Obviously this does not go to intentional killing, as with, e.g., the firebombing campaigns against Geramn and Japanese cities targeted at industrial workers, or even reckless killing of noncombatants. Nor does it offer any justification for suicide bombings and the like, intentional attempts to kill noncombatantas.
Nor does the principle say how much unintentional killing of noncombatants is acceptable, or what risks of such killings may be taken for what purposes and under what constraints. It does suggest that within the scope of the reasonale objectives of the war, the unintentional killings shoud be minimized -- incidentally I guess that was part of the announced purpose of Shock and Awe, whether you believe it or not.
All that said, there is a double standard that a lot of liberals use, that when out forces wipe out a weedding party by mistake in Afghanistan, oops, sorry, but if a bomb planted by resistance fighters in Iraq and aimed at a police station blows up a bus full of children, Outrage! Terrorism!
As has been variously pointed out, "terrorism" is a pretty slippery word, and it's less often applied to state conduct than it should be if it's defined the way it is defined in various national and international laws. Thus in the Patriot Act, international T is defined in part as the use or threat of force in a way dangerous to human life and in violation of what would be a law of the US or any state (if it occurred in US jurisdiction) that is intended to influence the policy of a government . . . . It's not hard to see that a lot of US policy in Iraq satisfies that definition -- even if the govt whose policy being influenced is not Iraq's!
All that being said, and the need for the anti-war and the anti-imperialist satruggle being acknowledged, it's also necessary to say that the guys running around blowing up trains in Spain and crashing plans in building here are really bad, dangerous people who have to be stopped. Terrorism isn't a bad name for what they do, either.
jks
jks
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>
> From: Stephen E Philion
>
>
> liberal 'marxist' norm geras:
> George Galloway denies any distinction between war
> and what some of us
> call terrorism, other than that one is ordered 'by
> men in suits', the
> other 'by men in sandals'. And so blowing up a bus
> full of
> schoolchildren isn't terrorism, it's just 'a grisly
> aspect' of
> revolutionary insurgency.
>
> --yet Galloway is correct, after all Geras doesn't
> call dropping bombs
> on civilians (by accident of course it's always by
> accident) 'terrorism'...so what gives? Is Geras
> saying that the
> schoolchildren were targets btw? he must have some
> pretty good
> intelligence agents on the ground in Iraq these
> days...
>
> steve
>
> ^^^^^
>
> CB: Yea, clearly U.S. bombadiers, artillery
> personnel, Marines, etc. are the
> Mega-Terrorists in the world today, killing more
> civilians than the one's
> the U.S. calls terrorists. They don't even hide it
> with "Shock and Awe" and
> the like. A killer wearing a uniform is a terrorist
> too. The fact that the
> people fighting the U.S. have less powerful weapons
> makes them less
> terroristic. The fact that U.S. uniformed terrorists
> kill more efficiently
> makes them more terroristic. It doesn't exonerate
> them of being terrorists !
>
>
> Who is naïve enough to believe that the U.S.
> military doesn't kill civilians
> on purpose ? If you start launching missiles into
> cities it is certain you
> will kill civilians. You are presumed to intend the
> necessary and inevitable
> consequences of your action ( Mr. Justice Powell).
> It's no excuse that you
> were trying to hit a tyrant. But who doubts that
> some Yankee Marines murder
> Iraqi civilians on purpose in the course of these
> events ?
>
> Why is there a debate on a left list about whether
> the U.S. military is
> terroristic, and more terroristic than the
> relatively pintsized terrorists ?
>
>
> War _is_ the ultimate terrorism ! Why does this have
> to be explained ?
>
>
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