> difference between terrorists and freedom fighters is a matter of which side of the fence
Oft repeated but untrue. Terrorism, empirically, doesn’t work. Non-violent protest, and armed insurrection (aimed at the state, not its population) do. Sometimes freedom fighters can benefit from terrorism. But they are distinct strategies with separate targets.
And freedom fighters are supposed to actually care about "freedom" while terrorists generally do not. I fail to see what great advancements in freedom for anyone involved have come out of the terror attacks performed over the past 25 years.
25 years? Why stop there? How about the US terror attacks on other countries civilians since at least the 1960s?
When did USA bomb a civilian house that wasn't a part of a larger operation? Terrorist attacks only target civilians, I have never seen such an attack by USA. They always try to target military or leaders.
The last time I know USA did a terror attack was japan in ww2, but everyone did terror bombing during that war, and the first world stopped doing terror bombings since then. If USA still ran that doctrine you would have Tehran and the rest of major Iranian cities leveled to the ground now, that is what it looks like when the strongest military in the world perform terror attacks.
If you ignore our proxies. Or are Israel's attacks destroying the hospitals and apartment buildings in Gaza and Lebanon "part of a larger operation"?
I guess it's okay we napalmed Vietnam and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians because it was "part of a larger operation"?
American Exceptionalism is a disease.
Yeah... what about those?
How many retaliatory terror attacks on americans performed by citizen of those countries?
What point are you trying to make? US bad? Anything more thoughtful to offer?
The US are an empire and they have behaved as an empire over the last 70 years (bombing, overthrowing governments, supporting dictators). By historical standard, they have proved less coercive than empires of proportionally comparable reach. Think of the Mongols, the Assyrians, the Japanese...
Islamists fight to be the oppressors, not to help the oppressed.
> Islamists fight to be the oppressors
Eh, the history of Islamism comes out of rebelling against secular dictators who had a habit of imprisoning their thought leaders.
or put simply, just rebelling against any attempt at modernising muslim societies. Anwar Sadat comes to mind.
The Taliban's terrorism very much did work.
Not really. The Taliban’s attacks on civilians didn’t help their cause. They found success when they started acting as a more-competent government than our fucks in Kabul. If we want to debate whether the Taliban under occupation had any success with its terrorist tactics, I guess I’d concede that one man’s terrorist is another’s guerrilla fighter. But even then, guerilla tactics rely on a sympathetic local population. So a guerrilla team bombing civilians is undermining its own cause.
I'm not exactly an expert on Afghan politics and the reason for the failure of the western backed government are surely multifaceted, but don't you think that destabilizing the country through terror attacks played a role in the sustained weakness of the government as well as the withdrawal of the West?
Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters, in order to delegitimize them. Basically this is such a common tactic that it is unsurprising that the two are sometimes conflated.
> Terrorist is often a term used to describe freedom fighters
Do you have an historical example?
Basically all of history. Terrorist is a term people use for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change. Freedom fighter is a term used for people who use violence and intimidation to attempt to cause political change that you are sympathetic to.
Both words have identical meanings, the only difference is if you happen to agree with the people commiting the violent acts or not.
No, not at all. Methods and targets/victims also matter. Using violence to achieve specific military objectives or as a response to violence is not the same as indiscriminate murder and terrorism.
> as a response to violence
Literally every terrorist group ever claims they are responding to some sort of violence or oppression.
So what? It what they are actually doing that matters.
Terrorism very much does work. The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded (in one case formally, in the other almost) because they weren't needed anymore. Taliban also got the US out from Afghanistan pretty handily with mostly terrorism.
> The Basque and the Northern Irish terrorists / freedom fighters have gotten a so many of their demands for autonomy met that they disbanded
That’s certainly not how it works.
They just became highly unpopular amongst the populations they were trying to liberate (which generally preferred more peaceful solutions) and lost their support base and had to disband.
The Taliban absolutely did not terrorism the US out of Afghanistan haha
When the population was complaining that they had to go to the Taliban for help because the Americans could do nothing to help them when the local military was corrupt and abused the people.
Why do you think they left, then?
Because it was expensive and the local population did not care for the Kabul government we were protecting. It is hard to prop an unpopular government in a country of 40 million.
The US military was averaging only 12 deaths in the years before withdraw.
Most of what the taliban was doing is closer to asymmetric warfare than terrorism.