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pecuniumRecent reading (The Interrogators, by Chris Mackey... that will be a different post) had me pondering terror, as a tactic, and a question by antiquated_tory makes my thoughts on it more relevant.
What makes terrorism terrorism. This was addressed by some question and answer in my post about the mail with the device to make it ignite on opening (a whole new meaning to "flame wars").
And what of groups like the IRA?
Is there an acceptable use for terror?
Maybe.
When Michael Collins (to use the IRA as an example, because it's a subject near and dear to my Irish descended heart) was attacking the British he was using a form of terror. What the guerrillas in Spain did against the French when Napoleon invaded. It was more targeted than they were, but it was still aimed at those who were directly involved in the ruling of British Ireland.
As such, while unconventional, it was still war, and I could; had I been alive, have supported them with a clear conscience.
These days the Provos are in another kind of fight, one which is indiscriminate, and doesn't have such clear aims. They want the British out of N. Ireland, but they aren't trying to make a direct fight with the people running the show. In fact they don't always target those in N. Ireland (which isn't really required, they could make members of Parliament, who support the continuation of the status quo targets of assasination... I don't think I'd approve, but it would be a more legitimate fight... more akin to a war).
I'm a soldier, in the right context I am a legal target for some pretty indiscriminate lethal force (a 122mm rocket is not what anyone would call a precision weapon... neither is a hand grenade, it's just a matter of scale). If the Provos were attacking just soldiers, and administrators, and the government which supports and pays for it... it would be (in my mind) a form of legitimate struggle (none of this means I think such a thing is a good idea. The 80ish years since the founding of an independent south have changed the equation, as have the tactics of the Provos).
Which, I guess, defines what I mean by terrorism. I, as a soldier, have explicitly accepted that there are situations where killing people to gain my ends are acceptable. Some of those means are terrible, but those are the rules of the game.
Groups who try to sway an entire people without accepting a concomitant risk (and suicide as a tactic doesn't count... unless the target is of a military nature), people whose specific targets are the non-players (civilians in a war are different, one of the reasons I disagree with calling the struggle with bin Laden, et alia a war), that's terrorism.
And it's a thing to be eradicated, at its root if possible, but by its branches when they bear their bitter fruit.
antiquated_tory makes my thoughts on it more relevant.What makes terrorism terrorism. This was addressed by some question and answer in my post about the mail with the device to make it ignite on opening (a whole new meaning to "flame wars").
And what of groups like the IRA?
Is there an acceptable use for terror?
Maybe.
When Michael Collins (to use the IRA as an example, because it's a subject near and dear to my Irish descended heart) was attacking the British he was using a form of terror. What the guerrillas in Spain did against the French when Napoleon invaded. It was more targeted than they were, but it was still aimed at those who were directly involved in the ruling of British Ireland.
As such, while unconventional, it was still war, and I could; had I been alive, have supported them with a clear conscience.
These days the Provos are in another kind of fight, one which is indiscriminate, and doesn't have such clear aims. They want the British out of N. Ireland, but they aren't trying to make a direct fight with the people running the show. In fact they don't always target those in N. Ireland (which isn't really required, they could make members of Parliament, who support the continuation of the status quo targets of assasination... I don't think I'd approve, but it would be a more legitimate fight... more akin to a war).
I'm a soldier, in the right context I am a legal target for some pretty indiscriminate lethal force (a 122mm rocket is not what anyone would call a precision weapon... neither is a hand grenade, it's just a matter of scale). If the Provos were attacking just soldiers, and administrators, and the government which supports and pays for it... it would be (in my mind) a form of legitimate struggle (none of this means I think such a thing is a good idea. The 80ish years since the founding of an independent south have changed the equation, as have the tactics of the Provos).
Which, I guess, defines what I mean by terrorism. I, as a soldier, have explicitly accepted that there are situations where killing people to gain my ends are acceptable. Some of those means are terrible, but those are the rules of the game.
Groups who try to sway an entire people without accepting a concomitant risk (and suicide as a tactic doesn't count... unless the target is of a military nature), people whose specific targets are the non-players (civilians in a war are different, one of the reasons I disagree with calling the struggle with bin Laden, et alia a war), that's terrorism.
And it's a thing to be eradicated, at its root if possible, but by its branches when they bear their bitter fruit.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 04:30 pm (UTC)Depends on how one defines gov't. I suppose I ought to have used a magiscule "G". Government, as in those who set the policy, and vote for the funds to implement it. MPs, in the case of Ireland, Senators and Congressmen in the case of things like Iraq.
Agreed. Of course, targeting them in such a way as to not kill everyone surrounding them is part of what you mentioned earlier.
To target people who are merely looking for work to feed their families (e.g. Nick Berg) is wrong. Capturing soldiers, and then killing them isn't.
Killing people after they've been captured just because they're enemies seems to me to be still wrong. After a fair trial, for actual crimes of war, fine. But not just because they're on the other side.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 06:34 pm (UTC)I suppose I can blame the late hour of my posting. Ambushes are the deliberate killing of semi-random soldiers. So too are things like roadside bombs and booby-traps. One might manage to disable a vehicle, and kill the occupants. That's legal. Dragging them out, and then killing them is gray. I was stretching that gray area a little further.
The target of the violence was the point of that. Soldiers have agreed to put their lives play, as stakes in the national interest. (What is owed to them, when those stakes are put in the pot is a different question, and at the root of no small amount of my, and some of my fellows; personal, reservations, about the venture in Iraq, but I digress).
War, as has been said by better writers than I, isn't about indiscriminate killing, but rather applied violence, meant to make the continuation of a policy (by the enemy) too dear to continue (and this is what I need to talk about in response to Tory's post below). Given that, the rules are important, but they are malleable, and there is a lot which goes on, in the heat (or at least the very warm) of the moment, which is questionable. The laws may say it's right, or not, but needs must when the Devil drives, and there are times to bend the rules, in either direction.
They can't (to abuse the metaphor) be allowed to be bent past the strain point, they have to be able to return to norm.
TK