Is there any set of circumstances preceeding 9/11 that would cause you to feel that they were justified in their actions?

Note: Not asking if 9/11 was justified, but rather could it have been if certain things had occured before.

Yes. I think events in Northern Ireland proved it. We're almost where we want to be with that situation and had those guys never took the fight to the British at home, we'd still be seeing all the gruesome shit the British army got up to in NI happening today. I don't support terrorism in any shape but sometimes you have to fight back. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.

'fighting back' and the wanton slaughter of innocent people, often in the case of the IRA including young children, are two completely different things.

I don't believe terrorists are interested in justice or freedom or whatever noble causes exist as justification for 'fighting back' against tyranny. I think terrorists are interested in vengeance, power, and malice towards anything that can be perceived as 'the other'.
And a lot of terrorist activity is carried out under the guise of being noble, while the ultimate goal (and usually undisclosed to followers of a terrorist group) is profit or incitement of anarchy.

I also don't think the terrorist activities of what's now been generations of people in NI has been in any way beneficial to the society.

Seeing as a friend of mine lost his leg in the IRA Canary Wharf bomb in London, I'll have to disagree with you there. To me there's a great deal of difference between liberating your homeland and indiscriminately trying to murder innocent civilians.

difference between Resistance and Terrorism:
terrorists target indiscriminately, including civilians. (and yes, many acts of war are also terrorist, like bombing cities).

So NO, there's never a justification for terrorism.

Attacking military or maybe even governmental targets on the other hand can be 'justified' (that is if you believe that violence resolves anything).

So it's the target that makes it terrorism?

I've become more strongly of the opinion that the word terrorism should just be done away with, so I don't know how to answer this question.

Yeah, I think it's more the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians.

This thread is kind of an exercise in getting to the root of just what it means to people. I know we've done this before and it usually gets ugly, but hey.

Malice brought up the conflict I think:

This leads to the question "fighting back how and against whom?"

Also, for those who answered no, do the reasons really not matter at all? What if the US slaughtered citizens of their homeland, or committed other atrocities against them as a people? Are they wrong if they seek revenge and they kill innocents on the other side just as their own innocents were killed? Is there any kind of way to rationalize it by "collateral damage" or "ends justify the means" sorts of arguments?

that's a much too simplified question in this context, and I think you know that.
But whatever-
No- target isn't what makes terrorism- ultimately intent is what makes terrorism and how you as a person decide to carry out your intentions.

When you decide your beliefs, desires, and singular perspective out weigh the beliefs, desires, and wide range of perspectives of the rest of society, and then decide to express your beliefs, desires and singular perspective by killing/causing destruction and chaos in order to impose your beliefs, desires, and perspective on the society, you are a terrorist.

Did you ever watch the West Wing? They did an episode on terrorism where they compare Extremist/Fundamentalist Islamic groups to the KKK.

made a lot of sense.

That sounds good.
Fair enough. Is it possible for a terrorist to have cause enough to be justified in killing innocent people. On the flip side of that, is a government ever justified in killing innocent people in retaliation for an attack suffered by its' people?

No. Revenge for The Blitz certainly didn't justify us killing between 25-40,000 civilians in Dresden.

That's because there will never be a consensus on what it means to people. Like dime said, it's the terrorism/freedom fighter dichotomy, even if it's an overused cliche.

What I think you're asking (correct me if I'm wrong) is if advocating/achieving political change by violent means is ever justifiable. I can't ever think of a non-self-defense scenario where the killing of innocents would be acceptable. Civil disobedience is a different story altogether.

In my opinion, no. Terrorism as a method for bringing about anything beneficial is ludicrous. You don't go around beating the hell out of women in order to stop violence against women, do you?
Do you think PETA acts in a terrorist manner when they throw blood on people wearing fur, or whatever other extreme lengths they go to in order to supposedly stop people from hurting animals? I do. The cause, in their eyes, is a righteous one, so they place no boundaries on the lengths they will go to in order to further that cause. That's terrorism and fits my above statement about putting your beliefs, desires and singular perspectives above anyone else's.



Again, in my opinion, no.
This doesn't mean I didn't want to see Osama Bin Laden hung by the balls and slit down the middle after the destruction of the World Trade Center- but see, that's about veangeance and retribution, not about justice.
Humans have the ability to distinguish between their more base instincts/dark desires and loftier ideals of liberation, personal freedom, social welfare, what have you- however the loftier ideals are almost always invoked by governments as reasons for submitting to our darker desires. Does that seem right to you? It doesn't to me. The problem is there are times when a government must take actions against evil that are just as evil. Witness WWII. Think the actions of the USA were justified against Germany and Japan?
On a personal level, they probably weren't. there was nothing that could justify killing thousands of Japanese cilivilians and hurting another generation of them by dropping the bomb (twice) yet the government believed had they not done it, millions more would have died. (Justified? Probably not, necessary? Probably so...)
On a national level though, and a global level, they were necessary.
I'm not a Japanese person in Hiroshima in the 40s, dying of radiation poisoning, so I don't have the same perspective.

This and the fact that it's about interpretation and point of view. Ordinary NI citizens were treated worse than animals, most conventions and understandings of fair treatment and human rights went out the window consistently and over an interminably long time.

The fight back against military targets only made this treatment worse so eventually a decision was made to hit the British where it hurts, not their people, though collaterral damage and casualities is always part of it, but in their pocket. The Canary Wharf bomb cost around £500 to make and let off. It cost the British around a billion. The IRA could drop one of those every few weeks consistently so the British governments hand was definitely forced and as a result they had to level the playing field in NI politically and in terms of rights, and basically back away from it as much as possible, which is where we are now.

Was it worth it? Depends where you stand. There was a lot of wrong done on both sides but if we're gonna stand looking back forever, playing the blame game, we'll get nowhere. Got to look at where we are and where we can go from here and try make it upwards and to better days. Sometimes the fight is right.

Actually it was explaining to kids the KKK are to Christians what hardcore Islamic fundamentalists are to Islam. They say they're the same thing but they're not at all in fact they're sometimes opposite from their beliefs. That was a good episode.

way to get my point, dj...

And it WAS comparing the KKK to Islamic Extremists. It was a valid comparison of the two groups regardless of the point of the exercise within the context of the episode.
Pay attention, huh?

k. It wasn't at all, you need to rewatch the episode but lets not derail the thread.