe it would have been better if they'd just worked it out themselves. That said, do you know any Koreans?
  - Gibbon1 9y ago
    It's kinda interesting but the US intervention in Korea wasn't in isolation. Before that was the Japanese conquest. And even before that the Chinese were messing with them.

deleted 9y ago

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deleted 9y ago

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