War and Law

[Narwan]

War and terrorism are not absolutes. They are what their defenitions say they are. Different people and different nations use different ones at different times (both throughout the years aswel as at one single point in time). Both Begin and Mandela were generally considered to be terrorists at one point in their 'career'. For some they still are. For others they always were freedom fighters.

Same with terrorism in general. It is one thing to define it as an act aimed at civilians (to kill, maim or otherwise hurt them), it's another to follow that through to its logical conclusion. That conclusion being that a roadside bomb or suicide bomb aimed at the militairy (which does not excluse the chance of non-militairy casualties) is NOT an act of terrorism while (just to name two examples) the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokio were acts of terrorism. (In fact german Luftwaffe officers were convicted in Neurenberg for similar bombings which had far fewer casualties).

It is one thing to have a defenition, it's another to apply it consistently. The west does consistently shy away from applying these standards to their own acts. During the air campaign against Serbia (allegedly because of Kosovo) NATO bombed the Serbian television studio's. Deliberately. Because they were considered to be airing pro-serbian propaganda and hence a valid target. That was a blatant act of terrorism, except that we never really called it that. Not to mention that that same act also meant that Serbia would be in its right to bomb CNN (it's reporting was, along with other western networks, as biased as the serbian reports were). Imagine what would have happened if they had actually done that.

The point being that the rules and defenitions are set up for a reason, to benefit those who made them. Our current rules governing warfare are derived from the wishes and desires from imperialistic western powers who wanted to minimise the damage they would do to each other while fighting wars agianst each other while not inhibiting their affairs against other nations (the ones they ruled as colonies and dependencies primairily). This thinking is in my opinion still very prevalent in the way we view the world and acts of violence within it.