AndrewL

Note the inclusion of the word 'criminal' in that definition though. This is what makes it different from earlier definitions of terrorism. The most popular being, "terrorism is the act or threat of violence against civilians for the purpose of ideological, economic, or religious goals". When we add the word 'criminal' we have a situation in whicg terrorism is fine as long as some institution, like the UN, or the American congress, says it is legal. It then ceases to be a crime, and hence by M. Dancers definition ceases to be terrorism. I don't like that definition at all. Andrew

You certainly jump into asshole mode quite easily. I agree, i should have said there is no generally accepted definition of terrorist, smarty pants. Based on that definition most terrorists are certainly not muslim. Sounds more like the history of global warfare in general to me. Andrew

No, not almost every nazi was German no of course not...everyone knows that almost every Nazi was Australian.....or Jamaican...or .....Swiss...anything but German...... ......and that why we can say for sure that most terrorists are muslim.... The definition of Nazi is pretty clear. There is no definition of terrorist. Some people might say OBL is a terrorists, others might say GWB is a terrorist. Without a definitoon that everybody agrees to we really cant say for sure that most terrorists are muslim. Andrew

Well, the only problem with your thesis is that no courts agree with you. Nuremberg doesn't either, since it has not ruled on the issue, largely because it no longer exists. What you in effect arguing is that war itself is illegal, and that's a fairly ridiculous proposition. That's not a "legal" interpretation; that's your angst. The Nuremberg principles were adopted as the basis for the UN resolutions prohibiting aggression. According to the closest thing we have to international law, the UN, the Iraq war was clearly illegal and clearly a war crime. Andrew

In modern war there is a 100% guarantee of civilian casualties. There is no chance of not killing innocent people. When a war does not even come close to meeting the criteria of self-defense, when a war is brought forth based on manipulations and lies, it is pure aggression. The deaths that happen as a result are by definition were unnecessary, unwarranted, and unjustified. And they were a guarantee. How is this not intentional murder? Well they obviously are not in possession of fighter jets, stealth bombers, and cruise missiles. Would it all of a sudden be more moral if they were? The targets being the same? Seriously, even if we grant that the Twin Towers were just murder, wy would you not consider the victims at the pentagon just inimportant collateral damage? I have read them all and i have come to the conclusion that the only thing that can possibly justify the murder of civilians in war is if the war is carried out with just cause in self defense. It is still murder, but at leas then it is defensible. Once the step has been taken to wage an elective war of aggression, all resulting deaths can be considered nothing but murder. That is the most important lesson learned from WWII, and it is the basis of the UN charter prohibiting wars fo aggression. I find it amazing that nobody ever seems to know this. Too busy glorifying war i suppose, rather than learning from it. But i see you have resulted to name calling (and im the immature one, right!), its unfortuante. For a second i though you at least understood some parts of history. Guess i was wrong. Andrew

Or like hitting the Twin Towers? Do you realize what the death toll might have been had it been hit 10 or so floors lower? The twin towers could also be construed as a military/economic target. And what would you care if the death toll was higher, its just collateral damage to you... they arent real poeple, just 'non-targets'. How is it AQs fault that there were people in the building? Andrew

Does it matter to you that no court in the world agrees with you? That is not true. Both the Nuremburg tribunals and the UN charter recognize international aggression as the highest of all war crimes. Besides, what are you saying? That a war with no justification and a 100% guarantee of civilian casualties is somehow not murder? Yes, this is the glossing over that is so disturbing. It is pure hatred. Andrew It's also not "illegal": Hezbollah, and frequently Hamas, are the criminals according to international law. Do you have no words of condemnation for them, or is your condemnation reserved for white folk? Just so you know, things are not "illegal" just because you 'feel' they should be. The Iraq war is a clear case of international aggression. That is illegal. Im sorry you cant see that. The justices @ Nuremberg considered the crime of international aggression to be the highest of all war crimes because it engendered and made possible all other war crimes. Every death in Iraq as a result of the american invasion is a war crime, and hence, murder. That is a legal interpretation. Yes Hamas and Hezbollah are also criminals by international law, duh? What is your point? Are you suggesting its one or the other? Both sides fo a conflict can be illegal, immoral, and subject to my scorn. Andrew

Kidnapping and using civilians as weapons negates any bullshit about collateral damage. Ahh yes, here it is. The poor white westerners were murdered, they were not collateral damage, even though the target was purely military. I can see your inadvertend jingoism and racism seeping through, even if you can't. AQ specifically picked the pentagon as a strategic target, the only way they could figure to hit it was by sacrificing civilians. Tough luck, i guess. Obviously if AQ just wanted to maximize civilian deaths there were better targets they could have chosen, like a baseball game or something? Andrew

The civilian death toll in lebanon is directly related as to where the terrorists choose to position themselves. Even if that is true my point remains unchanged. Modern war achieves nothing (or worse), and civilians pay the heaviest price. Its a direct result of the cowardice of soldiers on both sides. Modern war is essentially the definition of cowardice. Be it a militant hiding out in a neighborhood, or a fighter pilot dropping bombs from thirty thousand feet. Either way, i have little respect for the militant or uniformed western soldier, I am only concerned about the reality that civilians are murdered in large numbers every day in these conflicts and people like you gloss over it as if it is somehow acceptable when 'your' side is just as guilty. So that makes the pentagon a legitimate target, right in the middle of a civilian center? And any civilians who happen to die from such an attack are just 'collateral damage' to the west i suppose. The media wont go on ad-nauseum about the tragic details of their lives as the nation mourns their loss? You mean i wont see pictures of every victim and know most of their names? They will just be a number i suppose to the media? Right? Andrew

Lets look at it from a different angle. When the hijackers crashed a plane into the pentagon were the resulting deaths murder or collateral damage? The pentagon is obviously a military target, AQ had declared war on the US previous to the attack, and the only way they could hit their target was by slamming a hijacked plane into it. Too bad for the 'non targeted objects' that had to be destroyed in order for this to happen. Right? They are collateral damage, we shouldn't think of them as human beings with families and lives, the are just necessary victims of war. Too bad for them? Except the truth is is was murder just as much as a 1000 pund bomb slamming into a civilian neighborhood in baghdad is. Neither are justified, both are murder. Twerms like collateral damage in the media are kust revolting, and when we dont use it to refer to white westerners being killed under similar circumstances, it is obviously a racist term. Andrew

Yep. Glossing over of murder. Why such hatred M.dancer? Its ok that these people are killed right? You dont know them, you dont have to see them, they are just an object to you. That is pathetic, and really just proves my point about our media. Andrew

Does it matter to you that no court in the world agrees with you? That is not true. Both the Nuremburg tribunals and the UN charter recognize international aggression as the highest of all war crimes. Besides, what are you saying? That a war with no justification and a 100% guarantee of civilian casualties is somehow not murder? Yes, this is the glossing over that is so disturbing. It is pure hatred. Andrew

For the record, civilians deaths totalled over 47 million The fact is we move on to Vietnam where ~3-4 million civilians were killed, and just over 1 million soldiers. Then we have both Iraq wars. The ratio is huge. In Lebanon this past summer again we had another massively lopsided military adventure in which civilians paid the highest price. This is unacceptable, especially when the world is constantly made a worse place by all these actions, nothing is achieved. And you gotta admit, if total war ever was realized again, civilian casualties would be in the billions. Andrew

This is exactly the type of glossing over of murder that i find so distressing. I find it odd you would say i am ignoring reality when you consider the murder of children to be 'damage that is not the target'. If anybody is ignoring reality i would say it was you. Doesn't matter in the slightest when the initial justification for the occupier is completely lacking. That alone makes collateral damage nothing but murder. When the war itself is a crime, than every death in it is murder. WWII death totals: Military 25 million Civilian 37 million. That is a ratio of more civilians dead than soldiers. The ratio has increased dramatically since WWII through Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, etc... Modern war is far more deadly to civilians than any other era of war. Andrew

Why not? That was the purpose behind the collective punishment of Iraqis for 10 years. The people of iraq were held responsible for something entirely out of their control... as a matter of international policy, With Americans they are actually responsible, as they do have a political voice. In principle it would make much more sense to hold the american people responsible for the actions of their leaders, more so than a people living in a police state. Andrew

Racism is global in nature, not exclusive to arabs. Andrew Yeah, thanks for that. We didn't now. Racism in the West means not hiring someone for a job because of his skin colour or religion. No. Racism in the west is poverty, hatred, and abuse. No. Thats religion. Andrew

By not referring to the killing of innocents as murder, and glossing over it as if they are just another object like a building, we are promoting a hate that goes far beyond the infantile propaganda of deliberately racist hate speech. Our casual acceptance of collateral damage breeds hatred of people we do not know and cannot understand, as long as they are not like us, and are way over there in some foreign country, we can pretend they are all evil and that their deaths are of no more concern than that of an actual combatant or terrorist, let alone as you describe as just something that 'is not a target'. (that is quite perverse). You make a claim that collateral damage is decreasing, which is very misleading. The fact is that the civilian/soldier death ratio is on the rise, beginning in the 20 the century. Total numbers are down since WWII, yes, but the ratio is up. Also it is important to note that WWII was total war. There has only been limited war since then. If total war ever came upon us again it is not inconceivable that every civilian on the planet would be killed. We have not improved, we have become infinitely more barbaric. Andrew

Depends what you consider hate. I personally consider the acceptance of terms like collateral damage to refer to civilian casualties in Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan as a form of hate in our daily newspapers. That might sound like im stretching the definition a bit, but i believe it is just as harmful, if not more so, to those effected. Sure in Canadian mainstream media one cant be overtly racist, but when i hear the press talk about collateral damage, as if such a thing would be accepted in one of our own cities or towns, to be a very sinister form of racism, mainly because it is not recognized for what it truly is. Andrew

The roots of christianity. I suppose all religions have ways in which they interpret their own history. Even moderate adherents of islam search for ways in which to lighten up their own obviously violent origins. Andrew

I don't see either of those groups being as radical as the Islamists, we may have one or two or want to kill abortionists, all religions have their crackpots I suppose, but none to my knowledge are beheading people, stoning women to death or even suggesting that they might want to bomb a subway or fly planes into building and kill a few thousand people at a go, and certainly none of them are using kids as human bombs or decoys. Neither do I see them planting bombs in places of worship that belonged to their own faith There is no equivalence. We only have George Bush publicly admitting he talked to God before he went off and murdered thousands of innocent people in Iraq, based on little more than lies and manipulations. If you dont consider that an extreme form of both religion and capitalism, at a systematic and fundamental level, at the same time, im not sure what extremism is. What is a christian president who bombs people from a distance like a coward, throwing all their body parts is every which direction imaginable, justifying it to himself in terms of his religious beliefs, if not a religious fanatic? Given the power and influence that rapture obsessed evangelical Christians possess and their growing numbers, with their published and public desire to see the end of the world, id say they most likely present an equal or greater danger to human progress and perhaps even existence. Andrew

The bible is a very violent book though. Even the ten commandments themselves contain a promotion of violence, as God swears vengeance and punishment on the children of those that don't believe in him, and their childrens's children as well, for a thousand generations. Mohammed came much later and actual details of his life exist. Christ may have been a totally violent person, if he even existed. There is not record of his life beyond the Gospels, which come much later after Jesus supposedly lived. How do you know he even existed, let alone didn't beat his wife? Didnt ever kill a man? Even Ghandi used to go home a pummel his wife... Andrew

Thats not my point, although Christians everywhere are guilty of very horrendous acts. Andrea Yates murdered all her children because God told her to, after all. (yes, she was insane, and i would argue no less so than the fanatical muslim, its just less frequent among christians for various reasons. Im saying that if we are going to attack islam we can't avoid but attack all religious belief on the same ground, i.e., the irrationality of a literal belief in the certainty of ones fate in the 'afterlife'. Absolutely. I will fight just as hard against seeing any religiously motivated law from being promoted here. But if muslims of the fanatical ilk want to kill us, and they might one day get their hands on the weapons to do so, why shouldn't we try to change islam in islamic nation? Doesn't our survival depend on it? Yes. And i think it is necessary to marginalize our own christian and jewish radical in the process. I can't accept the extreme brand of christianity brewing amongst us, just as much as i cannot accept islam promoting their religion amongst us. Andrew

Racism is global in nature, not exclusive to arabs. Andrew

Ok, now that we've established that, please go on to find some contemporary mainstream newspapers in the west that engage that kind of anti-semitism. I'm not asking for a lot here. Just one or two mainstream newspapers that have blatant anti-semitism in them of the sort you're an apologist for in the Arab media. This time I won't be able to help you out I'm afraid, because I don't think there's been a lot of that since around 1945. Where did i claim that the mainstream press engage in anti-semitic racism? (they do engage in other forms of racism though). I said there is anti-semitism in the west, which there is. Also i don't quite agree that arab mainstream press is engaged in anti-semitism. I noted only that there were a couple examples, of which Hezbollah's propaganda seemed to be the culprit. Are they mainstream? I would consider al-jazeera mainstream, and i did not see any anti-semitism in their publication. In fact, the vast majority of your sourced examples were not anti-semitic at all, they were not even anti-zionist, they were simply critical of Israeli policy, which is itself at times overtly racist. Also, your snipping of the content of my post was very dishonest. Andrew

Kuwait TimesMy question is broader. Has Christianity made our world more civilized? I think so. Without Christianity, our world today would be nastier. I think there is no doubt that christianity taught poeple that wilderness/indigeneous was evil, and that domesticated apes in the city were good. This is precisely how we justify the slaughter of native peoples and the theft of their lands - with a deep seeded belief if their inherent badness (or lack of christianity). Civilization is from the beginning based on theft and murder. It is nothing to be proud of, nor is Christianity. Andrew