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Comment by Dolores12 | Hacker News Reader

It was so nice of United States to make sure none of ISIS fighters were harmed. It is just unbelievable. They make deals with terrorists.

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The only people who don't make deals with terrorists are in the movies. All the world's governments make deals with terrorists.

Is it totally fine for lets say Mexican government to make a deal with terrorists on american territory and let them go?

I never understood how any armed muslim automatically becomes a "terrorist" in the eyes of the world. Most ISIS fighters aren't terrorists.

> Most ISIS fighters aren't terrorists.

What are they then, freedom fighters?

What's wrong with 'militants'?

They're a militant group, and they claim to be a state, though they are unrecognized.

I don't even understand how the label "terrorist" applies to the lot of them.

It's like everyone has forgotten what the term terrorist means. We might as well change the dictionary definition to "armed muslim" now.

Burning people alive, attacking civilian targets to cause fear and panic and lack of trust in the civilian authorities - that's exactly what classic terrorism is.

I never understood how some people consider "terror" to only be acts of terrorism in Western countries, thus reaching the conclusion that local fighters are somehow not terrorists.

If you want to use a narrow definition of terrorism, such as "participating in purposeful killing of civilians to cause terror and further your political goals", 100% of ISIS fighters are guilty. Dozens die or are hurt daily by a huge number of mines, booby traps, suicide bombs and attacks explicitly targeting civilians in Syria, Iraq, and across the world. This happens inside and outside of ISIS controlled territory.

Civilians are in no way collateral damage for ISIS, they are direct targets of genocide, sexual slavery and simply random mass murders.

Using that "narrow" definition most countries around the world, including the US, have engaged or are engaging in terrorism, thus making the lot of them terrorist groups?

Bombings of cities during war time, indiscriminately killing civilians, sometimes as a show of power to pressure the opposing side to surrender, wouldn't make the whole military a terrorist group.

North Korea's treatment of their citizens doesn't make the whole country, or their military, or their police, a terrorist group.

At times countries like the US have killed more civilians in a single day than ISIS killed in the past 6 years[1][2]. Do I consider them terrorist? No.

In the war in Syria, the Assad regime killed more civilians than ISIS by an order of magnitude[2]. Do I consider them terrorist? No.

All three countries would be considered terrorist by your definition.

I don't buy it. Just because of terrorist acts by a few, the whole group doesn't become a group of terrorists.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...

[2]: http://vdc-sy.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/June-report-Eng...

>most countries around the world, including the US, have engaged or are engaging in terrorism

1. You are saying that at least 98 counties in the world are killing civilians to pursuit its political aims. That's bold assertion. Can you elaborate?

2. Hillary Clinton, a former United States presidential candidate, asked to send a drone to kill Julian Assange [0]. Do you consider this terrorism? I do.

3. The use of nuclear weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a war crime and i hope some day the guilty will be punished. Otherwise, expect North Korea to land a nuke on US territories without any consequences(for North Korea).

[0] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/782906224937410562?lang...

Edit: actually i just found what it is, it is called State Terrorism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_terrorism and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_state_terror...

I agree it can be considered terrorism, what I explicitly disagree with is then claiming that for this reason the US and other countries should be considered a terrorist group, rather than a country.

Same reason ISIS shouldn't be regarded as a terrorist group, since their actual modus operandi is better described as a militant group and proto-state.

Also to reply to your nitpicking on 1: I didn't specify a timeframe, so yes. If I had to I could go back in history for a few thousand years for most countries until I found something that fit my parent comment's definition of terrorism. There will be scant few who will come away clean under such scrutiny, which is also why I rejected that definition for being useless.

But since only tens of countries are currently completely at peace, I may not even have to go very far back.

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