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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Friday, May 05, 2017


6 comments:

Stephen said...

What if the Empire calls itself the Alliance and thinks it's the good guy?

CyberKitten said...

Resistance is always a Point of View. One Man's Terrorist is another Man's Freedom Fighter.... etc....

It's easy to brand something as an Evil Empire, but I try very hard to see what so-called Evil Empire's actually *do* as opposed to being told how I'm supposed to relate to them.

Mudpuddle said...

Basically, he said, it's any group I don't like...

CyberKitten said...

I liked the comment in the 2nd Captain America film - Winter Soldier: How do we know who the bad guys are? They'll be the ones shooting at us.....

Stephen said...

I don't agree with the one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, but then unlike the government I have a precise definition for terrorism, as opposed to "anyone I want to dehumanize". Blowing up a railroad bridge to disrupt the flow of military transmissions is not terrorism; blowing up a civilian highway to incite fear in the general population is.

CyberKitten said...

Terrorism quite neatly fits into the Clausewitz definition of war as politics by other means. Acts of Terror are political acts to get (usually) a government to change its actions and do what the Terrorists want - not unlike the much bigger, and equally illegitimate, acts of terror by governments in (for example) WW2 who carpet bombed cities to terrorise their populations into abandoning their war efforts. I completely agree that military targets are legitimate targets in war and that civilians or non-combatants are illegitimate targets at any time. Unfortunately neither terrorists or governments seem to agree with me.

I think bridges are a bad example to fix on though. By their very nature - as part of the strategic infrastructure - bridges are definitely legitimate targets in a conflict. Plus that blowing up a bridge for military reasons will inevitable cause fear in the general population. What are most definitely *not* legitimate targets are restaurants, market places or civilian buses where any casualties will be predominantly civilian and where the prime objective is to terrorise the non-combatant population.