The official all things terrorism thread

Hmmm. I must admit I was confused before when I answered you saying that I don't use this forum all that much and Comm turned that into me accusing you and him of not working

 

Stay confused bro, you've more chance of a 100 pager if you leave this art work to me.

 

Comm's either fooked off to hoy some sausages or he's beating the fook out of his pillow.

 

My take, the soldiers were never terrorists in NI, they were their to try and keep the peace.

Just to be straight, I think the IRA could have been classed as freedom fighters 100+ years ago quite legitimately but were too late in the fight and went after the wrong targets (except maybe when they tried to delete the government in Brighton).

One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter but the timing and targets has to be right, without that you are just a bastard murderer of innocent people.

 

IGNORING the stuff in Northern Ireland, I do believe armed forces can be terrorists.

Examples: The SS in concentration camps in WW2, some U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, some Israeli forces in occupied Palestinian territory, the Indian Army in Kashmir, The Myanmar massacres, the massacres in Srebrenica. It may be argued that in some of these cases they were following orders (and that means their leaders are also terrorists) but I do believe the defence of "following orders" is no defence at all.

 

I'm honestly not bothered Cheers anyways, though

 

Anyway im off to bed. If you see Comm tell him no hard feelings, i was just following orders

 

I couldn't disagree more, fella. You are trained to follow orders and follow orders, you must.

 

So you don't think terrorists follow orders? ... 9/11 was meticulously planned and perfectly executed in terms of its' objectives ... the foot soldiers that died flying the planes were mere collateral damage to those pulling the strings....

 

Terrorist ^^^

 

Which is exactly why the new Bloody Sunday enquiry is justified

 

Was he given an order to fire at the crowd? Soldiers can also use their own judgement if they're in a dangerous situation and they don't have time to pass communications.

 

We'll agree to disagree, but if you're ordered to target innocent civilians then what's the difference? You can go ahead and follow them, but then you have to consider yourself a terrorist imo.

 

Correct, you have no idea of what intel those orders came from so must take it as vital.

 

Yes I'm not disagreeing with those sorts of orders. It's the ones where you knowingly target just civilians. The examples I gave were purposely chosen because that's all they did. There was no military objective.

 

It's not up to the soldier to question the order that is giving to him from his superiors. He'd be disciplined for that and potentially putting his own safety and that of his colleagues, in danger. If every soldier started questioning and disobeying orders, it wouldn't be much of an army. It would be ill disciplined and that's a recipe for disaster.

 

How do you know there's no military objective. They could be armed men amongst those civilians that your superiors have intel on. A soldier should never question an order.

 

I know what you are saying but with the bloody sunday incident intel says there are IRA in the crowd, the crowd suddenly start chucking bottles and bricks at you, do you wait until the first shot hits you or defend yourself?
Remember you don't know who the IRA members are in the crowd, all you see is who is being most threatening or coming towards you.

 

No you're not getting me Saf, I'm not applying a blanket approach. Read the examples I've given and my response to Diego above. I'm not questioning orders where civilian loss of life may be a calculated but unfortunate casualty of an overall military aim to target enemy combatants. I'm talking about soldiers soley targeting civilians for no other reason but to harm or exterminate them. Look again at those examples.