I have heard a quote that "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter."
Now having witnessed attacks on my fellow countrymen and women, it makes me want to take up arms and find and execute every last one of them so it never happens again.
My quandary is that i know for sure if i saw tanks rolling down my street and they were not Australian, i would be long dead from throwing molitov cocktails and rocks at them.
So while governments play the game of Nations, are we, the citizens of the world, screwed?
:'(
I'm actually quite unsure as to what you're asking here, so I'll attend to the question of freedom fighters as opposed to terrorists.
I think motivation should be separated from method. It does not matter what one's motivation is for the method employed alone should constitute terrorism. Terrorism is the use of fear/terror to elicit a response that would otherwise not be made. This can constitute attacks with threat of further attacks, kidnapping for ransom or demand, the threat of punishment, etc.
This in turn makes the definition of terrorism far too wide and arbitrary. Therefore, a typology has to be created to deal with the definition. My typology consists of Political Terrorism ,Criminal Terrorism and Social Terrorism.
Once again, if the method of causing fear to elicit a response is used, then it must be identified as terrorism.
Social terrorism is benign and used as a source of power to regulate society. The rule of law threatens negligible consequences such as fines and reprimands and serious consequences such as the deprivation of freedom and liberty and/or death. IT is the fear of incarceration or death that is supposed to deter citizens from breaking the law. That is to say that the state creates fear in order to exact a particular personal policy from its dependents. Likewise, parents and teachers threaten deprivation of liberty or resources, or more seriously, pain, for transgressions. A child is threatened with a smack or grounding should they transgress orders/requests or social norms. Fear is used to elicit a particular behaviour or personal behaviour.
Quite obviously, this is not an insidious act if it is done in the order of creating a harmonious society or even the safety of the threatened person. Social terrorism is legal and encouraged in the form of discipline. Social terrorism should not be seen in the same light as Criminal and political terrorism.
Criminal terrorism is the act of using terror for personal gain. This typically encompasses acts such as extortion, kidnap for ransom and any other criminal act that elicits a particular behaviour from another. Criminal terrorism is predominately a crime that is conducted in order of personal/financial gain. Political motivations may be found in criminal terrorism but the political influence sort has the end goal of personal gain, not a political/ideological motivation like that found in political terrorism.
Political terrorism is by far the most dangerous form of terrorism identifiable. Political terrorism is the act of causing fear to elicit a response from a state or dept. of state for purely political purposes. This could be regarding a policy issue such as abortion (Domestic political terrorism) or issues of foreign policy (international political terrorism). Acts of political terrorism can be and can be found in acts of conventional warfare. Many acts considered war crimes (like the acts of bombing civilian targets by both the Allied forces and non-Allied forces during WW2, the Terror order of lynching downed pilots in Germany. Although not considered war crimes, the specific use of snipers and booby traps to lower soldier motivation through excessive fear also constitute terrorism during conventional conflict.) are also acts of terrorism. Acts of terrorism employed by the state such as the Jacobin show trials of revolutionary France, the show trials of Stalinist Russia, the attacks on villages suspected of supporting GAM in Aceh by the TNI and acts thus are also considered acts of state/political terrorism.
As per my typology above, terrorism is defined by the method of causing fear to elicit a particular response or policy. The target of fear may also be the target of demand or it may be the target audience. There need be no delineation of audience or attack. The target of fear and/or demand can be civilian, military or state, the motivation does not affect the identification of the terrorist method. The motivation of the act is the identifier of the threat posed by the act and also the measuring stick used to determine appropriate deterrence and punishments for such acts.
What do you think of my definition/typology?