Does it matter if The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is labeled a terrorist Group?

Question

The word is losing more meaning every day. When I was growing up a Terrorist was civilian who targeted civilians for acts of deadly violence to make a political statement and was not officially authorized by any government.
A recognized nations armed force could not be a terrorist group because it actions were officially sanctioned by a government.
A resistance movement was not a terrorist group so long as they targeted military, military support or political targets.

We keep changing the word. If we change it constantly to fit whatever we want then the word doesn't mean anything anymore. So why should it matter if we call them terrorist when that word only means whatever we say it means at the moment? We could call them the Nazis with exactly the same amount of accuracy.

Joby: Good answer. That makes sense. We classify them as terrorist so that legal action can be taken against their assets. It sort of validates my point though. The word means what we say it means for our convenience at the moment. If we can classify a countries armed forces as a terrorist group then don't we have a license to invade or attack pretty much anyone we like because they employ terrorist (a military). Couldn’t the same argument be used on us? We have a military. We have sent advisors to other countries in the past. We have supplied and trained insurgents.

Ash: Yes it does.

kashyyyyko: I have a lot of faith in our military. Ours is the greatest military in the world but do you think we are having even the smallest problem with our occupation of Iraq? Assuming that we can continue to occupy Iraq and walk right over the military in Iran, do you think occupying both countries might be a strain? Who should be next? Should we conquer all of the Middle East or set our sights in Asia and take North Korea? Think maybe we should conquer China after that? Most of Africa needs conquering as well. What about Europe? I do think Australia is one of the good guys so its not like were setting out to conquer the world because one whole continent is completely out of the picture for the moment.

Answer 1

In Bush's speech to Congress right after 9-11 he defined Terrorism which included any State sponsor. Remember his "Axis of Evil" speech? So far Iran and Syria have acted as State sponsors and therefore "we don't differentiate". If you feel that the meaning of the word has changed and Bush changed it that's fine. I see it as necessary to combat terrorism on all fronts. If we are going to combat terrorism it should be an all or nothing effort. If it is not we get the blunder of the Clinton administration which allowed the Al Queda thugs to be protected by a state sponsor, Afghanistan.

Answer 2

The reason that we are declaring them a terrorist group is because they are funding and training the insurgents who are fighting in Iraq. By calling them a Terrorist Organization, that allows us to freeze their assests, as well as use other resources that wouldn't be availible otherwise. The IRG is much like the Chinese Army, in that it controls several businesses and financial investments, far beyond what you would think of as "military". By declaring them a terrorist organization, we can cut them off from those assets, thus making it harder for them to fund their efforts.

Answer 3

To those of us in everyday life it does not matter what we call them - I usually call them murderers and thugs. But from a governmental standard both internationally and with the federal government we can use different law enforcement and military efforts against them with that tag.

Answer 4

The PKK is labeled a Terrorist Group yet we provide them arms and sanctuary so they can launch terrorist attacks against our NATO ally Turkey.

Answer 5

Before LBJ escalated our involvement in VietNam he did a lot of name calling and a lot of threatening at their borders to try and get them to attack so we would have an excuse to invade. It didn't work, so we made something up.

Before GWB got us to invade Iraq we threatened and name called; when this did not cause Iraq to increase their offensives we made something up.

Now we are namecalling and threatening Iran. Does this give you a strange feeling of deja-vu? Like we are getting ready to make somethin up about Iran?

Answer 6

well in simplest terms we are in a war on terror -bush has just found a way to delare war on Iran - without getting approval from congress -

Answer 7

It does matter this is just the first step towards victory

Iran is a sack of crap end of story.

Answer 8

Yes, because it notifies Iran and the World of what they are doing, and what we may do in return!

Answer 9

anything with Iranian in it is going to blow up wait that is for a nukeyouliar missile,

Answer 10

Soon it will easily apply to Bush and his fighting fifth.