5 ms·

Words like terrorism just can't be left in the hand of politicians. It's incredible how middle eastern dictators have picked it up as a name for their enemies.

• x5n1 11y ago
  It used to be a political tool for furthering potentially legitimate political or ideological interests. These days it has been corrupted to further illegitimate, religious interests. That's out of bounds. So let's make a rule to only use it in cases where it applies to illegitimate political and ideological interests. Otherwise, let's call them potential freedom fighters, depending on outcome.
  • netcan 11y ago
    Lets not use it at all. Lets call them enemies. ISIS are an enemy, that's unambiguous. They would not dispute it. I'm not saying lets not apply moral judgement. Call them assholes, brutes, whatever.
  • meepmorp 11y ago
    > It used to be a political tool for furthering potentially legitimate political or ideological interests. By "it," I assume you mean terrorism, as a tactic. > These days it has been corrupted to further illegitimate, religious interests. That's out of bounds. Why? What's specifically out of bounds about religiously inspired terrorism, but acceptable about purely political and/or ideological terrorism? And where does the boundary get drawn - Northern Ireland, for example, has had no small amount of trouble with terrorism where the political and religious motives are inextricably linked. > So let's make a rule to only use it in cases where it applies to illegitimate political and ideological interests. Otherwise, let's call them potential freedom fighters, depending on outcome. Or perhaps your post was merely sarcasm.
  • pekk 11y ago
    Calling something terrorism never implied favorably that the interest was legitimate, so it isn't a corruption to apply it to hated groups like ISIS, it's just a description. The phrase "freedom fighter" has never been usable in an objective way.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• dragonwriter 11y ago
  > 'US removes Cuba from list of enemies' is what actually happened. The US has lots of different things that amount to "lists of enemies", so its important to distinguish which list we are talking about. The individual terms in the names of the lists may not be meaningful in the usual sense of the words used, but the names of the lists still serve as (potentially opaque) unique identifiers for which list (and thus, which associated legal consequences) is being discussed.
• tzs 11y ago
  > Terrorism is currently just a euphemism for "enemy." We should just go back to using that title. It's way more honest. 'US removes Cuba from list of enemies' is what actually happened. The word "terrorism" may be overused and too broadly used in many political contexts, but in this particular context it is narrowly used. The official list that Cuba was removed from was "Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria". The list of enemies would be a larger list.