Thread: What makes terrorists?

^ Do we need to post Holocaust photos to show how nice white Christians treat others?

^^One would also use that method to argue that Israel wanted to kill civilians in Lebanon. You can't have it both ways. Either it's a legitimate military target with civilian collateral damage or it's not.

After all, empty passenger jets are hard to come by, aren't they?

Have it both ways? How am I trying to have it both ways? Are you proposing to speak for me for what Israel did in Leboman? It's 5:30am so I'm a little drowsy here and I may be getting confused.

There intent was to kill civilians on the penatagon flight. Therefore the civialns are not collataral they are part of the planned misery and terror the terrorists wished to inflict.

After all, empty passenger jets are hard to come by, aren't they?

Am i supposed to answer that?

Originally Posted by attaboy

Have it both ways? How am I trying to have it both ways? Are you proposing to speak for me for what Israel did in Leboman? It's 5:30am so I'm a little drowsy here and I may be getting confused.

There intent was to kill civilians on the penatagon flight. Therefore the civialns are not collataral they are part of the planned misery and terror the terrorists wished to inflict.

After all, empty passenger jets are hard to come by, aren't they?

Am i supposed to answer that?

What civilians were they intending to kill? The ones on the plane? If the target was the Pentagon then the passengers were merely collateral damage as those Lebanese civilians were who died during the Israeli air campaign. The fact that the civilians happened to be on the plane is not all that important if the goal was to crash into the Pentagon since empty airliners are extremely rare at 8-10AM in the morning.

If the premise is that an intentional grounding of a plane was in fact an intended consequence to kill civilians as well as hit a military target then you must also accept that any action in war that kills civilians is intentional as well.

Yeah, I can see it now:

"United Airlines, how may we help you?"

"Yeah, I need a 737 to crash into the Pentagon on 9-11. Can you make sure there's no passengers aboard? Oh, and don't tell anyone. Thaaaaaaanks."

In the same way civilians killed in Lebanon were just part of the intended terror?

If the Pentagon was the target then the passengers must be collateral damage. Right?

Bombing civilians who stayed behind was not intended if they were around military targets. Bombing the car caravans leaving the warzone was wrong.

More than one objective I'd say. They could chew gum and walk at the same time.

Originally Posted by attaboy

What happened to airline revenues after 911? people didn't fly because they were terrorized maybe eh?

Maybe because they were chickenshit? I had my tickets booked prior to 9-11 and still flew less than a month later. Didn't stop me. I'm not a coward.

The way we've acted the past 5 years is more than enough proof that the terrorists have won. A few guys with boxcutters brought a powerful nation to its knees. They accomplished more that morning than any nation in the history of the earth who has been against us. Man, what the fuck would we do if there was really a major event? Dirty nuclear explosion? A city wiped out? Taking down a pair of skyscrapers is nothing compared to what we could face. Are we all going to choke on our own paranoia if it happens again?

Look at the fucking shit that takes place in Iraq, yet, people still go on. That's terrorism. We don't fucking know what it is because it's not taking place in every city and every neighborhood here. We lost a few thousand people out of hundreds of millions. We simply have never experienced it and we overreacted as it was.

America is a nation of pussies if a few hijackings is all it took to force us to change our laws and erode liberties the way we have.

Originally Posted by mad_dog

Originally Posted by ceburat

Originally Posted by mad_dog

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Originally Posted by humphrey

Originally Posted by ceburat

Teaching children to hate.

Teaching children to fight.

Adults wondering why there is war's.

Oh well, Maybe someday the world will wake up.

.

And that goes for both sides.

Are they indoctrinating hatred of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam in general now?

Yes

Where do you get your incorrect information from?

Your posts are extremely hateful towards Muslims. Where does this hatred come from? The media, politicans, educators the Western culture in general. Imagine how hateful you would be if Muslims were occupying your country!

I ask you where do you get your incorrect information from?

You answered by accusing me of being extremely hateful towards Muslims in my posts. Wrong. I am extremely hateful towards terrorists, ass holes who blowup innocent people.

If you are man enough just answer the question or admit that you were talking thru your ass.

^^I don't think we are pussies. I think Bush got poor council from the neo-cons and he made terrible decisions including invading Afghanistan. We could have handled things with drones and with allies like Lion of Panjshir. (was that his name? the guy they blew up with the camera bomb?)

The way the Congress was going ga-ga over the Military Commissions bill just further erodes my confidence in either party to do the right thing. The whole thing leaves me very suspicious.

A defiant nation would not have suffered such a decline in air travel and would not have allowed their government to turn back the clock on progress. A defiant nation would have said "FU" and gone about life as normal instead of cowering in fear. In the UK and Spain they went about their business soon like nothing happened after their attacks. Maybe we are just too innocent and don't know how to handle it. After all, we never have really been attacked or invaded (I don't really count Pearl since Hawaii wasn't a state in 1941). Maybe complacency leads to overconfidence in the government to do the proper thing and lets politicians erode civil rights as a symptom of mass stupidity.

They have been eroding my privacy and rights since I was a kid. I think the Hate speech laws was a major hit on the Constitution within my life time. but I have to set this down for now. Hasta luego.

Originally Posted by attaboy

Bombing civilians who stayed behind was not intended if they were around military targets.
...

They had no choice, as there was no plane without passengers available.

I had this exchange with someone before about Hiroshima.
They knew the potential of the bomb, and civilian were targets for it as well, it was obvious many would die.
No, they targeted military installations, not the civilians, was the answer.

-not a clear-cut thing, IMO.

Same excuse: it was a military target, therefore, civilian casualties are unavoidable. As if the bomb just drops itself without a human pulling the trigger. Somehow it's wrong when terrorists bomb targets and kill civilians but not wrong when national militaries do the same exact thing.

(Interesting scenario as I noted previously: the national bus system in Israel carries soldiers from post to post. If a suicide bomber hits a bus is the target the civilians or the soldiers? Does the mixing of the soldiers turn a civilian asset into a military target? Ok, if it's wrong to hit the bus because there's civilians onboard then why is it not wrong to bomb a civilian apartment building in Beirut by the IDF?)

Were the japanese warned to leave the city? The Israelis dropped flyers warning to get out. No vacant planes...pretty funny. It wouldn't have mattered the Israelis bombed the airport. I think the reasoning was so Hezbollah couldn't fly the captured soldier to Iran like they had done previously. The Iranians never returned the body.

So, if the hijackers had warned people to get out of NYC then destroying the WTC and part of lower Manhattan would have been OK?

The dropping of the atomic bomb wasn't about forcing Japan to surrender but more of a warning to Stalin. Sadly many Japanese paid the price for that.

What about the firebombings in Dresden? Were the also not a terrorist act? Or does the declaration of war (a legal war...LMAO...I get such a laugh out of the concept of an 'unlawful enemy combatant') alleviate the moral responsibility to protect civilian life at all costs?

Have the worst terrorist attacks in history been perpetrated by poor terrorists or by wealthy terrorists?

We like to think about the terrorists that come from refugee camps but what about the ones wearing national flags on their uniforms who have unilaterally invaded other sovereign nations?

Preemptive strikes. By killing women and children they couldn't produce more soldiers. Duh.

Originally Posted by surasak

A defiant nation would have said "FU" and gone about life as normal instead of cowering in fear

Absolutely. The USA has surrendered already to the terrorists. They won, the war on terror is over, now it's war against our society.

Originally Posted by surasak

Maybe complacency leads to overconfidence in the government to do the proper thing and lets politicians erode civil rights as a symptom of mass stupidity.

Yep, that about sum it up.

What about the firebombings in Dresden? Were the also not a terrorist act?

That was a terrorist act by anyone's definition. No military targets to speak of in Dresden.
This was pure revenge bombing onto civilian targets with no other justification whatsoever.

It infuriates me that the Brits built the guy responsible, "bomber" Harris, a monument in London!
Incidentally, the same guy was in charge of bombing the shit out of the Iraqi marshland tribes - would one build Sadam a monument for doing the same thing?

Sorry, going off-topic...

So in other words there's no difference between terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism, since civilians are harmed in both cases anyway. Ok. So?

To get back to the OP, one could also ask why don't MORE people become terrorists? Why is it only a tiny minority of a given population feel justified to become terrorists?

Because regular people don't want to. For good reason.

Probably because the past several centuries of European domination have been plenty violent enough. I think the terrorists have a long way to go to catch up with what Europe caused in the past and what America is causing now.

It doesn't stop being terrorism simply because the uniform has a flag on it.

Originally Posted by Sir Burr

BH,
My comment you quoted about Total War. You did not mention that it was refering to nuclear weapons.

Which non-state terrorists will eventually gets their hands on anyway.