Mav wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Well, what /was/ the purpose? Given the NY attacks, terror is likely. As for civilian deaths, remember the infamous Gulf War "collateral damage". Was that a terrorist attack by the United States armed forces?
No for three reasons: 1) the intent was not to terrorize the civilian population, 2) very few people call it that, and 3) by definition governments cannot commit terrorism.
1) Yes! So one cannot argue that /because/ there were civilian deaths, the act was terrorism rather than warfare. One must look at the /intent/: an intent to terrorise. Which is what I did; that was my only point there.
2) This is also a good point. But as far as articles /titles/ go, we need to look at this more thoroughly. If more people refer to the terrorist attacks on that day as "the September 11 attack(s)" than "the September 11 terrorist attack(s)" (as one would expect), then the common-name naming convention suggests that we prefer the former. /If/ they called it, say, "the September 11 terrorism", then [[September 11 terrorism]] would be a reasonable title, despite its rather blatant POV content. But they don't.
3) That is false. (Well, IMO, it's clearly false. Our article [[Terrorism]] should be NPOV about this.) Source: OED ^_^.
Viajero wrote:
On the Talk page of [[King David Hotel bombing]] Zero wrote something awhile back to the effect that the word "terrorist" should be banned from every article except [[Terrorism]]. I am inclined to agree with him.
This is far too extreme (as Viajero later admitted). But there /is/ a lesson in Zero0000's suggestion, all the same. Clichéd as this is, terrorism often /is/ in the eye of the beholder. We shouldn't leap to calling people terrorists when it's not necessary. OTOH, we should definitely cover, by the usual NPOV methods, accusations that somebody is a terrorist. Outside of such coverage, however, it'll be much more useful just to say what somebody did. Readers can decide if that's terrorism or not.
-- Toby