Originally posted by BigDoggProblem
"Terrorist" is a label you slap on people that allows you to bomb them indiscriminately and treat them as mentally insane.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." [Don't know who first said that, but it's so true.]
I don't agree.
It is certainly true that there is a tendency [particularly recently] to label everything terrorism...
Although that is in part due to the fact that we have recently given our security and law enforcement
agencies an awesome set of new powers and toys they get to use in cases of terrorism... and thus
the more things they can label as terrorism the more toys [and special funding] they get to use.
However that doesn't mean that it is an empty label and that it doesn't point to a recognisable
set of tactics and intentions that are distinct from other crimes and acts of violence.
Saying that ""Terrorist" is a label you slap on people that allows you to bomb them indiscriminately
and treat them as mentally insane." strikes me as a bit like saying that man made climate change
isn't a thing because you don't like the measures [you believe] people will employ to help prevent it.
The fact that our response to terrorism is wrong [and it really is] and that we have a tendency to
try to label all kinds of stuff as terrorism that shouldn't be [like the sony hacks] doesn't mean that
it's right to just give in to cynicism entirely and say that there is no such thing as terrorism.
Like many things I am not sure you can come up with a hard and fast description/definition that
will satisfy everyone, and we are trying to put definitions onto human behaviours which will always
be on a continuum that slides gradually from one thing to another....
Think of it as a bit like trying to define when one species ends and another starts.
At either end they are definitvely different species... But you will never be able to point to
the point in the middle and say "here is definitively where one ends and another starts".
However my note for defining terrorism, at least as far as I am concerned...
Terrorism is a crime.
Which means to have terrorism you must also have at least some kind of functioning law and order.
Acts of war are not [in the conventional sense] crimes.
So bombing of civilian populations during WWII was not terrorism. [It was pointless, ineffective and immoral]