Boston Marathon: Is terrorism ever justified?

[Beef Oven]

Answer your question PLEASE ?

I don't think we should have a statue NO

and terrorist acts are wrong regardless of who is the perpetrator
(shooting innocent people on the tube, blowing up bandsmen etc etc )

You're second sentence actually makes more sense read backwards!!?

Are you against the statue, as I am, or not?

[MrGongGong]

You're second sentence actually makes more sense read backwards!!?

Are you against the statue, as I am, or not?

I'm against a statue
(but not against retrograde processes in music ............)

the NO should have been at the front

[Beef Oven]

I'm against a statue
(but not against retrograde processes in music ............)

the NO should have been at the front

Good, that's been cleared up.

So you think the NO only goes at the front? Retrograde processes in music, but never palindromes?

And so there can be no doubt, I feel that terrorism is never justified, whoever the perpetrater.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

mr gonggong and beef oven i see you two are at it again before the blood on the pavement has dried .... your banter might be tolerable in the right context, but surely not in a thread concerning such tragic and current circumstances ... please desist here

[Beef Oven]

Please close the thread calum. My OP was a very simple question and it's been answered - we all feel that terrorism is never justifiable. There's nothing more to say.

[Mr Pee]

mr gonggong and beef oven i see you two are at it again before the blood on the pavement has dried .... your banter might be tolerable in the right context, but surely not in a thread concerning such tragic and current circumstances ... please desist here

:ok::sadface:

[Beef Oven]

:ok::sadface:

See post #35 Pee.

And if your respect for the Boston victims was bigger than your urge to have a little pop, you wouldn't have posted.

[Richard Barrett]

I think there is more to discuss here though. The "conclusion" that terrorism is never justified leads on to the question of what is to be done about the various forms of state terrorism. While at this moment it isn't clear what the motivation behind the Boston bombing was, if we look at the Iraq bombing we see the protracted and gruesome working-out of the consequences of that country being invaded in 2003. Was that terrorism? Did it involve (remember this is the US Army's own working definition) ""the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear"?

The answer I think would have to be to a certain extent yes, thinking of Fallujah for example. It must be clear by now that the entire invasion involved "goals that are political... in nature" since none of the invading nations was under threat from Iraq, which moreover they had ground down over a period of twelve years through crippling and lethal sanctions. Who are the "savages" in this case? Bush and Blair? the military commanders who gave orders based on their strategy? the soldiers and "contractors" who carried them out? the people who voted for Bush and Blair?

This is why the "savages" argument won't work. I think any act of terrorism, including the Boston Marathon one, should cause us to look further and see that if causes and effects in society are inextricably interconnected that also applies to the "lone terrorist" who (if such turns out to be the perpetrator) will be characterised as cut off from society, mentally dysfunctional, without any implications for society at large. The victims of terrorism (all of them, not just inhabitants of the state of Massachusetts) are most justly respected by probing as deeply as possible into causes, not just dismissing perpetrators as subhuman and going back to business as usual.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i neither wish nor am able to close this thread .... i am simply asking as a fellow boredee for some care in what is posted and in particular that we all avoid "ding dong"

i share Richard Barrett's view that the topic is far from exhausted; i would suggest that we desist from the term 'savage' as a description of the people who commit violence ... presumably intended to refer to indigenous hunter gatherer peoples, or the tribes and clans that existed in the pre-empire period, the barbarity of the imperial forces far outweighed any 'savage' violence - shooting the natives in Tasmania for sport for example ...

Graebner, who wrote that excellent tome Debt:The first five thousand years; also gave a lecture commenting on how violence underpins bureaucracy ... start arguoing persistently in a welfare centre and see when the tasers come out ....

it would appear from latest reports that the bombs in Boston were packed with ball bearings and have amputated several victims ... so a deliberate effort to wound, maim, and murder any person in the vicinity then ...

[Mr Pee]

See post #35 Pee.

And if your respect for the Boston victims was bigger than your urge to have a little pop, you wouldn't have posted.

Oh dear. I was not having a little pop. I was simply agreeing with AKA's comment. I find it extremely distasteful that you are questioning my respect for the victims of yesterday's atrocity; on the contrary, I agree with AKA that getting into a bad tempered exchange so soon after the event shows the very lack of respect of which you accused me. :sadface:

I was rather hoping that some lessons may have been learned after the recent Thatcher thread debacle.

I shan't be making any further contributions to this.

[eighthobstruction]

I agree with the thrust of #38RB & #39CdaJ.....choosing one word [savage] to describe such horrors is the same as using the other favourite 'evil'....just like choosing the single word 'terrorism' should be avoided too....more clarity and investigation is needed....if I was in Palestine and certain other world 'trouble spots' (inadequate abreviation), my view of my relationship to violence might be very different than the one I have in North Yorkshire....

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I can't see how terrorism, killing or maiming innocent people, can ever be justified. However, non-violent civil disobedience is a different issue, which can be acceptable in some circumstances.

[eighthobstruction]

maiming of innocent people is in my mind absolutely never justified....

[ahinton]

I think there is more to discuss here though. The "conclusion" that terrorism is never justified leads on to the question of what is to be done about the various forms of state terrorism. While at this moment it isn't clear what the motivation behind the Boston bombing was, if we look at the Iraq bombing we see the protracted and gruesome working-out of the consequences of that country being invaded in 2003. Was that terrorism? Did it involve (remember this is the US Army's own working definition) ""the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear"?

The answer I think would have to be to a certain extent yes, thinking of Fallujah for example. It must be clear by now that the entire invasion involved "goals that are political... in nature" since none of the invading nations was under threat from Iraq, which moreover they had ground down over a period of twelve years through crippling and lethal sanctions. Who are the "savages" in this case? Bush and Blair? the military commanders who gave orders based on their strategy? the soldiers and "contractors" who carried them out? the people who voted for Bush and Blair?

This is why the "savages" argument won't work. I think any act of terrorism, including the Boston Marathon one, should cause us to look further and see that if causes and effects in society are inextricably interconnected that also applies to the "lone terrorist" who (if such turns out to be the perpetrator) will be characterised as cut off from society, mentally dysfunctional, without any implications for society at large. The victims of terrorism (all of them, not just inhabitants of the state of Massachusetts) are most justly respected by probing as deeply as possible into causes, not just dismissing perpetrators as subhuman and going back to business as usual.

There's a lot to think about and broadly agree with here. The question that your reference to Iraq (and you could as easily also have cited Afghanistan, I think) is when does the line between "terrorism" and "war" get crossed? Would you say that it becomes war when the acts of aggression become frequent and sustained and/or when the aggressor nation's government orders and carries out physically invasion of the victim nation? I don't wish to dilute the arguments here, still less to undermine what we might all agree is meant by acts of terrorism, but whilst it seems realistic to charge Bush and Blair, for example, with acts of terrorism, one could as easily charge them with warmongering against nations which have not invaded theirs. The argument almost invariably advanced by such people is that the victim nation poses a threat to national security - and it almost always turns out to be a questionable - i.e. suspect - argument.

[eighthobstruction]

Iraq is a very good example....over ten years there has been Baath Party Death Squads....Invasion....War....Peace keeping....Insurrection ....Terrorism against invader and indigenous pop', inter factional war/terrorism, and terrorism Sunni on Shia all in 10years....