Definition of a terrorist attack: the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
All you've done here is define terrorism so broadly that it de-legitimizes war entirely, and that includes non-nuclear war.
Here's the arrangement, which you obviously haven't been clued in on: a state is any entity which monopolizes the legitimate use of force in the country it governs. War is the use of force by states against other states or non-state entities to achieve desirable ends. Terrorism is the use of force by non-state entities against states or other non-state entities to achieve desirable ends.
We have war because everyone agrees that if violence is inevitable, it's best to contain to as few sectors of society as possible -- that is, states against other states. Terrorism is bad not because it's violence (which is never, itself, inherently bad), it's bad because it's violence in defiance of the established order by which violence is permitted to be carried out. In the absence of that order, there is no reason for anyone to believe that government alone has the right to use force, even to do mundane things like enforce basic laws. The whole foundation on which society is built suddenly melts away if you unequivocally embrace terrorism or unequivocally reject the validity of war.
And even that kind of violence is never inherently bad: it's all contextual. The Warsaw ghetto uprising was precisely what I just defined terrorism as: violence by a non-state entity against a state. But no one (except David Duke and his sickening Holocaust-denying brood) would really define that as bad, would they? A few dozen people on the brink of death took up guns and fought for their lives against one of the most evil entities that has ever existed. Thus we can do nothing but judge the use of violence on the basis of its merits, from the perspective of our own value system -- does it achieve ends we find desirable? If so, we should think of it as legitimate. And what do you know, I guess that means might
does make right.
This is a pitch-perfect example of why I can't help but laugh at liberals. You plead and scream about nuance, context, subtlety, that the world's not all black-and-white and that everything's relative, but on any issue of serious intellectual substance you cannot bring yourself to conform to those principles. Suddenly there's a definite good and a definite evil, and only the established powers ever fall on the evil side because we can't expect any better from the little yellow folk, can we?
No. Dropping a bomb on two civillian cities in full knowledge that every single person in it would die immediatly or get cancer from radiation posioning is an act of terrorism.
No, it's an act of war. Only an uneducated communist conflates war with terrorism.
Then why did you go after Saddam Hussein in a war on terror? As the ruler of a government, according to your defenition, anything he or his government did cannot be terrorism.
So? No one ever said it was, rigidly speaking, a war against
terrorism. In fact, Bush made clear pretty early on that terrorist-sponsoring states would targetted, as well. The "war on terror" is a phrase, nothing more -- it implies no obligation. This is like complaining that we didn't go to war with every other nation in the world during World War II.
You're basically defending your opposition to Iraq on the basis of some cheap semantic parlor trick. It's frankly beneath discussion in polite company.
Killing civillians in true warfare is very bad when its collateral damage and accidental, but its not terrorism. Killing civillians by dropping a nuke on them is just a straight on terrorist attack on innocents.
Listen to yourself! You're judging by intentions, not results!
Who cares WHY we used nukes, or whether we did it with the DELIBERATE INTENTION of killing civilians? The end result is that fewer civilians died than the alternative.
You're putting worthless philosophical abstractions above the concrete well-being of human lives, both American and Japanese, and you have the gall to take the moral high ground with
us?
