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I honestly do believe that it is less cowardly to sacrifice oneself in a cause that one believes is bigger than yourself than to sit in a trailer & kill people from drones who may, or may not be soldiers on the other side of the world, just to be able to qualify for a pension.
One can be courageous & stupidly wrong but one can also be amoral & wrong. But if you believe in your cause & don't question authority, just go along to get along, you can be talked into anything by using god or country as the motivation.
A lot of people with jobs like this view it as 'just doing their jobs', its not really right or wrong to them, its just their job.
Im not sure how this mentality became so popular, as that excuse has NEVER worked when its used as a legitimate explanation.
The so-called good guys (nations) kill innocents all the time and casually refer to them as collateral damage. When terrorists do it, there is outrage about targeting innocents. I recall the saying that one's terrorists are someone else's freedom fighters.
As may have been said before, why would a group with a cause, attack a substantially bigger and mightier military? It always makes sense to go for the underbelly.
Last edited by Rastafellow; 07-20-2018 at 04:53 PM..
Reason: change wording
The so-called good guys (nations) kill innocents all the time and casually refer to them as collateral damage. When terrorists do it, there is outrage about targeting innocents. I recall the saying that one's terrorists are someone else's freedom fighters.
As may have been said before, why would a group with a cause, attack a substantially bigger and mightier military? It always makes sense to go for the underbelly.
I think the IRA made that one up.. Freedom fighters.. but who knows.. still killers.
No, of course terrorists aren't cowards. I think it was just a political ploy to insult them.
It would be more sensible to say that people are cowards when they attack their enemies with drones, while sitting comfortably in safety.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Joshua
So if someone was coming at you with a knife and you had a gun, you would put the gun down and get a knife so that you would not be a coward?
That's textbook stupidity.
I'm sorry, but that's an absurd analogy. In your example I would be under immediate direct attack with limited options. None of that is true with our drone strikes.
I'm sorry, but that's an absurd analogy. In your example I would be under immediate direct attack with limited options. None of that is true with our drone strikes.
What risk are the drone operators under when they perform these strikes?
They sit in an air conditioned heated trailer on a military base or facility, they are in NO danger whatsoever, there is little to nothing their victims can do to defend themselves against a drone strike, it really is a cowardly way to carry out missions when you think about it.
I'm sorry, but that's an absurd analogy. In your example I would be under immediate direct attack with limited options. None of that is true with our drone strikes.
I agree with rStevens62. To those drone operators, it's just another at work in an air-conditioned environment. What's courageous about that?
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1. What are the tactics of the armed group? (Military and police, or civilians [especially civilians in purely commercial, educational, non-security-related vocational, or recreational areas]). The 1963 Birmingham church bombing clearly was terrorism under any widely-used definition. On the other hand, if the group attacks the states' agents or targets only government and arguably commercial properties empty of people (e.g., office building at 3 am, transmitters, etc), then that's probably genuine freedom fighting, depending on the answer to #2.
2. What's the goal of the armed group? (freeing its people from genuine political oppression, or merely disliking government policies?). This one's a bit more complex, but I think yields some recognizable patterns.
An armed group that shoots back at police or military - agents of the state - who clearly are carrying out policies that seek to keep all or a subset of its citizens second class citizens at best...or do even worse to them. They probably are freedom fighters. Imagine if Tim McVeigh instead flew a plane into a military base. Would he still be a terrorist? I think most people would say "Yes", especially since McVeigh's group stands for social and political practices the great majority of people find nutsy at best and abhorrent at worst.
The 2016 Dallas police shooter? I'd say he was one too. The government, nor police department specifically had policies or practices specifically designed to keep racial minorities down, nor specifically set out to violate the human rights of the people as a whole. Any such instance of the latter is more a matter of poor police traning and misguided ideas of what good law enforcement is, rather than a reflection of actual government goals and aspirations.
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