Who, Saddam? First of all, Saddam was technically hanged by the Iraqi government, not the U.S. government. Secondly, execution is not murder. Someone who is tried in a court of law, found guilty and sentenced to death is not a murder victim.
did he not bomb the shit out of areas in Afghanistan, in order to try and kill Osama Bin Laden? Well obviously not him literally, but the US military with the permission of the Bush adminstration?
Well here's a definition. Terrorism is, according to a UN panel, any action "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act".
So a terrorist has to specifically and directly target civilians with the intention of influencing their government in some way. Does G.W. fit that criteria?
alright, ur right.. since there is no proof that he directly targeted civilians, according to that definition he is not a terrorist.. Although he could've been a bit more careful with civilian caualties, there isnt any proof that he dirctly targeted them.
But to me, a terrorist is any person that condones terrorism...
The Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism as "a policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of terrorising or condition of being terrorised."
By that definition the US army definitely commited act of terrorism under the rule of the Bush administration.
While the United Nations has not yet accepted a definition of terrorism[5], the UN's "academic consensus definition," written by terrorism expert A.P. Schmid and widely used by social scientists, runs:
Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or political reasons, whereby — in contrast to assassination — the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims of violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperilled) victims, and main targets are used to manipulate the main target (audience(s)), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought," (Schmid, 1988).
^^heres another definition, also by the UN.
but the point is, alot has to do with personal perception of what a terrorist is. And to me its simple, a terrorist is a person who terrorizes people. To Osama Bin Laden is a terrorist. To me Saddaam Hussein is a terrorist. To me George Bush is also a terrorist, because he caused so much harm to innocent people (intentionally or non intentionally is besides the point) for whatever motives, and loosely justified them. Osama Bin Laden (not captured or killed 'atleast that we no of'). WMDs not found. Al Qaeda 'still at large'. All these people dieing for what? US soldiers, Iraqi people, Afghani people, doesnt matter, they're all humans. We captured Hussein, placed an unstable 'democratic system' in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thats it. Peoples homes broken, peoples lives ruined for what? Is that freedom? Is Iraq or Afghanistan any better off? We can sit here and make speculations, but the innocent peopleliving in these war struck areas are the ones that are having to deal with decisions based on misjudgement and misinformation by the Bush administration. And on top of that, they have failed to apologize for their mistakes, and failed to rectify any damage they have caused, and that to me is Terrorism.
You may not agree with me, and thats fine. But the way I look at it 1 Human life = 1 human life. Osama Binladen killed at most 2000 civilians, and in return the US army has killed countless numbers of civilians. (please dont bring a figure for civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, we all know alot of casualties are not reported, for whatever reasons) I understand that Osama Bin Laden directly attacked civilians and in my eyes that makes him worst, but if you look at the # of people they have terrorized, I believe the Bush Adminstration are definitely responsible for causing harm to more civilians.
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
