What Is Terrorism? Is It Terrorism If A fighter Jet Bombs Civilians In a Village?

Question

Like in Lebanon?

What about Iraq?

Answer 1

yep, I would call that terrorism.

Answer 2

Terrorism is a state of mind.

I can terrorize you if I put you in fear of your life. I might do repeatedly day after day until you jump at the sound of a twig falling on the roof of your house.

The terrorists we are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere attack randomly. They don't fight as an army would, they hit and run, hit and run... we never know where they are going to strike so we live in "fear" and are terrorized. (I know people will say we don't fear them and will stand up against all comers, etc. but we are terrorized anyway.)

They hide among the citizens and launch their attacks from their neighborhoods. So if we try to root them out we must attack them where they hide. We don't want to bomb a civilian neighborhood. It isn't in our medal. We would perfer to meet them on a battlefield, but that isn't their way. So we must attack and root them out.

Are civilians killed; yes. Are civilians terrorized by both the insurgents and the coalition troops; yes. Is it terrorizing to have jet planes drop bombs in your neighborhood; most certainly.

Do you see the average Iraqi standing up, taking charge of their own lives by preventing insurgents from using their neighborhoods, assisting us to free Iraq and send the coalition forces home....... ?


Maybe it is time.




g-day!

Answer 3

Terrorism is walking into a shopping center with a bomb strapped to your back and blowing yourself up. It is hijacking a plane full of civilians and flying it into a building. It is blowing up a school bus full of kids. These things are terrorist acts.

A jet fighter dropping bombs during a time of war is not. Civilians die in war, that is one of the reasons we attempt to avoid it. When you're forced into a fight you didn't ask for you still have to fight to win, even when innocent people die.

Answer 4

It depends. Were they AIMING for civilians? Then, maybe. Otherwise, no.

If one wants to get really technical, what the Allies did during WWII could be construed as terrorism. I'm not saying that I'm not grateful they DID it, they had a right to, and it was the only way to win. But there were something like 21 million civilian casualties...NOT including the numbers from the Holocaust. WOW.

The dictionary definition of terrorism:
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.


So, two examples and I'm done:
9/11? THAT is terrorism.
The U.S. going after Afghanistan? Retaliation, NOT terrorism.

Answer 5

Don't bore me with your biased opinions!!
Roget's International Thesaurus
Terrorism = anarchy, anarchism, disorderliness, unruliness, misrule, disorder, disorganization, confusion, chaos, nihilism, reign of terror, club law, lynch law, mob rule law,mobocracy

I guess that make US the real Terrorist?!!!

Best Regards.

Edit: Gabriela Thanks to you to i loved the way you tell the facts. you make it exciting too. i gave you the first "Thumb up"

I read another interesting comment (another ?) that suggested we had may be a few fanatics ignorant here or there that hated us for some not very good reasons . But now we have created 100's of 1000's people who hate us and for a legitimate reason, perhaps we killed the entire family? Dropping a 15,000, or 20,000 etc lbs bombs on a small area that we guess couple of fighters are hiding shows we have not learned any thing from Hiroshima And Nagasaki Holocaust.
It's a tragedy. It's horror.

Answer 6

Oh no!! You don't seem to be aware that president George W. Bush declared a war on TERROR. He has outlawed terror. Not only in the U.S. but globally. Were you absent from class that day?

The illiterate Afghanistani woman milking her goat by her tent who has not only never heard of New York but can barely imagine such a thing as big metal birds in the sky flying into buildings taller than mountains is being willfully obtuse ,if not criminally insurgent and rebellious,if she allows herself to feel TERROR when a U.S. fighter jet pilot bravely gets her village in the cross- hairs of his control panel and drops his bombs accordingly. She is supposed to feel grateful for the privilege of being ¨collateral damage¨ but never is she supposed to feel TERROR,the stupid raghead.

We are fighting a war to eliminate TERROR,remember,so to suggest that we may actually instill terror somewhere is blasphemous ,treasonous poppycock.

Any action of ours- or of our alter ego,Israel- is only ever the product of the milk of human kindness and should be received as such. How dare the Lebanese feel TERROR when we are doing everything to fight against this entelechy and eliminate it. Boy,what ingrates!!! Are they suggesting that we aren't doing an efficient enough job? Are they implying that there is still TERROR out there even after everything we have done? I guess they aren't paying attention either. I guess they haven't heard of the ¨surge¨and how successful it is . Some people are just never satisfied no matter what you do for them. We bomb their villages and allow others to do it for us;we bomb TERROR to smithereens and yet they still insist on experiencing TERROR. Aaaaw,to hell with them.

ADD.NOTES TO ¨ICEMAN¨
thanks for your citation from
Roget's International Thesaurus:
¨Terrorism = anarchy, anarchism, disorderliness, unruliness, misrule, misrule, disorder, disorganization, confusion, chaos, nihilism, reign of terror, club law, lynch law, mob rule law,mobocracy¨

GOOD GRIEF! That is the best and most complete description of what we have turned Iraq into since our invasion. This is our legacy to the Iraqi people. So that is where we have been sending all the TERROR we have been fighting against!!? We have been outsourcing it to Iraq. What a legacy for them. Now they can have all the fun stomping it out. War on Terror is so wonderful we shouldn't keep it all to ourselves.

Answer 7

It is my understanding that ALL of the terrorists involved in the Sep 11 attacks that murdered thousands of innocent men, women and children, were civilians.

Answer 8

Bombs are expensive, no one drops them just to kill "innocent civilians". Terrorists and insurgents like to hide among "innocent civilians" and launch there attacks. The civilians must be complicit so, they lose the "innocent civilian" qualifyer.

Answer 9

If they do it deliberately then yes.

Although terrorism is generally seen as the actions of a covert, non-government group rather than those of an official army.

Answer 10

Nope. We use our fighters to kill terrorists.

But sometimes terrorists use innocent civilians as shields and they get killed in the cross fire.


Why not pour some of your anger onto them instead of putting the blame on the one country trying to stop terrorists attacks! You know...AMERICA!!!!!!

Answer 11

No. Terrorism is the conscious use of tactics designed to spread terror and panic in a population. The 'collateral damage' of civilians, whilst deplorable, could be argued to not be the prime intention of the attack, therefore it is not, technically, terrorism.