But the question remains, what do you when the "enemy" gives you no other option? — Apollodorus

By that time, it's too late anyway. That's why it's so important to live in such a way that you either don't make enemies at all, or you become so big and powerful that nobody dares to mess with you.

or you become so big and powerful that nobody dares to mess with you. — baker

Quite possibly, this is why China is trying to become as big and powerful as possible. A new colonial power. We'd better start learning Mandarin. Or self-defense tactics ....

Your logic is so childish, amounting to "do me wrong I do you wrong" except "you" = civilians who have no hand in military decisions. "Two wrongs make a right" is the level of your justification.

. Obviously, it's difficult for Al Qaeda ( or then Taliban ) to target America to this extent, however, they have succeeded in convincing American public to NOT INTERFERE IN THEIR OWN REGIONAL AFFAIRS. — Wittgenstein

The US public is tired of war, they're not tired of terrorist attacks on US citizens.

Infact, I would make sure l slap twice so my opponent doesn't even think of retaliation. — Wittgenstein

Think about the topic you're talking about, with the US war on terrorism, your logic is worthless but that you use it on a thread about terrorism is just so funny.

Terrorism very rarely has any kind of success but backfires often, it's done by radicals who have no other means, that's all. Guerilla warfare has had success but terrorism very rarely does anything but upset and anger people. The media and politicians blow up terrorism for their own benefit, in reality, the scale is negligible, and it accomplishes nothing.

Imo, terrorism cannot be understood without at least some attempt at nuance in understanding. — tim wood

Absolutely - there's a huge difference between placing a bomb in an unoccupied government building and bombing an Elementary school. Both could be considered terrorism, but they are very different. "Terrorism" can absolutely be justified because a state can be criminal, but even within that realm there must remain lines that cannot be crossed otherwise the terrorists are no better than the oppressor. Sure, we might ally with them pragmatically but that's it. We are not friends.

True evil is never in any sense "pragmatic" or "necessary" - it is always completely unnecessary by its very nature. If something is necessary it cannot be evil.

...civilians have always been targeted in wars — Apollodorus

Civilians were not the targets of the nuclear weapons used to end WWII in the Pacific. Stop spouting that bullshit! There were manufacturing facilities crucial to the Japanese war effort in both cities. It is well known that the knowledge of civilian casualties deeply troubled FDR and Truman. In fact, the civilians were forewarned by dropping pamphlets from the sky so as to reduce the numbers of civilian causalties, because the US wanted to reduce the civilian casualities as much as possible. That's not the sort of thing that is done if the civilians are being targeted.

Nuclear weapons to destroy manufacturing facilities? Doesn't make any sense to me.

95% of the casualties were civilians.

So, I doubt there was too much worrying about civilian casualties.

Besides, would you have advised the Japs to do the same in order to end the war?

Fact is, if "ending the war" is the primary concern, then we go back to "the end justifies the means" and all talk of avoiding civilian casualties becomes superfluous IMHO.

the Japs — Apollodorus

Nice racial slur.

Your opinion does not matter here. It doesn't matter if it does not make sense to you. The 'logic' you've employed here is flawed as well.

Whether or not the Japanese civilians were targeted has nothing to do with your belief or opinion. It has to do with whether or not they were being targeted. If they were the target, they would not have been warned by pamphlet of the day it was going to happen. They were warned more than once of that day. The warning allowed many to flee the area prior to, which tremendously reduced the casualities. Those are facts.

There would have been far far more casualties had the warnings not been dropped. That is not the sort of thing done if civilians were the target, if reducing the number of civilian casualties was not priority, and/or if those civilian deaths were not troubling.

There was no evidence that warning them would necessarily avoid all casualties, so some casualties must have been taken for granted even if they were not specifically singled out as target.

There were many thousands of civilian casualties and very few military. Some estimates have figures as high as 170,000.

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/survivors-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

If there is a conflict between two powers and if one of the side is a superpower with unmatched military capability and the opposing side is poorly equipped militias. Symmetrical warfare for the militias will ensure total destruction of their force. They will resort to asymmetric guerilla warfare.

One important feature of asymmetric warfare is that, civilians of enemy country are also counted as combatants. Another justification for targeting civilians lies in the fact that there will always be collateral damage on your side, your civilians are getting killed anyways, it only seems fair that you do the same in return. — Wittgenstein

I don't think the notion of "fairness" makes much sense here. All war tends to terrorize the civilian population where it's fought, so I think a general distinction between "regular warfare" and "terrorism" cannot be upheld. War exists on a spectrum where you can try to limit the terror inflicted, or you can try to increase it. In either case, you probably only have limited control over the actual result.

So I think the question ties back to the question of when war itself is justified. I think these situations exist, though they are quite rare. If you are in that situation, what matters is how much you achieve for a given amount of terror. No matter how oppressed you are, acts of violence can only be justified if they are a rational means toward an end, and the entire path from decision to means to end is justifiable.

I have explored that particular disagreement with @180 Proof in the Israel-Palestine threat. As emotionally unsatisfying as it may be to ask people to endure the unendurable because they simply have no plausible way to make a difference, I likewise see no way to ever justify objectively useless terror.

Civilians were not the targets of the nuclear weapons used to end WWII in the Pacific. — creativesoul

That's technically true, but in this case it's the bad kind of technically true. Hiroshima was selected as a bombing site for a number of characteristics, and maximizing civilian casualties wasn't one of them. Neither was minimizing civilian casualties. The chain of events that lead to the targeting decision is well documented. I recommend "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes for a very in-depth history. The bombs were definetly not dropped to destroy the japanese warmaking potential.

The bombs were definetly not dropped to destroy the japanese warmaking potential. — Echarmion

That is my argument too. I think it is important to distinguish between military strategy, political agendas, and propaganda by the press and other actors.

In military terms, you conduct smaller bombing raids that would focus on specific military targets, you don't flatten a whole city.

According to one theory, the nukes were intended as a message to the Soviets. But there are other possibilities:

Edit. "President Harry S. Truman decided to use the atomic bomb as revenge for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in 1942. Truman worried that an invasion of Japan would cost up to one million American lives and would drag on for far longer than the American public wanted due to the fanaticism of Japanese soldiers to defend their island and emperor. He also needed a reason to justify the $1,889,604,000 the government spent on the Manhattan Project, which in of itself was a secret program. He worried of the political ramifications of not using the weapon while spending almost $2 billion. Finally, Truman understood the Soviet Union's role in post-World War II global affairs would be one of an antagonistic player to American policies. He felt a showing of American military might would force the Soviet Union to reconsider its approach to its own Eastern European affairs."

https://www.reference.com/history/were-major-reasons-bombing-hiroshima-9e47a834f91d027c

Terror in the God-Shaped Hole - Confronting Modernity's Identity Crisis, David Loy.

Essay about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their meaning for Islam and secular culture.

Anything can be justified as a means to an end if you win.

I interpret you as asking: to what extent do acts of violence and destruction satisfy the motives of the terrorist?

This raises the question as to how the motives of terrorism, and violence in general, are determined, and the extent to which it is possible to determine motives through the analysis of language and behaviour.

For example, what were the motives of rampaging England fans after they lost to Italy? Is a Marxist analysis of English hooliganism warranted? or were they merely indulging in spontaneous and instinctual acts of self-gratification in the absence of a sufficient deterrent under the influence of alcohol? I'm inclined to believe both.

In fact, the civilians were forewarned by dropping pamphlets from the sky so as to reduce the numbers of civilian causalties, because the US wanted to reduce the civilian casualities as much as possible. — creativesoul

Sort of misleading. They were warned of potential air raids, but it was specifically decided not to warn them about the nuke.

In preparation for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Oppenheimer-led Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee decided against a demonstration bomb and against a special leaflet warning. Those decisions were implemented because of the uncertainty of a successful detonation and also because of the wish to maximize shock in the leadership. No warning was given to Hiroshima that a new and much more destructive bomb was going to be dropped. Various sources gave conflicting information about when the last leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima prior to the atomic bomb. Robert Jay Lifton wrote that it was 27 July, and Theodore H. McNelly wrote that it was 30 July. The USAAF history noted that eleven cities were targeted with leaflets on 27 July, but Hiroshima was not one of them, and there were no leaflet sorties on 30 July. Leaflet sorties were undertaken on 1 and 4 August. Hiroshima may have been leafleted in late July or early August, as survivor accounts talk about a delivery of leaflets a few days before the atomic bomb was dropped. Three versions were printed of a leaflet listing 11 or 12 cities targeted for firebombing; a total of 33 cities listed. With the text of this leaflet reading in Japanese "... we cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked ..." Hiroshima was not listed. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Leaflets

And in the case of Nagasaki they actually intended to bomb Kokura but visibility was poor so the plane diverted to Nagasaki.

There were manufacturing facilities crucial to the Japanese war effort in both cities. — creativesoul

They didn't need to use a nuke for that. In fact they specifically chose not to target these locations with conventional weapons so that they could save them to be nuked. And it wasn't just about damaging manufacturing facilities:

The Target Committee stated that "It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released. ... Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Choice_of_targets

How is that not terrorism?

No. Unless you win. Otherwise, no. Just kidding.

You appear to be sidestepping the root question. You're describing an action or ideology. So we have to ask what is the driving factor behind said action or ideology. Therein lies your answer. If it's someone who was displaced by war, while justification is an important overall concept (though less so if you're an atheist or not a believer in some sort of absolute collective accountability), it comes down to a matter of basic sense and logic. No, it's generally not a smart thing to do. Beyond that if it's just someone trying to take more crap that doesn't belong to them, like is human nature.. well that's the root question. Is war justified? The governing authorities and the material provided will definitely convince the citizen so.

I attended an anti/counter-terrorist quick reaction crisis mission course at the FBI Academy back in the 70s. World experts at the time could never give me a satisfactory definition of the term “terrorism.” Over the intervening years, I still have yet to see a definition that distinguishes “us” from “them.”

“Rules of War” is an oxymoron and a luxury of a winner. Here’s the proof of that: Next time a combatant champions the notion of “rules” in a war, see if they will provide their opposition with a level playing field: give their enemy the same weaponry, training and numbers.

Wait, what? They won’t do that? You mean they like to use F-16s, drones, and fire-and-forget missiles to bomb the shit out people with rifles and grenade launchers? And then they want to take a moral high ground and act all indignant when someone blows up some of their civilians? That’s rich.

Some would argue that military superiority itself is proof of the righteousness of the winner. After all, the winner's "system" generated the largess; and money = right, even if might does not, right?

BS.

This brings us to genocide. There may or may not be a line between genocide on the one hand, and destroying the enemy's will to fight on the other hand. But I tell you this: A failure to utterly destroy the enemy's will to fight will leave a lingering, low-intensity, simmering evil and hatred that will last for eternity. If genocide is the answer to that, then it might best be left on the table.

These are universal truths:

“War is hell.” Bill Sherman

"“The rules of fair play do not apply in love and war.” John Lyly

Edited to add another universal truth: "In war, everyone is a combatant whether anyone likes it or not." Me.