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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

It's highly likely that this was shot down by terrorists currently fighting in eastern Ukraine. I seem to recall the US being interested in fighting terrorism.

edit: also, I bet dollars to donuts there were US citizens on the flight.

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Just who exactly are the "terrorists" you talk about?

Do you mean the Swedish neo-nazi snipers fighting there? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28329329

Or are you referring to people who have taken up arms because they no longer want to be part of the Ukraine. Why not simply call these people "rebels" or "separatists"?

Generally when you take up arms against your country, the act is called 'treason' and proper term for the perpetrators is 'traitors.'

So do you consider the coup leaders who violently overthrew the legitimate government of Ukraine as traitors and terrorists too?

And in case you're wondering, no, they didn't impeach the President or follow the constitution when seizing power.

http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/2849/was-the-cha...

Your source is a stackexchange post? C'mon.

Do you dispute the facts contained in the post?

Or are you just going to shoot the messenger?

I read the page. There are no facts contained therein, just someone posting a link to a BBC article about the venerable Ukrainian legal scholar Vladimir Putin's opinion on the legality of the events. Additionally, some other people share their opinions.

You might want to double check that link you posted.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It's all completely subjective, depending on your perspective.

For that matter, Ben Franklin, George Washington and crew were "terrorists" from some POV.

Even speaking as a US citizen, I can admit that the actions of some rebels did constitute terrorism. Innocent Loyalist civilians were targeted, for the purpose of political change. It doesn't get much closer to the textbook definition of terrorism than that.

But hey, the winners write the history books.

The actions of many national armies in wartime counts as terrorism by application of various textbook definitions was well. That does not make those armies or their soldiers terrorists.

I disagree. However, nobody wants to admit that their team did evil things, so we whitewash. Very rarely do people see anything but black and white when it comes to 'Us vs Them' situations.

Then you are extending the definitions of "terrorist" and "terrorism" to such broad lengths as to make the terms useless for anything except political and propaganda purposes. It has nothing to do with admitting to or denying evil things.

Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism. Terrorists use political violence to further their ends, but not everyone who uses political violence is a terrorist.

> Terrorism is political violence, but not all political violence is terrorism.

Exactly. It's terrorism when other people do it.

But hey, the winners write the history books.

Yeah, that too. That's another reason that all of these definitions are a bit fuzzy.

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