Comment on What is the difference between terrorist attack vs military strike if both kill civilians?
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 4 hours agoYour argument is morally and intellectually weak.
What is the difference between murdering civilians to “stoke resistance” and murdering civilians to “coerce civilians into complying with your demands out of fear”? In both cases you are using violence to influence behavior and the difference is you are childishly imagining “fear” isn’t an emotion when bombs are dropping out of the sky randomly killing people.
How I know your thinking is soft-headed: you mention Trump’s bombing of Venezuelan boats, but not Iranian cities.
disregardable@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
It’s not an argument. It’s a textbook definition. I’m sorry you disagree with the standard definition. There’s a time and a place to argue political theory. I hope you have at it with people engaged in that discussion.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
We are literally talking about the difference between bombing someone from a plane and bombing them from your chest. This is exactly the place to talk about it.
The dictionary definition is just a start. The question for the adults in the room is how that applies in reality and if there is a real difference between terrorism and, say, an air bombing campaign.
By leaving the definition out there and ending the conversation, you are implicitly arguing that there is a substantive difference.
The question for you is why are shy about engaging in a discussion.
disregardable@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
Because this question is clearly asked by someone who appears to be a teenager, or maybe a university student, who doesn’t understand the first thing about international politics. My goal was to answer their question efficiently and in language they understand.
No, I’m not arguing that. That’s taken as a fact central to the definition of terrorism. Whether you personally agree with it or not, that is how the word is used. When government actors use the word “terrorism,” they’re not referring to government military action. If you argue otherwise, you’re teaching this person to misunderstand the language their government uses.
Now you can make an entirely separate argument that goes along the lines, “The definition may be that, but I think it SHOULD be something else!” That’s what your response is doing. That’s an argument I have no stake in personally and did not bring upon by myself by just explaining the definition.
schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
“Government says that when it does terrorism, it’s called something else, so it’s not terrorism.”
I read this question as someone asking what is the SUBSTANTIVE difference between the two, because maybe they are struggling to see a difference between a president who LITERALLY THREATENS NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION UNLESS HIS POLITICAL DEMANDS ARE MET after literally murdering school children and a “terrrorist.”
“Terrorism” is one of the biggest emotional trigger words in the political language. If you want to discredit your enemy and remove their legal rights, you can call them a terrorist. If you want to terrorize people as a state actor, you have ample semantic and legal tools to pretend you are not committing terrorism, inlcuding text book definitions.