What makes a terrorist a terrorist?

Faith writes:

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That would still be terrorism because war is not conducted by individuals.

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So what about individual actions - and there were many - taken during the American Revolution and during the Civil War? What about individual actions taken against the Nazis during WWII?

Faith writes me:

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You have to be more specific than that. I said some causes are romantic and righteous in the very post you are answering, such as the people who were trying to take out Hitler. I don't know what individuals you were talking about in the American Revolution or Civil wars, who they were and what they were aiming to do.

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Like the French resistance in WWII, during the Vichy period. There were countless individual actions of killing Nazis, sabatoging their vehicles (causing accidents that sometimes killed innocent people), that sort of thing. There are references to such actions in the movie Casablanca.My point is not to trip you up, Faith, only to show that your definition needs too many exceptions in order to account for the differences in perspective. From an opposing viewpoint, the sort of actions I'm talking about would seem very similar to what you're calling terrorism.I've always preferred the fairly simple definition that terrorism is any action that, by its nature and regardless of whatever other motives might be at work, is designed to inflict civilian casualties and/or cause monumental civilian suffering.That way no one even has to die in order to consider an act to be terrorism; a hostage-taking would qualify. But to use my definition you have to accept that there isn't a moral absolute, even as regards terrorism. If you are sympathetic to Israel in this current action then you likely don't see the bombing of the Lebanese airport, power stations and major highways and bridges as terrorism, but for that very reason you have to accept the idea that a moral absolute is impossible.

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But I think terrorism isn't aimed at specific targets for specific strategies so much as simply aimed to cause terror among a population. Intimidation, nothing rational.

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But that would seem to call into question whether 9/11 was terrorism. Surely the targets chosen that day were chosen to fulfill a specific strategy, and that strategy had, I think, more to do with disrupting the western-dominated world economy than causing terror in New York and Washington. That's why I prefer to simply set the standard at the targeting of civilians. Of course, that means that long-time Israeli PM Menachem Begin and even American President Harry Truman could be called terrorists, but like I said there are no moral absolutes.

Faith writes me:

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he French resistance killing Nazis in time of war was not ideology-driven.

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Oh? There was no anti-fascist ideology going on there? Certainly some of the mercenaries in France were motivated by anti-fascism.And your definition doesn't seem to comport with the Bush administration's. We've been led to believe for years now that 9/11 was executed - not entirely but in substantial part - by the government of Afghanistan with support from the government of Iraq. That's supposed to be the main reason we're at war there.And while we're on the subject of governments I'd like to get your opinion on actions by independent groups that eventually become governments, like the Sandinistas in South America or the Zionists in Palestine.

This kinda flew in under the radar last week, but I chanced across it this morning and I must say I'm stunned. I can't imagine celebrating something like this.That bombing set off a chain of political events that resulted in the end of the British Mandate and the creation of Israel, which satisfied in full the demands of the Zionist militants who set the explosion. No doubt the Palestinians were paying attention, and they learned quite well the lesson that actions of that sort get results!I don't want to be overly condemnatory of Isreal; this was right at the end of WWII and the situation in Palestine was very complicated (much as it has been ever since). For decades, no one knew for sure whether the militants had actually placed a warning call to the hotel desk. Sometime in the 1970s, a batch of hotel records came to light and made it clear that a warning call was indeed made, but the records suggested that it came only a very few minutes - maybe five, iirc - before the explosion.But however moderate we might say this was as an act of terror, one would really have to construct a very complicated definition of terrorisn in order to excude it entirely.

Faith writes:

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They might, but this overlooks the fact that they are defensively responding to an ideologically-driven enemy that wants Israel not to exist. If that enemy just minded its own business, negotiated for a state that sought peace with its neighbor Israel, none of this violence would be happening at all.

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Huh? The Irgun wanted the British Mandate not to exist. And they didn't just "mind their own buisness", they bombed a hotel and killed 91 people, mostly civilians. Do you consider that an example of "negotiating for a state"?

Faith writes:

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But what I do know is how they are being set up now to look like they are in the wrong when they are not, and the world, especially the Left, eats it up.

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Are you talking about the Howard Dean left or the Pat Buchanan left? Edited by berberry, : Forgot to include the quote from Faith.