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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

What is terrorism? If two sides are fighting each other and one side has smart bombs and drones and the other side doesn't, clearly the choice for the weaker side is to give up or to find tactics that work to break its enemy's will.

The word terrorism is a propaganda word intended to make the audience pass moral judgment on the act and ignore the larger issue of why the conflict exists in the first place.

I too find acts of violence upsetting, but it's dangerous to buy into the propaganda around the word terrorism, since it's used to justify abandoning diplomacy and dehumanizing the enemy.

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> I too find acts of violence upsetting, but it's dangerous to buy into the propaganda around the word terrorism, since it's used to justify abandoning diplomacy and dehumanizing the enemy.

And it's used to curb the rights of your own citizens.

Exactly. I haven't figured out the true aim of terrorists. Unless it's to give license and cause for government to do outrageous things. Which seems to cause more problems for society than the initial terrorism. So maybe that is the aim.

Here's one of their strategic guidebooks, 'The Management of Savagery/Chaos'[1]. They want to cause America (and Europe) to exhaust their military resources in the Middle East and cause the states there to fail. In failed states, they are able to establish a caliphate, as the strongest armed force on the ground. So far we are fulfilling their goals quite well with our useless war, and France is now going down the same path.

[1] https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/abu-bakr-naji-the...

> So far we are fulfilling their goals quite well with our useless war, and France is now going down the same path.

Is France fulfilling Daesh's goals by destroying their administrative, economic and military infrastructure? What kind of action or inaction would go against Daesh's goals in your opinion?

Terrorism is psychological warfare aimed at a civilian population. It could be an expression of frustration; an act by one who doesn't care, or cares exclusively and consumingly. And it is horrific, disgusting, and morally reprehensible.

The word is not merely propaganda, it is a word whose extremity exactly conveys the revulsion and moral judgement of the speaker. As with any label, you run the risk of superficiality and preoccupation with simplified narratives, but "terrorism" is NOT just propaganda, and it deliberately conveys more than "acts of violence". (A clinical term with its own problems of distancing audiences from the immediate reality.)

I wrote this because your last sentence seemed to imply something that I've noticed crop up in these kinds of discussions: the (typically Western) assumption that there is legitimacy to both sides of any conflict, and that, recognizing this, a diplomatic solution can be achieved. I've yet to see concrete evidence that this is the case. Short of deprogramming, how do you reason with a group of people brainwashed to be fundamentally unreasonable?

Was it terrorism when the US dropped the nukes on Japan?

Psychological warfare aimed at a civilian population, right? Even if you agree that it was, you have to admit that is not how the history books are writte, because we don't use the propagana term "terrorist" to describe our own actions.

Things have changed a bit since then. How many ISIS members adhere to the Geneva conventions?

Does the US?

Exactly. The drones flying over Pakistan and Afghanistan are intended to make the populations of the border regions worry constantly about being fired upon. It's what terrorism looks like when you have an essentially unlimited budget and don't have to resort to crude munitions like IEDs or suicide bombers.

Dropping nukes and bombing civilians could be construed as war crimes, and the penalty for such war crimes would probably be death.

War criminals versus 'terrorists'.

How does that sound? Is it really a propaganda term if you're a common war criminal who committed mass atrocity against civilians? Or a terrorist?

Both side prosecuted bombing of population centers. They also both get away with it. Probably the reason why there wasn't prosecutions in the first place because they fear the precedence that will set.

The propaganda message we're supposed to believe is that the groups doing terrorist acts are bizarrely religious and brainwashed, completely irrational, with pre-enlightenment values. I don't think there is any evidence to support that.

It's a really bizarre amplification and dehumanization of the enemy... I realize this is a part of war propaganda, but it's particularly distasteful because it amplifies the environment of fear the terrorists were trying to create in the first place.

The goal of any tactic in war is to break the other side's will to keep fighting. Terrorism is an effective tactic because it can usually be carried out at convenient times and doesn't require much logistics, sophistication or funding.

Like pornography, you know it when you see it. I don't care much for this bit of sophistry. Islamic fundamentalists or lone wolf nuts deliberately targeting innocent people works as a definition of terrorism to me. I don't feel like I'm being manipulated by propaganda.

Honest question: Do you think Daesh is open to diplomacy? What course of action do you propose with them?

Politics aside, if targeting and killing civilians indiscriminately is not terrorism, I don't know what is.

ETA: I'm talking about the Paris attacks specifically, not giving a formal definition of terrorism. If you don't count those as terrorism, I don't know what you would count. This semantic mumbo jumbo is ridiculous.

By the definition you gave above:

* Bombing of Dresden: Terrorism

* Nuking of Hiroshima: Terrorism

* America's Drone strikes: Terrorism

Context and motive is everything. You cannot boil it down to an easily digestible soubd-byte to base your opinion on.

Don't forget shooting at redcoats from behind the cover of a tree during the revolutionary war.

Yes you can.

Hiroshima was in the midst of a full blown state vs. state war, in which the US was not the aggressor against Japan.

While it is true that it was hoped the atomic bomb would be as useful psychologically as it was physically, there is no true comparison here, and this is argumentative for the sake of trying to make a point.

> there is no true comparison here

You're right, the Hiroshima attack in itself was worse in terms of the death and suffering of innocents than all Islamic terrorism of the past 20 years put together.

True. Ironically, it's generally understood by Americans that this was done to break Japan's will to continue fighting. It worked. Everything we do in war is to break the will of the enemy to continue.

Thus unless we expect one side to nobly surrender, we ought to expect the most extreme atrocities to occur in war.

When you think about it, it's silly to draw an arbitrary distinction of humane combat, since if we really wanted to be humane we'd have our leaders compete in chess boxing or something that would minimize the destruction of property and loss of life.

I'm not claiming to give a formal definition of terrorism, I'm just saying that if such a definition exists it should definitely include the Paris attacks, otherwise it would be meaningless.

Regardless of that, the events that you mentioned are massive, coordinated, state-level actions. I just can't accept labeling those as terrorism without that word losing any meaning. Yes, those events are horrible, but not every horrible thing that involves killing civilians is terrorism even when if's brutal mass murder. There are other words too, like genocide, war crimes, massacre, assassinations, etc.

Oh hogwash.

Bombing innocent people simply isn't right and isn't effective. If you're honestly sympathizing with these people or justifying their actions (which you seem one skip and jump from doing), you should at least want them to do things that are effective at getting the change they want.

Then again, maybe their entire motive is to bring global sharia law and secure their place in heaven by killing as many innocent infidels as possible. As far as I know, ISIS has made no claims that were less extreme than this. I have no problem dehumanizing someone with that sort of motivation. It's barbaric; it's monstrous. They have made no attempt at diplomacy, and there is no chance.

It isn't effective? So far in the past 15 years the terrorists have spent at most a few million dollars on their attacks, and the west has spent trillions.

The amount of economic damage to the west has been profound, and yet our leaders would be happy to spend 20% of GDP indefinitely on ineffective projects attempting to thwart terrorism.

So yes, terrorism works very well and often terrorist groups transition into respectable and moderate political parties.

Yup, you're entirely correct.

Fortunately, We would never do anything like bombing innocent people, because We are the Good Guys, and all our actions are therefore entirely justified. Only They do things like that, because They are the Bad Guys, and Their actions are barbaric and monstrous.

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/06/u-s-journalists-who-inst...

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