On 01/16/04 at 09:12 PM, Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de said:
isn't terrorism defined by the very word it is based on - terror? Because that's what a terrorist does. He doesn't destroy an important military target or kill an important person - that's what military and assassins are for. A terrorist's goal is, in the end, to create _terror_.
What makes it complicated is that there are also things like attacks on civil infrastructure which play into the equation. In Colombia for example the FARC regularly targets things like power lines. Strictly speaking, these are probably more accurately classed as acts of sabotage; they may be more tiresome than terrifying. But attacks on things like wells, and water purification and sewage treatment plants can condemn tens or hundreds of thousands of people to slow death from diseases like cholera. Are these acts of terror? Perhaps not. But people tend to label them as such. Are they morally equivalent? Good question. Aside from the number direct victims, crashing planes into buildings certainly has a terrible psychological impact on vast numbers of people, but destroying the civil infrastucture of a country can retard economic growth for years if not generations.
V.