Comment on What is the difference between terrorist attack vs military strike if both kill civilians?
disregardable@lemmy.zip 4 hours agoBecause 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.
you are implicitly arguing that there is a substantive difference.
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 4 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.