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From: mokhtar@ubc-vision.UUCP (Farzin Mokhtarian)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Terrorism, Inc. (Who is moral?)
Message-ID: <1069@ubc-vision.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 00:59:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-visi.1069
Posted: Fri Oct 18 00:59:14 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Oct-85 03:30:39 EDT
Organization: UBC Computational Vision Lab, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 46

Subject: Re: Terrorism, Inc. (Who is moral?)

>> ...I do not approve of murder of innocent civilians by an
>> individual or a group of people but I do not disapprove of it any more
>> than I disapprove of the same act by a government...

> Same here.  But I dispprove of it more when innocent civilians are targeted
> than when they are killed due to targeting combatants (though if the 
> attackers have no regard for the number of incidental civilian deaths, then
> the difference becomes quite small).  In the "total war" concept, civilians
> are the targets; but often governments try to avoid killing civilians, and
> will only risk killing innocents incidentally when doing so will avoid the
> deaths of even more innocents (usually its own people).
> --Paul V Torek						torek@umich

First, the total war concept. If civilians become targets then the government
which is targetting them is no longer trying to avoid killing them. To the
contrary, it *is* trying to kill them. Furthermore, "combatants" can be
interpreted to include civilians too since they support their army against
the opposing army.
  
Second, your explanation does not make it easier to see the distinction between
terrorists and more conventional armies. Explanation:
  
I believe you are telling me that (at times of war) governments don't really
want to hurt civilians but sometimes find it necessary to do that in order 
to achieve a military or political goal that they happen to believe in (and
hopefully the rest of the population believes in). Fine. If I were a member
of a terrorist group, I could find very close parallels between this
argument and my motives, such as the following: 
  
"If my group takes hostages, the intention is not
 to hurt them but to achieve a political goal we happen to believe in. If
 some hostages are killed, they are unfortunate victims of our war. They
 were not killed because we take pleasure in killing. You can not convince
 me not to do it because your government does it when it is found to be
 necessary. And that's how I saw it; necessary. Unpleasant but necessary."
  
This does NOT imply that I approve of "terrorists". Indeed, I disapprove
of it in all of its forms.
  
  Farzin Mokhtarian
    
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