The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by BigAl:

Dave Bell @ 43

You made me go look it up :)

"Acts of sabotage are very important. It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and in-discriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution."
Che Guevera, On Guerrila Warfare

When all's said and done his isn't the last word but most folks who ever had any skin in the game, that is, actually fought (and in his case died) agree with the above sentiment.

And no it's by no means easy and its always blurred so don't get me wrong. When you take off the uniform things get confusing (really confusing). Algeria, Rhodesia, we could write ourselves a long list.

What I was after initially was this:

An act of 'terrorism' has boundaries, probably a lot sharper than anything that one might consider guerilla. And we can do some good if we remember that terrorizing someone isn't always a matter of 'their crazies' running around throwing bombs or crashing airplanes. That reasonable men can conclude that sometimes its also attributable to 'our crazies' sending very sophisticated weapons of war into places on very thin pretexts. Seen from that end of the telescope I think its a lot easier to ferret out the propaganda (like the Dix Six, or as someone above suggested the Six Dicks) from real and present dangers.

There's no doubt there's some dangerous people out there willing to do some really scary things. And we should be wary and vigilent. And we should take care in really knowing what constitutes dangerous, cause a lot of those dangerous people willing to do some dangerous things wear suits, travel in motorcades and work in downtown Washington DC.

Bruce @ 39
Alan @ 32
Erik @ 7

Thinking back and trying to summon up what Che Guerverra would have said in 'On Guerilla Warfare' I confess the gray hair is real and I can summon no direct quotes. But it seems to me back there in the mist of youth that:

1. By inference such warfare is warfare against occupation, i.e. it is an indigenous population taking on an occupier through popular uprising. The two folks that I can think of off hand (Vo Nguyen Giap and Gueverra) I think would both start from that premise.

So . . . Not that I think we should be satisifed with but two choices, in that case, attacking Fort Dix would not qualify as a guerilla engagement (frankly I would be more apt to consider it one of those 'very bad ideas' and leave it at that).

But is it terrorism?

Let's try something slightly different. Let's take a couple things that we know of and let's imagine that we interrupted each in the planning stage. Let's take say: The Twin Towers, the USS Cole and let's place them (as planned acts) against Fort Dix.

2. The guerilla warriors cited above went to great lengths to put civilians and targets containing large civilian populations out of bounds. Remember, your objective was to get folks on your side, to bring people to your arms. Now that, it seems to me heads you in the right direction.

The Twin Towers is a terrorist attack (with certainty). It couldn't possibly be considered a guerilla operation.
Fort Dix is probably not a terrorist attack (with some ambivalence). Like it or not, as Eric @ 7 points out Fort Dix is after all a military base full of what? Full of war fighters.
The USS Cole is not a terrorist attack (with certainty). A warship that contains nothing but military, coming into port is a legitimate military target. No?

But then you get stuck.

It was Khadafi (not someone I find myself referring to often) who pointed out that the USS Nimitz off the shores of Tripoli represents the biggest terrorist threat he knew of. And given his experience with F-111's coming out of the night, attacking clearly civilian targets, with no formal declaration of war, simply a President's assertion that this represented retaliation, we would be forced to at least consider putting such an act in the terrorist category. And I don't know about you, but I find that more than a little unsettling.

At the bottom of the well I think it should probably work something like this. Terrorism is an act:

* Which is clearly random in nature;
* That targets almost exculsively civilian non-combatants who are demonstrably engaged in the peaceful pursuit of their ordinary everyday lives;
* By people who have communicated their intent prior to such an act;
* With weapons that include either unusual features or incredible fire power or both.

Is what we need. It's really important for me to say that I intend to hurt you, and to make it clear that I intend to act randomly that puts the 'T' in terror. And it is also critical that I do it in a way that gets your attention (a plane run into a sky scraper). At which point:

Twin Towers (still terrorist)
Fort Dix (just plain stupid, but more effectively seen as criminal behavior and more likely therefore to allow for considerations of entrapment)
USS Cole (still not).

But unfortunately I'd also have to admit: Khadafi while not exactly right, most certainly had an argument.

Graham, Patrick, Lee and Albatross (all)

REally key point (made by one of you and I can't remember which, sorry).

At the bottom of the slope is the funeral pyre on which we heap books, personal liberty . . . Like anything, if I outlaw you today then . . .

So sure, I, just like everybody else, get a little ticked off (okay more than a little) by Coulter & Company. And there's far more out there that's totally vile because its anonymous. But I still maintain that its far better to fight for their right to say whatever they want, where ever they want, when ever they want, and most importantly HOW ever they want. Yes I've been offended (quite often) reading some of this trash. But being offended is unfortunately one of the prices paid. It's not free, in fact, it ain't even cheap! this thing we call freedom.

Beyond shouting "Fire!" in the crowded theatre, the debate needs to take place absent any restraints.

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