Originally posted by Sandwich
If by "traditional warfare" you mean military targets, then yes.
Originally posted by Stryke 9
"Exactly.
Terrorism is, essentially, any militant act by an organized political faction outside the bounds of traditional warfare, meant expressly to demoralize the enemy population. There you go. "
i agree and disacgree with stryke in a way.
funny as how terrorism has so many defenitions and every has there own version of these defenitions. if u look in a dictionary, terrorism is defined as per-say "tomato" where as in a political science meaning or law enforcement, it means "ketchup". in other words same thing or same "things that make it what it is", but 2 diffrent ways its described, but in the end its still the same concept.
a good book i recomend is the "Critical Views of September 11" By: Eric Hershberg and Kevin W. Moore. it has contemporary essays that i can only describe as "wow". i think in reality sandwich has a better "view" of terrorism and politics simply cause of his location and military experience. others are basing there knowledge on what they read or hear. so its good to have "an insider" out there. cause frankly i'd believe sandwich before id believe cnn.
if anyone checks out the book, they will discover that terrorism, sadly no matter how its sugar coated, is performed by anyone. any-government; thus is political terrorism. it would logicaly explain why they WTC and pentagon (although became obvious for some later) that why they were targets and not "Projects full of thousands of families".
if the gov keeps saying, there out to kill as many americans as they can, then (although the WTC coincidently can contain thousands of lives a day), only "Government" targets were hit? The WTC wasnt a privately owned office complex. the WTC itself was 70% government, even pataki had his albany offices there too. he ran his own state from there most of his last term. it just so happens that the WTC was a public/government area (The port authority is a co-owned government department by NJ/NY and has run the WTC since its construction had begun.) and thats why most casulties were civilian.
the pentagon is obviously military. so it needs no explanation.
and the suposet plane that was heaidng towards washington, the whitehouse is clearly government so thats self explanitory.
as much as our own gov says that there out to kill as many americans as they can, if this was the case, then why didnt they fly the planes into say the trump tower where there around it thousands of families live? or why not into hosing developments or projects where they could kill hundreds of families in a close area? etc etc etc. the government says "al qadea" was to kill as many people as they can, where as if u watch them damn videos of laden etc, the translations there and by the media state there after the infidels, as hard as that is to believe, there refering to the government themselves. Bush's (senior and current) government. Clinton only delt with the bombing of the USS Cole so what then? (the ethics of international Political terrorism).
as far as people are concerned, were only getting hit @ "specific" targets just like our "smart weaponry" agiasnt them, but they are just slopy and ended up killing 3000 -/+ civilians and FDNY- law enforcment.
so in the terms of conventional warfare, the united states has no enemies that threaten its soveriegnty. nation states sorta ceased to be enemies (major nations atleast). only nations still *****in (excuse the language) is always the left overs of the cold war, etc., n. korea/s. korea, rebels in india, isreal and palastine (no state yet officially), iran, iraq etc. so one can argue, like now, why hit iraq? cause they threaten us? nope, they threaten our so-called intrests... now we trying to get oil in africa. to me this whole **** sounds like bush is trying to be like franklin roosevelt when he sent naval ships to south america back in the 1900's to open shipping lanes up down there and in panama.