What is the difference between terrorist attack vs military strike if both kill civilians?

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨RavenofDespair@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Is it just one is a government

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unmagical@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
1428

It’s what the government wants to tell its citizens.

Any government can enact terrorist attacks or military strikes. However, random people can only conduct terrorist attacks (as they don’t have a military). The lines get blurred when you are talking about insurgent factions and occupied peoples. But it’s essentially a semantic choice depending on the propaganda you want to promulgate.

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- Wrufieotnak@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Why are half the words missing in your version? Here is the original:
  
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  - unmagical@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Appears I’d downloaded a genericized meme template.
    
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- RavenofDespair@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can freedom fighters against dictator use the word military strike
  
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  - unmagical@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They can call it whatever they like, but if there’s only a small handful the best the international community will grant is a “guerrilla” attack.
    
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- DevastatedBungHole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Their British what? Their barbarous, what?
  
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  - jimmy90@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    there spelling
    
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Zonetrooper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Nominally:

A terrorist attack is primarily intended to kill civilians or cause damage to civilian lives in order to cause fear of the attacking group, anger against the victims’ own government, or otherwise cause a change of policy. The deaths of people with no relationship to any ongoing military operation or force is “a feature, not a bug”. Military targets may also be hit, or the goal may even be to selectively target civilians to emphasize that their military cannot protect them.

A military strike is primarily intended to deteriorate an enemy force’s ability to wage warfare: by killing soldiers or leadership, destroying materiel or supplies being used to fight, or destroying industry or logistics being used to support the war effort. Civilian deaths are an unavoidable side-effect of strikes primarily intended to hamper military warfighting capability.

That’s the theoretical line.

In practice, of course, there are many points of disputation - how many degrees separated from a man holding a gun must a target be before it is “non-military”? If an organization which mainly targets civilians in terrorist attacks carries out an attack on a military target, that still might be referred to as a “terrorist attack”, as in, “an attack by a terrorist organization”. And of course, there’s a degree of publicity shaping involved in this as well. But in concept, the above is your line.
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- BionicBeaver3000@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “Rapid dominance attempts to affect the will, perception, and understanding of the adversary to fight or respond to our strategic policy ends through imposing a regime of Shock and Awe” (Ullman & Wade, 1996)
  
  One could argue that “shock & awe” is a military strategy to specifically terrorize the enemy force, for example a military opponent. This would blur the line above (terrorism vs military) as it intends to affect the opponents minds with fear of the attacking group and thus coerce them away from their goal.
  
  This strategy is one performed by an organized military that is (theoretically) bound by the rules of warfare (like the Geneva Convention) and unlawful acts can be prosecuted by either their own military law system or an international court (like the Hague). Non-state actors (insurgents, terrorist groups) on the other hand are not beholden to any law. To me, this is another relevant distinction: Is the act itself one of terror or military necessity? And is the actor a governmental organization beholden to the law?
  
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  - Zonetrooper@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    One could argue that “shock & awe” is a military strategy to specifically terrorize the enemy force, for example a military opponent.
    
    Indeed, and that’s why the definition hinges critically on the intended target (civilian vs. military). One could even argue that if you, as a civilian, see your nation’s military forces march out and get torn to ribbons, and then the next night your city’s sky is alive with enemy aircraft bombing military, government, or materiel targets, you have pretty good reason to be scared. But we wouldn’t call this terrorism, even if there are some civilian casualties, because the primary targets are all legitimate ones intended to hamper your ability to wage war.
    
    This strategy is one performed by an organized military that is … bound by the rules of warfare … Non-state actors (insurgents, terrorist groups) on the other hand are not beholden to any law. To me, this is another relevant distinction
    
    This is another good point. We nominally expect that organized nations will adhere to the laws and customs of war. More critically, non-state actors also tend to not have uniforms, stash materiel among civilian populations (often even on sites protected under said laws and customs), and deliberately introduce ambiguity as to whether a target is military or civilian.
    
    But this logic can also get murky when we consider states not recognizing other governments or arguing they are “occupied” by another, more ephemeral hostile force. It can be advantageous for a state to portray their enemy as an ephemeral, non-state actor, in part because it lets you portray the enemy as not adhering to laws and customs of war.
    
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- yakko@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This is the answer I was going to give, there’s such a thing as a legitimate military target, and terrorism is not considered legitimate war. States do terror all the time though, and they have a keen interest in blurring that line.
  
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ApplyingAutomation@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That’s the neat part ~ there isn’t one!

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Mrkawfee@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Basically this.

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WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The only difference between a terrorist group and a military is the size of their budget.

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Iconoclast@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The difference is intentions. The intentions of a terrorist attack is to cause terror in the civilian population.

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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  As do many military attacks (like the bombings of London, Coventry, Dresden, etc.)
  
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  - wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The blitz (WW2 London) was a terror attack by Hitler’s own admission I think. The explicit aim was to impact civilian morale.
    
    I believe Dresden was justified at the time as being against an industrial base, but the regardless of whether that’s true or not, it was certainly a war crime by today’s standards. Same for the dam attacks.
    
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MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Both are mass murder.

The difference is the State claims the (legal) right to lethal force. It’s still murder. Terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on outlook) that kill people are murderers. They probably also claim the right to lethal force, which is still murder.

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- unmagical@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Murder is specially extra-legal, and as states define their own laws so long as their militaries abide by the laws of their host country and international regulations for warfare it isn’t murder.
  
  They are both killing, however.
  
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GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There’s an old saying that the difference between a freedom fighter and a guerilla is corporate sponsorships. Seems like a relevant distinction here as well.

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ohulancutash@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
One group wears a special costume to do its massacres in.

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PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Generally, terrorist attacks are more about creating terror or (attempting) demoralizing the public, rather than targets that would impact an ongoing war effort or similar. That said, that and “military strike” are not mutually exclusive and seeing as intentions are hard to prove, it tends to be more about branding than anything else.

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disregardable@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Terrorism is when politically illegitimate groups use violence to coerce people into comply with your demands out of fear. The terror is key to terrorism. Usually, when a government strikes, it’s not intending to attack civilians, and if it does, it’s not to scare the civilians. It’s to stoke resistance You could fairly call the Trump regime’s murdering of random boats in the Caribbean terrorism.

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- schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Your 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.
  
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  - disregardable@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.
    
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yesman@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Terrorist is a social distinction not a rational one; It’s a slur. Trying to launder it with definitions and fixed meaning misses the point.

Terrorist isn’t even synonymous with violence because depending on where you are, a terrorist is a race, ethnicity, politics, or religion.

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sns@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Unless it’s the US or Israel, it’s terrorism.

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OriginEnergySux@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I wanna say the intent behind it but im pretty sure there’s no difference

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schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There is a variety of ways to define “terrorism”, but most definitions more or less explicitly exclude actions by military forces.

This may to some extent be a good thing: I at least want the government to be constrained by normal criminal substantive and procedural laws when fighting terrorism. When it’s fighting a war (i.e. against a military force), entirely different rules apply.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Military strikes theoretically are obeying various rules both national and international. Post ww2 because of all the atrocities it spurred creation of agreed upon rules around armed conflict to at least eliminate those worse things. They realized they could not get rid of war but they could at least limit its worst actions. Now all this is dependent on countries abiding by it and further the leaders of those countries that agreed to it to honor those agreements.

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