Originally posted by Adrift
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostIn the course of their TERROR campaign, of course.
In the course of their TERROR campaign, of course.
Of course - because they are conducting a TERROR campaign for the purpose of advancing their political and religious agenda.
I believe I'll leave you guys to this.
So torture counts as terrorism when it's done by terrorists but does count as terrorism when it's done by the State or even by an occupying force?"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Adrift View PostOk. Well, I hope I'm not alone in thinking that the jest was hard to read.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Sam View PostSo torture counts as terrorism when it's done by terrorists
but does count as terrorism when it's done by the State or even by an occupying force?The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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At the risk of getting involved in this mess, I think it's good to remember that 'terrorists' do not spring fully formed from a vacuum. The middle East has been a mess at least since the colonial powers decided to carve it up without reference to the population. Atrocities were committed by everyone. One thing we can be sure of is that if an injustice is done, it will sew the seeds of its enemies over time. I'm not convinced we can draw some line in the sand and say THESE guys are terrorists but if you combat them with indiscriminate bombing campaigns, proxy militia and torture you're the good guys.
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Originally posted by pancreasman View PostAt the risk of getting involved in this mess, I think it's good to remember that 'terrorists' do not spring fully formed from a vacuum. The middle East has been a mess at least since the colonial powers decided to carve it up without reference to the population. Atrocities were committed by everyone. One thing we can be sure of is that if an injustice is done, it will sew the seeds of its enemies over time. I'm not convinced we can draw some line in the sand and say THESE guys are terrorists but if you combat them with indiscriminate bombing campaigns, proxy militia and torture you're the good guys.
But to go from "enhanced interrogation techniques" to "torture" (I actually don't have a problem with that part) to "terrorism" is, to me, quite a stretch.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by pancreasman View PostI'm not convinced we can draw some line in the sand and say THESE guys are terrorists but if you combat them with indiscriminate bombing campaigns, proxy militia and torture you're the good guys.The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostNo. When it is part of the overall strategy of waging actual terrorism.
If the State or occupying force is conducting a campaign of terrorism, sure. Is that what you think our troops are doing, Sam? Waging a campaign of terrorism?
What the State calls terrorism, the militants call "guerrilla warfare". And our State, in particular, has supported guerrilla warfare routinely throughout the 20th century. And this is exactly the wrong-headed sanctification of violence that I'm talking about. Some of what our troops have been doing counts as terrorism, as has always been the case (e.g., Abu Gharib, Mai Lai). And in Iraq, there was never justification for our State's violence in the first place. But we're able to easily pass that off as OK under some nebulous cloud of right action while denying that others, from their own perspective, can appeal to the same kind of mitigating circumstances that justify violence.
Which isn't to say for a moment that both sides are equally wrong or that ISIS is a victim or just misunderstood or that terrorism is all in the eye of the beholder. But it is to say that we'd do well to think twice before castigating an entire religious group for the violence of a small subset when we've got a plank in our own eye."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostI'm curious about this part.... the "torture" is, obviously, quite targeted. I'm wondering what you mean by "indiscriminate bombing campaigns". By whom?
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Originally posted by Sam View PostHow can the same criminal action
be terrorism in one instance and not the other?The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostI'm curious about this part.... the "torture" is, obviously, quite targeted. I'm wondering what you mean by "indiscriminate bombing campaigns". By whom?
"I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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Originally posted by Cow Poke View PostNot everybody believes enhanced interrogation is a criminal action, Sam, but OK....
Shooting somebody with a gun can be a criminal action, but isn't necessarily "terrorist". Unless, of course, you use an incredibly broad definition of terrorism.
"Shooting someone with a gun" is not a useful analogy, as it's overly-generalized.
Take the situation I presented. Kidnapping and torture-to-death of a soldier and a civilian. Neither can be justified by international law or by Just War theory."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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And, to bring this back to the topic Jim and I were discussing, I'd like to point out just how extreme many Christians will go in synthesizing violence with Christian teaching. Here, CP is defending the use of torture as something a Christian could legitimately perform. How that can possibly square with the explicit teachings of the New Testament is impossibly baffling to me but it would be wrong to identify this as a problem with the Christian religion itself. It is likewise wrong to glibly assign blame for Muslim violence (or support for violence) to Islam itself."I wonder about the trees. / Why do we wish to bear / Forever the noise of these / More than another noise / So close to our dwelling place?" — Robert Frost, "The Sound of Trees"
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