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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I don't think anybody here would dispute this. I certainly wouldn't. It didn't come up before because it wasn't especially relevant to the topic at hand. I don't think any one factor has ever been the reason for a nation's surrender (not even the nuclear bombings of Japan; the Soviet Union entering the war has as much if not more to do with it).
There are degrees of legality. It is not illegal for a nation to bomb a populated city, so long as they can claim they weren't "deliberately" targeting civilians. Conversely, I cannot legally set off a bomb in the middle of the street under any circumstances, because I am not a state actor.
EDIT: Moved what I said here to a new post
edited 15th Jul '16 12:19:52 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
@Elle: Actually, the term "Terrorism" is Older Than They Think. The origin of the term IIRC is in the French Revolution, referring to the MO of the Reign of Terror.
How terrorism is defined is hard to say-it's as vague as the term "Barbarian". Basically, I'd define it as "an act of mass murder against civilians in order to install fear, particularly distrust of the establishment". By this definition, a terrorist need not be a non-state actor, nor are all militant non-state actors terrorists (even if they have political ends).
Leviticus 19:34In another lovely case of leftist sexism, the guy who delivered my pizza the other night felt the need to opine on how Clinton only got the nomination because of who she was married to, while blathering on about the attributes of our PM, Trudeau, who arguably only got the job because of who his father was. Double standards FTW.
Yeah, I have to ask the same question. What could have provoked some random-ass pizza delivery man to extol upon you his opinion about Clinton?
Noted.
edited 15th Jul '16 12:42:31 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly@Protagonist: Going by Wikipedia, the first attempt at officially codifying terrorism as a legal term that I could find was by the League of Nations in the 1930s.
Also, the Reign of Terror was so named because of the mass executions and witch-hunts ordered and committed by the revolutionary government under Robespierre. If it also involved random and indiscriminate acts of violence against civilians I'm not aware of it. "Terror" on its own is just a synonym for fear.
edited 15th Jul '16 12:49:53 PM by Elle
@Elle Random and indiscriminate acts of violence pretty well sums up the French Revolution.
It's odd to say, but if we had been a better partner to France during that period our relationship within the US to France may have been beyond our relationship with the UK.
A Francophile US would make for some odd political changes.
I'm not sure what you mean by better partner. Early America was pretty pro-French because the French helped us win the Revolution, and lots of people voiced support for the French Revolution before it turned sour because look, they're overthrowing their tyrant monarch too. Under Napoleon we were friendly enough in the diplomatic sense, especially when he offered to sell Louisiana to Jefferson, and in the war of 1812 the late French general Lafayette was still considered a hero of the revolution.
I'm not sure when the change in attitude towards Brittian and France happened, TBH. We were still having border disputes with the British as late as 1872 (the Oregon Treaty), the French worked with us on the Statue of Liberty through 1882. I suspect the world wars played a large part of the former and Bush vs France post 9/11 the latter.
edited 15th Jul '16 1:10:57 PM by Elle
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There is a reason the French Revolution (or rather its after-effects) tend to be the go-to example for The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized, however. Also, the Reign of Terror period would fit the definition if you consider the nobility that were executed (along with anyone accused of aiding them) to be civilians. The difference is that the Revolution had technically achieved its primary goal of ousting the nobility, so why they kept the party going doesn't quite fit.
And as a quick aside about Japan from the last page, part of the problem is there's a vocal faction in Japanese politics that are fully My Country, Right or Wrong, who deny that the Rape of Nanking happened, going so far as to remove all references to it from textbooks (like a certain faction here in the US is wont to do in regards to the treatment of slaves and Native Americans).
edited 15th Jul '16 1:21:38 PM by ironballs16
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"![]()
It happened earlier than World War I; The Great Rapprochment
between the US and Britain lasted from around 1895-1914, most notably involving the Spanish American War and the Boxer Rebellion in China..
edited 15th Jul '16 1:21:39 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnLink is broken.
Achievements of the Revolution:
- the legal abolition of the nobility, including its feudal privileges, by the National Assembly in 1789.
- the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, considered one of the world's most important statements of universal human rights, issued just after the abolition of the nobility.
- the reogranization of France's inefficient governing system into departments and communes.
- the temporary establishment of equal rights for blacks in France's colonial possessions. An uprising in Saint-Domingue, which ultimately led to the Haitian Revolution, would decree freedom for all slaves, though the French tried to reestablish it under Napoleon.
- Legal equality for Protestants and Jews, established in 1791.
- The establishment of the metric system in 1793.
- Formal separation of church and state in 1794.
- National system of schools known as lycées established in 1803.
- System of French civil law known as the Code Napoleon established in 1804.
- Stimulation of emancipatory, nationalist sentiment in Europe, Haiti, Latin America, and Egypt.
So yeah, there was a human cost, but I find it obnoxious in the extreme that some people want to reduce the French Revolution to its cost, as if the whole thing had been some bumbling mistake of those Hot-Blooded "Continentals".
edited 15th Jul '16 1:26:35 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.@Handle
Interesting that you would then instead sweep the violations of human rights that occurred on both sides as acceptable simply because good came from it. It was a bloodbath, it was messy, and a lot of people died because of grudges rather than because they were truly "wrong". Much like in the US politics nowadays, just because the Republicans are "wrong" does not make the Democrats "right".
That too is an over-simplification though; there were factions, the sane ones worked out reforms, the vengeful ones ran away with the show for a while, there was see-sawing back and forth until Napoleon stepped in. It ended up being a Full-Circle Revolution but there were hardly uniform motives or a consensus among the ruling powers throughout.
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Indeed. The French Revolution more or less led into The Napoleonic Wars.
November 8th.
edited 15th Jul '16 1:47:02 PM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On@Elle: Wasn't a circle, more like a spiral helix. They did not end up when they started; despite Louis XVIII's efforts, the Restoration failed on every level. The cat was out of the bag, or however the saying goes.
@Greenmantle: in France's defense, Europe shot first. And, if Leon Tolstoi's rendition of the process is anything to go by, it did so with glee, contempt, enthusiasm, and suicidal overconfidence.
Problem was, Napoleon bought his own hype and went Kanye West, except with an armed country behind him.
@Oblong Reality: I never said the cost was acceptable, I said that there was more to the whole process than the cost. Surely you can conceive that in one's brain and heart there is room for a nuanced and complex opinion, yes?
edited 15th Jul '16 1:54:52 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

It's also illegal for state actors to target civilians. Thats why NATO didn't specifiaclly target civilians. They targeted infrastructure like bridges Government buildings and power plants. The one time they were accused of targeting the civilian the Radio Television of Serbia headquarters, it was investigated by the UN.
Furthermore, there's more to the Yugoslawia bombing than you let on. For example, Russia's decision to back the West and to urge Milošević to surrender. The Yugoslav capitulation came the same day. They realized they had nobody backing them anymore.