http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/347893-are-certain-terrorists-more-equal-than-others/page-4

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/10319510/Martin-McGuinness-Warrington-boys-death-shameful.html

There you go Folly, as requested, sorry about the delay

Can you not revive an Archived thread?

Thanks Mossy. Apparently not....!

Terrorism.....well there's an uncontroversial subject.

Forget for a moment whether or not folk such as Yitzhak Rabin, OBL, Martin McGuinness, Nelson Mandela, 'Bomber" Harris, Assad (father & son), Josef Stalin, Mladic etc, etc are terrorists or not.

The main controversy revolves around what exactly is "terrorism" and thus what defines a "terrorist". Currently there is no agreed legal or academic definition of these often loaded and commonly perjorative terms.

Similarly, while terrorism was originally used to refer to the acts of a government against its own people (see Edmund Burke (now there's a very fine Irishman and demi-god of classical liberalism) and his comments re the French Jacobins), more recently terrorism is more commonly used to refer to acts by non-state entities engaged in asymmetric conflict against a government or governments.

Violent acts designed to gain publicity, to strike at symbolic targets (be it the WTC, 10 Downing St or the King David Hotel), to stifle collaboration or cooperation with the authorities, to provoke an excessive reaction and thus gain support, these are all components of what is termed "terrorism" and are normally designed to achieve political objectives, but IMHO the key part of the word is the first 6 six letters, T E R R O R.

Where the intention is predominantly designed to invoke a sense of profound terror, and more importantly said terror is achieved without any regard for the taking of civilian lives (and sometimes purely involves the taking of such lives), that to me is the essence of terrorism. Whilst striking terror into one's enemies is a key objective of all military engagements, the Geneva Conventions, Nuremburg Principles etc lay down quite clearly what constitutes a war crime, particularly in relation to non-combatants. Thus state forces that exceed these conventions have not committed terrorism but a war crime.

Thus examples such as Anuradhapura 1985, Kingsmill 1976, World Trade Center 2001 are classic examples of such a definition of terrorist acts. Incidents such as Srebrenica, Deir Yassin, My Lai would constitute war crimes.

In terms of the individuals earlier listed Rabin, Mandela, McGuinness and OBL could be regarded as terrorists or at best members of terrorist organizations, while Stalin, Harris, Assads & Mladic might have had/might have/are having a tough time fighting a charge of war crimes or crimes against humanity at the ICJ or its equivalent. But of course then there's the whole knotty issue of "Victor's Justice".......

Folly, that is a good post, and needs greater time to respond in full, so I will break it down in bite sizes, so I am not ignoring any particular points.