Why can't the Pakistani government sanction these attacks?
Are US drone strikes in Pakistan a war crime?
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Under Islamic law it would make them mohareb [terrorists] which carries a death sentence in Pakistan. Its a crime against humanity to attack your own citizens with WMDs. Apart from Iran which is the only country that follows sharia, Pakistan is the only country where the civil government has adopted Islamic laws [with modification] since the regime of Zia.
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Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Every government and other political organization on earth has its own definition of terrorism, which neatly excuses its own actions. I avoid those definitions and stick with the definitions that scholars use. The scholarly consensus I observe is:
Terrorism is an attack, of military scope (or at least paramilitary), deliberately targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure, in the (usually futile) hope of terrorizing them into supporting a policy so unpopular among them, that there is no other way to gain their support.
It does not require killing; blowing up a bridge or an empty but important building sends the same message. But it does have to be of military proportions or the enemy won't believe you have the power to follow through and do serious damage if they refuse your demands. And it must be directed at civilians and civilian infrastructure; if you attack a military target it's war, insurrection, rebellion, guerrilla warfare or any number of other types of combat, but it's not terrorism. (The USS Cole, the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the Pentagon, and British police stations in Ulster which maintained British control, were all valid military targets. This is an example of how the meaning of the word "terrorism" is twisted for political purposes.)
Physical violence is the only way to terrorize a population. You may be able to intimidate an individual into doing what you want by merely threatening violence, and in fact the Mafia and other outlaw gangs do just that. But you can't intimidate a population that way. All they'll do if you threaten them is fight back.
The only successful significant act of terrorism in history that I know of--i.e., one which resulted in the target population changing its policy--was the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These cities had no strategic miiltary importance, certainly not enough to use up the only two atomic bombs in existence, in the hope of crippling Japan's military. The U.S. government's goal was extortion: to terrorize the Japanese civilians into demanding that their government surrender. They regarded surrender as so dishonorable and humiliating that they would never have otherwise considered it, until the last surviving four year-old was gunned down while charging into a batallion of U.S. Marines waving her dead daddy's samurai sword. We had to demonstrate to them that they were fighting an enemy who also had no honor.
Unfortunately, for the rest of eternity, every two-bit wacko with an arsenal of weapons will be able to say to his comrades, "Nothing else has worked so let's try terrorism. It worked for the Americans."
Of course in the Information Age attacks no longer have to be explosive or chemical. If you demonstrate the ability to cripple a nation's information infrastructure you may be able to extort them into meeting your demands. The word "cyberterrorism" has already been coined.
The first part of that definition is okay, but I find that it founders on the seond part regarding intent and the disposition of the targetted populace.
It is a mistake to view terrorism as a form of Clausewitzian warfare (i.e., a rationally calculated strategy designed to maximize political utility). This can be observed by noting that terrorism is well-understood to be counterproductive in that sense, and noting that terrorist groups almost never cease terror operations even when their stated goals are achieved - they simply change the goals.
Terrorism is not about what, if anything, the terrorized do in response. It is about enacting fantasies of power and righteousness.
The classic article here:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3459646.html
And another good one here:
http://maxabrahms.com/pdfs/DC_250-1846.pdf
Which Islamic law says that attacking rebels within your country is a crime? That would make the Taliban terrorists, and thus criminals. It's not criminal for a legitimate government to go after criminals. If they cannot be arrested, due to their significant fighting power, then they must simply be killed.
These missiles are not WMDs under most definitions of the term, which only includes nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
If these missiles are WMDs then Bush did find WMDs in Iraq, thus the invasion was justified. I don't buy that and I don't think you do either.
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Its one that i am familiar with but feel the need to reject. I feel it ignores the root of the word and further still corrupts its meaning for the benifit of the politically powerful.
I'm sorry but I cannot really agree with that. If some one has done an attack of the sort, never tries it again not can't but people are still afraid is it terrorism to you? If say i do an attack and than say you use that fear to coerce whose the terrorist?
perhaps
I don't know the jewish terrorism against the arab population of palestine and the british seemed to work to me?
In the end though I feel as if the fairly well agreed on definition must be rejected. under it whether or not you use the fear generated if any one does it makes you the terrorist when you may just simply be a nut job.
I think you've missed the point. The taliban are a destructive cancer that threaten to destroy Pakistan and spread. Killing cancer results in damage to the body. The same is true for killing the Taliban. The technology for better focus on the cancer simply doesn't exist yet.
What does she care, the originator of her religion was a war criminal (and proud of it).
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
I don't call the bombing of the King David Hotel "terrorism." In fact I regard that misuse of the word as an illustration of how it is so often twisted for political purposes. The majority of the British people in that hotel may not have been soldiers, but neither were the majority of the Americans in the Pentagon on 9/11. Those Brits were agents of what the Zionists considered an occupying force in their historical homeland, and they had the power to decide the fate of the Jewish people in Palestine and a large number of those in other locations who might wish to immigrate. This makes them a military target. The attack was insurrection, not terrorism. Their goal was to drive the occupiers out of what they regarded as their country by killing them, not to change the opinion of the British citizens back home. I think that in 1946 any educated Western person would have known that the British civilians were not famous for surrendering to extortion! Their only hope was to dissuade the British government from fighting back; a reasonable hope considering that their army was exhausted from WWII. That attack was a military tactic, not extortion, and it succeeded.
Please note that this is merely an analysis, not an expression of approval. As you all know, I wish the Brits had not decided to give the Jewish refugees that particular piece of land. We've been paying for that blunder for sixty years and it keeps getting worse.
As for the terrorist attacks by Israel against the Palestinians since the foundation of Israel, I'm not sure why you categorize them as "successful." The goal of terrorism is to force the target population to accept your policy, and that certainly hasn't happened. Not just the Palestinians, but now the entire Muslim world, as well as a growing portion of the Christian world and a whole lot of other people, now hate Israel.
The rise to power of Hamas in Gaza is the direct (and not entirely unpredicted) result of Israel's policy toward Palestine. It is hardly a tactical, strategic, diplomatic or propaganda victory for Israel.
No, the goal of terrorism is to increase solidarity and adherence to ideology amongst the perpetrators of terrorism and whatever identity group they claim to act on behalf of.
And it has worked nicely for both sides of the particular conflict you cite. That's why people keep doing it. If they were in it for rational strategic ends, it would have died out long, long ago.
No, you can't say it has popular support. Such a thing cannot be done via guesswork. Most people have no idea it is happening or understand even what it means. Ignorance at certain levels certainly can be culpable, but Obama cannot claim that he is supported via democratic channels.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
That's one of many politically-crafted definitions. It does not represent any consensus of scholarly definiitions that I have ever seen. Even the several definitions in Dictionary.com, which report on actual usage in the media, do not agree with your definition. They all emphasize the impact on the target population, not on the attackers' community.
People keep doing it because they're angry and often poisoned by revenge, arguably the most wicked of all emotions. Strong emotions are notorious for suppressing logical thinking. This is why anger and especially anger rooted in vengeance motivate attacks that have no "rational strategic ends."
Terrorism often increases solidarity among the attackers' community, but for the wrong reason: It precipitates a response from the enemy (often a disproportionate one, as from Israel) that galvanizes the population in their own illogical frenzy of anger and revenge. Before long you've got a feud if it's between families, or a war if it's between nations. And the weaker side will inevitably lose unless a much stronger external party sees a strategic political value in helping them, as was the case in much of Asia and Africa during the Cold War.
No philosopher, historian, lexicographer or sociologist who's in the business of defining words is going to include in his definition of "terrorism" the words: "increasing solidarity among the attacking population to help ensure a devastating defeat."
Perhaps a psychologist would.
You and me are just going to have to disagree on this. I feel label them(civilians) as a legit military target and not calling it terrorism to be a highly political choice and part of why the word has become next to meaningless.
and seems to be willing to do what is needed.
did their terror get them their country yes. so it was usccessesful. they managed to drive the pals out through fear and keep them from returning. the fact that they have suffered the consequences for that successful gaining of a want to me doesn't mean it wasn't successful but that is a discussion for anther time and place.
true but do they have any real chance of harming the state of ISrael not really.
Well of course it doesn't. There is no consensus on the definition of terrorism to speak of, scholarly or otherwise.
Yeah, I'm aware of how the term is misused in the media. Why you would criticize me for a "politically crafted" definiton and then cite media usage - where all definitions of everything are explicitly politicized - is beyond me.
That reads an awful lot like a rephrasing of the definitions I supplied in an earlier post. If there are no rational strategic ends, then there is no issue of forcing policy changes on the target population, etc. It's simply an expression of one side's anger and self-righteousness, exactly as I suggested.
How is that "the wrong reasons?" We're talking about people who view their group as locked in cosmic combat with the target group; if their actions cause the target group to legitimate that supposition in concrete ways, so much the better.
Nor have I suggested that "ensure a devastating defeat" is part of the definition. Nor do I agree that such an outcome reliably occurs: where are the terrorist groups undergoing "devastating defeat?" Sri Lanka, perhaps, but that's more the exception that proves the rule. That is not the normal fate of terrorist movements, which usually do not get settled via decisive conflict. Even where they do - again, Sri Lanka and perhaps Colombia - such an end is often not achieved for decades, even generations. It is hardly an immediate or inevitable feature of terrorism.
Meanwhile, I suggest you read the two scholarly articles on the nature of terrorism I posted previously in this thread, which explicitly reject the inclusion of rational strategic calculus from the phenomenon of terrorism.
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Interesting. Are terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan viewed the same way?
We shouldn't confuse the issue: there are lots of countries besides Pakistan that have adopted islamic laws.
I disagree, Fraggle: terrorism of any kind against civilians is a form of political pressure. "Politics by other other means," if you'll excuse the pun. I don't think you could say that Americans in Iraq aren't political targets but that the British staff and civilians in the King David were. It's still terrorism; in this case, one could easily argue that it contributed to Israeli succession as a nation, but it doesn't change the facts of its application.
But Arab terrorism against the Jewish population not so well, once they were armed and properly led. I don't think you can judge terrorism entirely by its effectiveness.
They are the cowardly acts of a nation bent on world domination. And nothing more. It truly sickens me.
And we call them 'terrorists' for defending themselves in the only ways they have.
Planting roadside bombs, etc.
Like they are supposed to stand up and fight mano a machino?
Fuck, we are a sick people.
We keep this crap up much longer, and we just might find ourselves invaded by a rather large 'coalition' of nations.
And it will be nobody's fault but ours.
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If anyone wishes to disagree, first do a little historical research. Find out how many decades our glorious country has been fucking with those people.
9/11 was the direct result of our actions. It was RETALIATION. Anybody understand that concept?
Or do you all think we have the right to run the world militarily, politcally, economically, and religiously as we see fit?
If you do, then you deserve whatever happens.
The real shame here is, you are going to make the rest of us suffer for your arrogance.
I was just talking to a friend about this. Even conceding that the 'war on terror' could last for a 1000 years, never coming close to being 'won', he feels it is the correct policy.
Ignorance, religious beliefs, patriotism, and hatred go hand in hand.
Some people will never learn.
And we call them 'terrorists' for defending themselves in the only ways they have.
Planting roadside bombs, etc.
Like they are supposed to stand up and fight mano a machino?
Fuck, we are a sick people.
We keep this crap up much longer, and we just might find ourselves invaded by a rather large 'coalition' of nations.
And it will be nobody's fault but ours.
(edit)
If anyone wishes to disagree, first do a little historical research. Find out how many decades our glorious country has been fucking with those people.
9/11 was the direct result of our actions. It was RETALIATION. Anybody understand that concept?
Or do you all think we have the right to run the world militarily, politcally, economically, and religiously as we see fit?
If you do, then you deserve whatever happens.
The real shame here is, you are going to make the rest of us suffer for your arrogance.
I was just talking to a friend about this. Even conceding that the 'war on terror' could last for a 1000 years, never coming close to being 'won', he feels it is the correct policy.
Ignorance, religious beliefs, patriotism, and hatred go hand in hand.
Some people will never learn.
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Defending themselves against the workers in the World Trade Center? Face the facts, Islamists are bent on world domination of their brand of Islam, and they must be stopped for the sake of the US, but also for Muslims around the world. Do you want to see sickness? Look at this:
Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys
That's in Turkey, but it would be everywhere if the theocratic bullys have their way.
Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys
That's in Turkey, but it would be everywhere if the theocratic bullys have their way.
Incorrect. Those are extremists. We have them, too. Right here in good old christiandom.
How many muslims live in america? How many have they slaughtered? Ignorance of the facts are exactly what fuels BS like what you just wrote.
Its simple enough to check my claim.
Check out the US murder rate. Check out the number of muslims SWORN to eradicate us. Funny. 99.99999999% of them live quite peacefully among us.
Your ignorant, irrational hatred is appalling.
Look at the wacked out things that christian extremists do. The cowards send unmanned drones to blow up babies. Women and children. To get to their 'target'? We have no moral superiority. None at all.
We started this war. We will lose. All of us. Until people like you finally stop hating.
By the way ... somewhere between 5 and 8 MILLION muslims are living here in america. MILLION. Sworn to kill us, are they?
Really. Keep spreading the lies, and the hate, and the fear. Good for you.
Jesus would be so proud of you.
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