Is it right to ever support Terrorism?

[Surlethe]

Whyever not? Lowering the crime rate through deterrence or rehabilitation clearly has positive utility. That would involve targetting those that have demonstrated a will to commit the crimes, i.e., those who have had the intent to do so. Whether from the point of view of determent or rehabilitation, treating those with intent differently makes sense. Unless states are/should be amoral, the analogy carries over.

I don't exactly see what you're saying; we agree that it is ethical to punish more greatly those who intend to commit harm, but why should that imply the intent to harm is itself unethical?

I should probably add that several manslaughters would definitely be much worse than one murder. That analogy is more appropriate here than the "all things being equal" one.

True.

[Surlethe]

I should probably add that several manslaughters would definitely be much worse than one murder. That analogy is more appropriate here than the "all things being equal" one.

Is this aimed at me? If it is, point conceded. Sloppy work on my part.

Edi

I'm pretty sure it was aimed at me and my argument.

[wolveraptor]

It's hazy ground though. Naturally it's idiotic to assume a terrorist will simply not strike a military target if given an opportunity, of course they will. The difference is that it's not part of their overall strategy to do so. If it's part of their overall campaign strategy to target soliders and military infrastructure the term usuallly used is Guerrilla warfare.

So you contend that the hijackers who deliberately planned to attack the Pentagon and Pentagon only were not terrorists, since their target was purely military?
Besides, General William Tecumsah Sherman targetted both civillian and military targets in an attempt to consummately devastate the Confederacy's infrastructure, yet no one calls him a terrorist.

There is obviously going to be some blending of these terms since you can't very well expect everyone to accept a cozy definition of themselves. But if you're talking about terrorism or terrorists it's usually accepted that you're talking about those who target civilians and civilian infrastructure.

But not exclusively, which is the point you seem to be trying to make. The first dictionary.com definition of terrorism is the following:

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

[Darth Wong]

Notice how he said that terrorists target civilian infrastructure. One of the first targets usually hit by warplanes using standard Israeli or American tactics is electricity generating stations and water treatment planets. That's civilian infrastructure. Ergo, both the IDF and the US Air Force are terrorists according to Lord Woodlouse's definition. I would argue that by his definition, there have very few soldiers throughout history, and that most armed forces meet his definition of terrorists.

[Gil Hamilton]

Going by Woodlouse's defintions posted, incinerating 15 square kilometers of residential neighborhoods in a night of carpet bombing for the specific intent of terrorising the population (the part that wasn't reduced to ash by the tens of thousands) into surrender is not terrorism and is more ethical than killing a handful of civilians on the bus. Why? One was done by an Army using force against civilians for a political end and one was not.

Huh, funny logic there.

[Lord Woodlouse]

OK, I was just going to leave this debate quietly but I do rather feel my name is being unfairly dragged through the mud here. I did NOT say the military are ethical by sheer virtue of targeting military threats. From the very start of this debate I have said they are NOT above criticism. I have said;

Terrorism is the tactic of deliberately targeting civilians to cause terror. I don’t think it’s splitting hairs all that much to define a difference between that and military strikes with high civilian losses. Which does not mean, of course, that those military strikes are not morally flawed in themselves.

I never argued that it was right to kill hoards of civilians in pursuit of a military purpose (unless, potentially, we're talking about something that could literally win a war. Perhaps). I'm not even saying that one action from one tactic is universally better than one action from the other. I'm just stating that there is a difference between the two, and I consider it more than just hair splitting.

I think it's certainly possible that a military strike can be more unethical than a dedicated terrorist strike. Dresden is a fairly unethical strike, the destruction of an entire cities population for virtually no military gain. Worse than most terrorist strikes, I'd say. Though I say that with 20-20 hindsight.

That does NOT mean a military force is devoid of ethical blame themselves, especially in cases where they could avoid civilian losses. But it is rarely their objective to target the innocent party, their target is the warmaking potential of their enemy

It's certainly possible for collateral damage to be worse. Even more unethical. But it's almost never done deliberately, and that's an important distinction.

My stance was intended from the start to include both intent and consequences. Not one or the other, both judged in the same breath.

I'm leaving this debate because quite frankly there are far too many people for me to respond to, and because fundamentally the topic is making me a little angry (I think I've avoided making that show, but my emotional state most certainly can and does effect the coherency of my debate). So yes, I'll be leaving this debate. I only hope I've cleared up some possible misinterpretations of my stance before I do.

[Lord Pounder]

I'm probaly a little off here but here's my opinion of the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

A freedom figher does what he does with the support of the majority of the people in that country. For example Freedom Fighers of occupied France. The vast majority of France certainly did not want a Nazi puppet goverment, the Nazi's took the place by force. The French relaiiated the only way they could in the face of superior numbers and arms.

The ther side of the coin is the PIRA. The majority of Northern Ireland are Unionists. They support being part of the UK. The IRA took up arms and and committed military acts to force changes against the will of the vast majority of the people. They where terrorists. By the same token the majority of Muslims in the world do not support the actions of Al Quieda(sp?).

That's my opinion

[Darth Wong]

OK, I was just going to leave this debate quietly but I do rather feel my name is being unfairly dragged through the mud here. I did NOT say the military are ethical by sheer virtue of targeting military threats.

You said that it's an important ethical distinction, thus implying that they would have to kill a lot more people in order to make it less ethical. You have never provided a fucking shred of justification for this claim; you just keep repeating it.

Tell me, if an enemy's military is a threat to you because you are in a state of war, you destroy it. You consider that acceptable, even if many civilians die in the process. But if the enemy is a democratic society, it is the civilians who support the actions being perpetrated against you, is it not? If pressure against them could halt the actions against you, why is that not just as much a form of "self defense" (to use your liberal definition) as blowing up military targets and killing a bunch of civilians along with them?

Moreover, how do you counter the charge that your definition of terrorism includes virtually all conventional militaries throughout history? It certainly includes the IDF right now, which has repeatedly hit "civilian infrastructure" targets such as water treatment plants, electrical plants, transformers, bridges, etc.

[Kuroneko]

I don't exactly see what you're saying; we agree that it is ethical to punish more greatly those who intend to commit harm, but why should that imply the intent to harm is itself unethical?

The ethics of intent sans action is not germane to the discussion, but rather whether or not intent or lack of it is a contributing or mitigating factor when combined with other circumstances. Let's leave the consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist considerations for now, as the ethics of intent are much more defined under deontological and virtue ethics, and consider only the former ethical systems. Which consequences? Actual consequences are impossible to predict, but one may have a clear picture as to what the probable outcome will be. This is essentially the standard distinction between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism.

For example, suppose that without your knowledge I put you in a situation in which you have a 95% chance of doing and a 5% chance of leaving unharmed and none the wiser. Under act-utilitarianism, if you survive, I've apparently done nothing unethical despite the fact that I've introduced you into a situation that greatly risked your life without your consent, but under rule-utilitarianism, I've still done something unethical, even if it falls short of actual murder. Less abstractly, an engineer that deliberately introduced a dangerous flaw in a product has done something unethical notwithstanding that, by pure chance, no one was actually harmed. Likewise, that remains the case even if the product was originally dangerous enough and that the people that were harmed would have been likewise harmed without the willfully introduced flaw.

In other words, putting someone in danger or increasing existing danger is unethical, although of course there are degrees of this. Intent to harm a group, combined with a means to do so, increases danger to that group.

[Darth Wong]

One of the interesting things about this discussion is that Woodlouse and those who think like him clearly obfuscate the distinction between intent as in "was it deliberate or accidental" and intent as in "an inevitable consequence of your primary objective".

This is an important distinction between because accidents fall under the category of negligence at worst, rather than malice. However, the deliberate initiation of actions which have inevitable side-effects definitely falls under the category of malice. Examples abound in law and society: drunk driving being the most prominent of these, but also arson, bank robbery, etc. In fact, if a bank robbery results in a shootout with police where bystanders are killed, the bank robber is charged with the deaths of those bystanders. The fact that the bank robber is arguably defending himself from the police is irrelevant; he initiated this action, and is responsible for consequences which were either inevitable or had a high probability of occurring.

[Surlethe]

The ethics of intent sans action is not germane to the discussion, but rather whether or not intent or lack of it is a contributing or mitigating factor when combined with other circumstances. Let's leave the consequentialist vs. non-consequentialist considerations for now, as the ethics of intent are much more defined under deontological and virtue ethics, and consider only the former ethical systems. Which consequences? Actual consequences are impossible to predict, but one may have a clear picture as to what the probable outcome will be. This is essentially the standard distinction between act-utilitarianism and rule-utilitarianism.

For example, suppose that without your knowledge I put you in a situation in which you have a 95% chance of doing and a 5% chance of leaving unharmed and none the wiser. Under act-utilitarianism, if you survive, I've apparently done nothing unethical despite the fact that I've introduced you into a situation that greatly risked your life without your consent, but under rule-utilitarianism, I've still done something unethical, even if it falls short of actual murder. Less abstractly, an engineer that deliberately introduced a dangerous flaw in a product has done something unethical notwithstanding that, by pure chance, no one was actually harmed. Likewise, that remains the case even if the product was originally dangerous enough and that the people that were harmed would have been likewise harmed without the willfully introduced flaw.

In other words, putting someone in danger or increasing existing danger is unethical, although of course there are degrees of this. Intent to harm a group, combined with a means to do so, increases danger to that group.

That clears it all up. Thank you. Point conceded.