TheGreatGodPan on 31/5/2006 at 22:51
I've said this many times before but "terrorist" indicates tactics, "freedom fighter" indicates goals. Saying "What some people call terrorists others call freedom fighters" is like saying "Who you call Officer Brown I call Uncle Joe". Nobody cares. The problem is "terrorism" is becoming like the word fascism, as Orwell described, used as a synonym for bad. It's not quite as bad but people still sometimes throw around the term for things that just plain aren't terrorism no matter how much you dislike them.
Governments generally don't engage in terrorism, because they don't need to make you afraid of dying, they can just kill whoever they want. Terrorists aren't able to do that but by killing random civilians they create the "it-could-be-me" fear common due to our cognitive bias that exaggerates low-probability but highly frightening events.
Regarding Iraq, the religious fundamentalists aren't the rebels. The insurgents are overwhelmingly secular Iraqi Sunnis, although there are groups like Zarqawi's that are more Islamist. al-Sadr used to lead a rebellious Shiite group, but they've laid low for now after getting smacked around a bit and finding politics more to their liking. The Shiite death squads don't seem like terrorists to me because they don't publicize their killings. People just dissapear and their bodies get discovered a while after they've been killed. It may be just as bad as terrorism, but like I said, terrorism is not a synonym for bad.
Agent Monkeysee on 1/6/2006 at 01:55
Quote Posted by Fringe
So the Pentagon was, but what does that definition make of the USS Cole incident?
It's a tailgate party.
Rogue Keeper on 1/6/2006 at 13:05
Quote Posted by TheGreatGodPan
Governments generally don't engage in terrorism, because they don't need to make you afraid of dying, they can just kill whoever they want. Terrorists aren't able to do that but by killing random civilians they create the "it-could-be-me" fear common due to our cognitive bias that exaggerates low-probability but highly frightening events.
Governments can use terrorist means of solving their problems through covert operations of intelligence services. Random known examples are 1976 attack on Cubana airliner off on Barbados by CIA-trained team, which killed 73 people or the attack on Rainbow Warrior by french troops. Not to mention lifetime record of Mossad's actions.
The intelligence services can also sponsor foreign terrorist groups indirectly (by financial help, smuggled weapons, training and other logistical support) for their advantage, emerging from international political interests of their country.
Usually you can't recognize the true backround of most of these actions from everyday media reports, afterall they're supposed to be secret and the intelligence services make big effort stay out of suspicion, they are far too good at it.
From recent period, Spielberg's "Munich" is an interesting movie on this topic.
