Is terrorism Ok? (If the US is doing it?)

genxsis, where does the pejorative term' terrorism' come in here? I don't see anything like that being conducted by US forces.
We are not setting off human bombs, targeting civilians or any of the usual sort of stuff that muslim terrorists do.
 
Everyone is so quick to throw around the word "terrorism" when it suits them that eventually it won't matter. Everything is terrorism! This message will insult someone, so it must be terrorism! Terror! Terror!

I'd ask for perspective, but this country's got none left on anything except for how goddamned important it must be, be you left, right, or undeclared.

I was not justifying anything....but just like I don't think a stern talking to is torture I don't think counterfeiting and rumors is terrorism
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You're right, none of thsoe things are as you say. A stern talking to isn't torture, but when you start dunking their heads between questions, it is.

And counterfeiting and rumours certainly aren't terrorism, because they're not creating terror. On the other hand, they are international meddling and prime reason to get might PO'd if you're the country being intentionally screwed with by another country's spy agency.

Y'know, not that we'd have any reason to get the Iranians mad enough to cause an incident, right? Next thing you know, there'll be allegations of all sorts of nastiness over there, including arresting diplomats, making wild accusations, and...Oh.

It pains me when someone equates waterboarding to decapitation
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Me too. One is torture, and one is an execution. Why, they're hardly the same at all!
 
Prior to 9/11, Hizbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist group. Hizbollah=Iran (or more specifically, Iranian Republican Guard, who answer only to the Ayatollah, not the gov't).
DOD definition of terrorism: "..defined by the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
$ does not equal violence
 
"This isn't a stern talking to, just like a naked dogpile and spreading feces on a man's face is not a stern talking to"

Sorry...but I go with Ann Coulter on this one.....if it happens in a frat house hazing it is not torture
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It would be torture to me. Makes you wonder what kind of school Ann and Lush went to.

I'll give Wild a pass on this. It must get terribly lonely and boring up in "the frozen north". Long winters and all that.:p

badbob
 
Terrorism is defined by the US Government as "A violent act or an act dangerous to human life, in violation of criminal law, to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

Therefore, waterboarding is terrorism.

At what point does saber rattling become terrorism?
 
Nice try divemedic. Waterboarding is an interrogation technique. No, it's not nice, no I wouldn't want it done to someone I care about. But it is not killing people and it is not done to coerce a nation to DO anything. It is an attempt to force someone to divulge information they don't want to. In order to STOP them, or their compatriots, from doing something.

Now, you can say that it is wrong and that we shouldn't do it under any circustances. That is a legitimate argument. Eqauting it with terrorism is most certainly not.

Back to the OP, what the CIA is allegedly doing ain't terrorism either. It is action against a foreign government, yes. Are you saying that we should never, under any circumstances act against a foreign government? That's a legitimate argument also, but one I sure do disagree with.

If you're up for a loooong but worthwhile read, check out Bill Wittle. He recently wrote an essay on the application of game theory and The Prisoner's Dilemma to international relations. Long story short, the successful strategy is to respond to nice with nice and not nice with not nice.
 
We have a tyrannical government thats been either actively attacking us or funding those who do since at least the 1970's and people are getting their panties in a wad because we are trying to get the upper hand for the inevitable conflict.

I don't know why we bother with anything anymore. We might as well scrap the project and welcome whoever wants to deal with our mess of a land.
 
I don't know why we bother with anything anymore. We might as well scrap the project and welcome whoever wants to deal with our mess of a land.
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Sure, why not. We can be a country with no moral convictions. Let's torture whoever we want, let privates drop bombs wherever we want, and make sure we keep our feet firmly on the neck of that pesky habeas corpus.
 
Sure, why not. We can be a country with no moral convictions. Let's torture whoever we want, let privates drop bombs wherever we want, and make sure we keep our feet firmly on the neck of that pesky habeas corpus.
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Unless someone is a strict isolationist, there is no justifiable reason for not supporting our CIA working within Iran.

Everything you just mentioned has nothing to do with our CIA being in Iran. Furthermore there is NO evidence of anyone being tortured ANYWHERE. There are things that go on in football locker rooms and frat houses that make the incident at abu ghraib look like a girl scout meeting. And as far as habeas courpus in concerned, the only person that has had an issue was Mr. Padilla, and thats been address by the system as it should have been.

Thus, everything that you just mentioned 1) has nothing to do with the topic of the CIA being in Iran, and 2) is false.
 
Oh please. Comparing torture to frat hazing is trite. There are plenty of actions done during hazing (in which, BTW, the recipient of treatment can usually opt out of, which is kind of the point) that can be considered torture. You ask as if nobody has ever died from hazing. But then, it's not your analogy, you are just reciting. The simple fact is that torture is ineffective (this from our own military) so even if "nobody got hurt", it's pointless and immoral.


Our esteemed AG has gone in front of congress and not only said that the constitution doesn't grant us the right of habeas corpus (true), but that the constitution doesn't assure us the right of habeas corpus (false). I don't care if I can prove that someone has been denied habeas corpus. I care that people like you don't care that such statements can be made by the AG. I don't need to be personally affected by something to be appalled by it.

Everything you just mentioned has nothing to do with our CIA being in Iran.
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No, it was in response to your "panties in a twist" whining.
 
We are training hunderds of thousands of our young men to dehumanize these people in their own minds, so they can more efficiently kill them. I could care less that 'our people' are running spook games on the baddies.

It's all war in its various disguises; conventional, unconventional, and 'Politics- war by other means.' We didn't declare it, but we are going to have to fight it. War has never been fair and it's not supposed to be. Wars are won by puntive actions- pouring hell on an enemy until he quits or withdraws from the field.

The difference between us and them is simple- 'us' needs to win, by whatever means available. I am much less concerned about the methods used in fighting to win, as opposed to fighting some half-assed war which we don't lose- but never win.
 
Unless someone is a strict isolationist, there is no justifiable reason for not supporting our CIA working within Iran.
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No problem with that. Haven't seen anything we are doing that could aptly be described as torture or terrorism.
 
Waterboarding is just an interrogation technique?

It is torture. It is violence. Being violence, and being a crime (at least for now), it fits the definition of terrorism. You better believe that if a group of men were kidnapping and "questioning" FBI agents in such a manner, they would be labeled terrorists.

Just because people confess when "interrogated" by people using this method does not make them terrorists. When being tortured, most people will confess to anything to make it stop. It truly frightens me to see my fellow citizens agree with torturing people. It won't be long before the term "terrorist" means anyone who disagrees with the Government, and we are all subject to being "interrogated."

I wonder if people would feel the same way if a Democrat were the President responsible for these methods.
 
Regarding torture: Would people here find waterboarding (oh, sorry -- freedomboarding) acceptable if it were done to US troops? How about other rough treatment or sick acts of sexual degradation? I wonder if Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh would still think it was "fraternity hazing" then.

And yes, I would rather be decapitated than kept in a freezing-cold cell and waterboarded or otherwise tortured repeatedly over the course of an indefinite detention.

Getting back to terrorism per se, the US has been sponsoring Israeli terrorism for decades. (I have no problem pointing this out in spite of my own Jewish ethnic background because I'm not ethnocentric at all -- I believe the same principles of morality apply to ALL people.) We've all heard the endless refrain that Israel "has a right to defend itself," but shooting children sitting in classrooms and firing missiles from helicopters into crowded marketplaces doesn't exactly fit my definition of "self-defense." Neither does recklessly cluster-bombing Lebanese civilian areas in retaliation for the capture of a couple of soldiers.

The reason the US continues to send more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country while vetoing every single UN resolution critical of Israel in any way (even when other countries are unanimously in favor) is because of the Zionist lobby: AIPAC, ZOA, WZO, etc.

Palestinian militants have certainly been committing terrorism as well, and theirs is every bit as reprehensible. The key differences are that (1) they need to blow themselves up when bombing civilians in Israel, since they don't have tanks or an air force, and (2) the US hasn't been sponsoring their terrorism.

We've already invaded one country that never posed a threat to us as a "gift" to Israel. Iran is probably next. I don't know if the US will survive being stretched so thin, but the Israel-first crowd certainly doesn't care about that.

Countless other examples of US sponsorship of terrorism include the CIA's support for the brutal dictator Pinochet and the US-issued "green light" for the "dirty war" in Argentina. Oh, and let's not forget the "School of the Americas":

On September 20, 1996, the Pentagon released seven training manuals prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses in Latin America and at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). According to the Third World Traveler, these manuals show how U.S. agents taught repressive techniques and promoted the violation of human rights throughout Latin America and around the globe. [6] Amnesty International describes the contents of the document to contain instructions in motivation by fear, bounties for enemy dead, false imprisonment, torture, execution, and kidnapping a target's family members. [7]
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_americas#US_Training_Manual

If that's not terrorism, then what is?

More examples, real and alleged, here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_state_terrorism_by_United_States_of_America

I'm not pointing all this out because I "hate America." I'm pointing it out because I hate the policy-making wing of the American government. Its hypocrisy and lies are nearly intolerable. Anyone who loves the principles America was founded upon -- the central one being universal human rights -- can't help but agree. So I agree completely with the point implied in the OP. The attitude of the US government (and many Americans who think "my country can do no wrong") is that terrorism is defined as "any violence not approved by the United States government."

If America would seal its borders, carefully screen anyone entering, and pursue the relatively isolationist foreign policy our Founders intended (George Washington specifically warned against "entangling alliances"), then we would be able to regain the moral high ground. Sure, America has done a lot of good in the world as well, and that can't be forgotten. But doing good doesn't give one the license to do evil as well.
 
Counterfeiting money and printing false articles in newspapers is subversion not terrorism. FWIW: Nearly every country in the middle east and FSU counterfeits U.S. currency. Some of it is govt sponsored some is by organized crime.
I won't get into the torture side of this "discussion".
 
invssgt wrote:

The difference between us and them is simple- 'us' needs to win, by whatever means available. I am much less concerned about the methods used in fighting to win, as opposed to fighting some half-assed war which we don't lose- but never win.
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And somewhere in cyberspace there's probably someone writing the same thing about "winning by any means necessary" in Arabic or Farsi. Of course, you'd label him a terrorist.

(And just so you know, I agree that we do need to win, just not by "whatever means available.")
 
genxsis, take a hike and quit trolling. Do you know what terrorism is? Obviously not. Counterfitting money or urging people to revolt against their government is not terrorism. Terrorism involves the use of violent acts and tactics to accomplish political objectives. Now if the US sent spies to Iran that planted bombs aimed at killing people, you could say the US is taking part in terrorist activities. Even if the US was planting bombs aimed at killing Iranian military officials, that wouldn't even be terrorism. Terrorists target innocent civilians that have no affiliation with their governments thus are not responsible for the actions taken by their governments. If you are an American you should be ashamed. Seriously get a clue.
 
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