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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Uh-huh, So why wasn't 9/11 a "Strategic Bombing"?
Because what you describe still sounds like terrorism to me. Like, I can actually picture Osama bin Laden explaining this to his guys. "We are going to kill American civilians to cripple their industry and economy, and hopefully force them to turn on their crooked, western government." ...which, in a roundabout way, is exactly what happened over the course of the next eight years so, uh...awkward.
And I know everyone dropped bombs on German civilians but that was belligerent retaliation for the bombing of London - which, as I understand it, was itself an accident.
We also nuked Japanese cities but most people I've heard from seem to be in agreement that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were a dick move.
Oh, they've received it loud and clear. They've just learned that it's easier to oppose a progress movement by taking a victimized stance and going, "YOU are the truly prejudiced group! You're not doing anything for white, straight men, because the truth is your social movement is just a hate group in disguise!"
The popular term for movements like #All Lives Matter and #Not All Men is egalitarianism, the idea that all groups of people deserve equal rights and treatment. A fine idea, but it's become a beacon for people who want to oppose social justice movements from a position of legitimacy.
So instead of, "I hate feminism because I'm anti-feminist and don't want women to have equal rights," they can say, "I hate feminism because it's not about raising up men in equal amounts as women, and that makes it a hate group." By taking the egalitarian stance, they can decry any group that's dedicated to helping a specific group, masking their true agenda as champions of the existing status quo.
I've often said in this and other threads, if egalitarians were a thing during the American Civil War, they would have been demanding that freed slaves pay reparations to plantation owners to compensate them for the loss of their workforce.
Yes. One chink in Trump's armor is that his primary voterbase - hate groups - tend to skew heavily Christian and Trump is not. By announcing an angry Bible with legs as his running mate, Trump can assure the "White, heterosexual Christian men are the true victims of prejudice!" demographic that he will fight just as strongly to defend Christian Values - at least, as that group selectively interprets them to be.
More than that. In essence, it would have allowed refusal of any service that violates their religious beliefs. Abortions, prescription drugs, life-saving medical treatments that may reduce a woman's ability to reproduce....
It'll ensure that more of them come out to vote. Pence being picked makes Trump not just a blustering buffoon but an actual threat to the civil rights of the gay community. I expect that those who were less than enthused about Clinton, or considering staying home simply because "I work that day" or what have you, will be more than happy to come out to vote against Pence.
Trump's been an actual threat to a lot of people for a long time. It's no coincidence that racial tension has been escalating in equal measure to the success of his campaign. A lot of damage has already been done.
EDIT: This was a lot longer than I expected it to be. Sorry, I was playing a lot of catch-up. <.<;;
edited 15th Jul '16 10:59:42 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.https://twitter.com/DanaBashCNN/status/754007849022480384
hahahahahaha
New Survey coming this weekend!Not everyone is so easily put into one of the two camps. Being one of the last people born into Gen X, my politics are frequently ignored by everyone who preceded me in Gen X, the Boomers, the Yuppies, and now the Millennials.
None of the current politicians even come close to standing for me, not Sanders, not the Greens, not Clinton, not Trump, none of them. As far as US politics right now go, I'm about as abandoned as can be. The worst part is, so are a lot of other people, for their own reasons. There just aren't as many of "my" generational segment as there are of the other groups on the internet, and the 80-20 split means that of those that are on the internet, most of them are going to be raging trolls.
There's a reason that discourse online frequently goes emotional, and I'd chalk it up to the fact that in America we're often told to never discuss politics or religion for fear of "offending" folks. So when we can do it anonymously, we envenom everything we can with emotionally charged language.
It's easy to get sucked into ennui this way.
I would argue that no politician comes close to stand for any citizen's politic except themselves.
Non Indicative Username@Tobias Drake
You see me saying it's not terrorism? It's the use of fear to make a political point. That's by definition terrorism. What matters is why it's being done, and the scale. To stick to the Serbian example—the NATO bombing campaign over the Kosovovan killed about 500 Serbian civilians (and ruined hundreds of businesses, public buildings, etc). Within Kosovo the Serbs had already killed 3000+ Kosovar Albanians and raped and abused far more. The bombing campaign forced the Serbs to pull out of Kosovo and killed fewer Serbs than they had killed Kosovar Albanians. I'm willing to take that tradeoff.
As for the bin Laden comparison, what he did is illegal because he's not a state actor in an officially declared war. It's illegal for him to do it for the same reason it's illegal for me to cross the border into the USA and start shooting American soldiers.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:08:02 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
On strategic bombing I'd note that the morale impact is secondary, strategic bombing is aimed at war production, so you target industries and such that do have a military impact via supporting the war effort (so radio stations for communication and factories that make bombs), that's very different from targeting purely civilian industries like the Twin Towers.
Technically nobody fights officially declared wars anymore by the way, nobody declares war in the modern age, however yeah Bin Laden wasn't a state actor, state actors get special rules.
That I do.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:09:40 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran@Silas
Moral is only secondary from a non-military standpoint. It's a violation of the LOAC, the Geneva Conventions, and the UCMJ to target certain facilities.
Hospitals, religious structures, cultural centers, all of them could very easily be described as servicing the enemy's war production, but the military would be in violation for targeting them.
Moral to Morale, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
edited 15th Jul '16 11:11:11 AM by OblongReality
I'd argue excluding state actors from being capable of terrorism is an arbitrary cutoff, in no small part because sufficiently organized and effective terror groups can and do effectively set up their own statelets.
Considering the civilian population is required to man factories and replenish combat loses, they are themselves also part of the enemy war machine. Hence they are supposed to be exempted.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:13:44 AM by CaptainCapsase
We're not excluding state actors from being terrorists, we're excluding them from being legally labeled as such.
I'll note that it's a meaningless distinction in effect, because while we might not call accuse an enemy nation that attacks us "terrorists" (though we might) we'll still go flatten them with our army. So the end result is the same.
@Silas
The old "we are sending you a notice that we have declared war" thing may be done, but we still do, in a sense, declare war. In the case of the NATO intervention in Kosovo there was an official resolution by the organization and all of its members to force Serbia out of Kosovo. Which is rather different from bin Laden, a non-state actor, blowing up the Twin Towers.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:14:25 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar
Nitpick: My understanding of the definition of terrorism is that it excludes actions taken by the military of a nation-state. It's mostly a semantic difference in the cases being discussed but in a legal sense, if a terrorist case ever makes it to court (rare for a number of reasons) you don't bring war crimes charges against them.
It's not that a state can't commit terrorism it's that it's called something different, when a state does it against other state it's called "psychological warfare".
And again there's a difference between targeting something because it's a secondary part of the opponent's war effort and targeting something purely to cause fear in civilians.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:15:03 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran![]()
That's a relatively recent addendum to the defenition, largely added for political purposes because people kept (rightfully) pointing out many US actions were terrorism.
"violence against civilians for political purposes" doesn't distinguish between civilians targeted as part of the enemy war machine versus those targeted for the psychological impact.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:18:23 AM by CaptainCapsase
Only if they are working in the factories at the time of the bombing. Conventional warfare, like in the 1900s, indicates that they would be acceptable targets while working in the factories. You can't, however, say "Fuck it, Op, Op Op, Oppa Nagasaki Style" anymore without violating the accords that were set up after WWII to prevent just such tragedies from occurring again. State actor or not.
Genocidal wars were called bad voodoo, thankfully.
I wonder if we can call any 1945 Japanese a "civilian." Those guys were freaking nuts.
Non Indicative Username@Cap: Militaries targeting civilian populations is as old as the history of warfare, however, while the notion of terrorism is recent (though it's probable there are events in history we'd call terrorisim retroactively).
In a similar vein when non-military engage in terrorist acts that are funded and/or sanctioned by a nation state it's called state-sponsored terrorism, not military action.
edited 15th Jul '16 11:26:39 AM by Elle

edited 15th Jul '16 10:55:35 AM by LSBK