The Obama Faction

[Old Harry]

My own opinion is that the answer to a) is "no"

When we (the English) stopped treating Northern Irish catholics like they were all evil scum, tried to improve their living conditions (schools, healthcare) and institute more representative institutions (police, parliament, etc) people who were previously evil terrorists became community leaders who try to help govern the (still troubled, but much less violent) country.

Also Nelson Mandella.

Who are your terrorists Darrell?

[scooter]

Yeah seriously thanks for posting that article, I read it last night and wanted to comment, but I still needed to process a bit. This though:

It does mean that in another world, if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers. And that is indeed a tragedy. Welcome to Earth.

This is a really unsatisfying end to the article. "if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers" - that sounds nice in a vacuum, but I can't get behind that kind of thinking. What about all the other people raised in the same environment who went on to be ordinary, contributing members of society? To imply they are primarily a victim of the context they were raised in is an over-simplification.

[KingOfPain]

I am not an authority on rapists but I would assume most of them would admit they were just horny. But that's beside the point. If the said rapists really consider himself as "liberators of unfertilized eggs", then we understand where he's coming from and deal with it "appropriately" - From a slap on the wrist to a death sentence, depending on your moral codes (or where are you from?).

[darrelljs]

When we (the English) stopped treating Northern Irish catholics like they were all evil scum, tried to improve their living conditions (schools, healthcare) and institute more representative institutions (police, parliament, etc) people who were previously evil terrorists became community leaders who try to help govern the (still troubled, but much less violent) country.

Also Nelson Mandella.

The IRA were absolutely terrorists, and I don't subscribe to your interpretation of events . I think a combination of factors convinced the IRA to abandon violence, including the success of peaceful methods such as the hunger strikes, and the steadfast refusal of British authorities to accept a cease fire while the IRA claimed they were in a long war of attrition. Its possible some of those that initiated or committed acts of violence did indeed reform and become "community leaders". If so that is a very nice example of redeeming evil. I am sure there are examples post 9/11 of this happening that I am not aware of, but I don't think its an effective strategy to pursue with our limited resources.

Nelson Mandella never was a terrorist, the ANC activities while he was in charge never targeted civilians (or even military personnel). There were isolated acts of terrorism after his imprisonment but you can hardly hold the man responsible for those.

Who are your terrorists Darrell?

My terrorists are those that plan and attempt to carry out attacks on innocent civilians.

If the said rapists really consider himself as "liberators of unfertilized eggs", then we understand where he's coming from and deal with it "appropriately"

Exactly! We certainly wouldn't honor them with their chosen name, however .

Darrell

[novice]

I didn't say they were driven by evilness, I said they were evil...that's an important distinction

Right, evilness is the outcome. It's often treated as a root cause, in which case the only strategy for dealing with it becomes "eradicate all evil". Of course we need to do some of that too, since we can't hope to completely stop evilness from emerging through other means.

The whole "winning hearts and minds" strategy is noble, but apparently ineffective (or at least insufficient).

I didn't mean to imply that this is necessarily the way to go - I just generally think that understanding your opposition's motivation will help you form a better strategy.

[BRickAstley]

This is a really unsatisfying end to the article. "if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers" - that sounds nice in a vacuum, but I can't get behind that kind of thinking. What about all the other people raised in the same environment who went on to be ordinary, contributing members of society? To imply they are primarily a victim of the context they were raised in is an over-simplification.

[KingOfPain]

If the said rapists really consider himself as "liberators of unfertilized eggs", then we understand where he's coming from and deal with it "appropriately"

Exactly! We certainly wouldn't honor them with their chosen name, however .

Well, we do....

So that night the two daughters got Lot to drink some wine, and the older daughter went in and had sex with him. Lot was not aware of her coming in or leaving. The next night the two daughters got Lot to drink wine again, and the younger daughter slept with her father. Lot was not aware of her coming in or leaving also. Both of Lot's daughters became pregnant.

[Old Harry]

My terrorists are those that plan and attempt to carry out attacks on innocent civilians.

For me intent is irrelevant - it's anyone who carries out an attack where innocent civilians die. It's anyone who spreads fear through a civilian population. Which means every war in the last 70 years has been a series of acts of terror.

Nelson Mandella never was a terrorist, the ANC activities while he was in charge never targeted civilians (or even military personnel). There were isolated acts of terrorism after his imprisonment but you can hardly hold the man responsible for those.

I hadn't realised he took such lengths to avoid killing (just read up on it on Wikipedia). But my point was that he was called a terrorist then by most people around the world (he was only allowed into the US after 2008), but with our perspective he was nothing of the sort.

The IRA were absolutely terrorists, and I don't subscribe to your interpretation of events . I think a combination of factors convinced the IRA to abandon violence, including the success of peaceful methods such as the hunger strikes, and the steadfast refusal of British authorities to accept a cease fire while the IRA claimed they were in a long war of attrition. Its possible some of those that initiated or committed acts of violence did indeed reform and become "community leaders". If so that is a very nice example of redeeming evil.

We'll have to disagree on events - I mostly put our fragile peace down to John Major's courageous decision to negotiate with the IRA in the early 90s, but I don't know if that was the tipping point.

The point is they weren't evil, of course they did evil things, and they had evil things done to them, but terrorism is a tactic, like nuclear weapons and drone strikes, and when it didn't achieve their goals they tried something else. Martin McGuiness is widely regarded as having been deeply involved, but is now a popular leader.

I can imagine that living in a police state funded and armed by people who are just after cheap oil could make me do things that I wouldn't do in my current cosy surroundings. I read the article (perhaps a bit simplistically) as saying that understanding your enemy is the first step to stopping conflict.

Which may be why CTON makes for more interesting games of CIV.

[Viqsi]

It does mean that in another world, if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers. And that is indeed a tragedy. Welcome to Earth.

This is a really unsatisfying end to the article. "if they had been raised in a different environment, those hijackers might have been police officers" - that sounds nice in a vacuum, but I can't get behind that kind of thinking. What about all the other people raised in the same environment who went on to be ordinary, contributing members of society? To imply they are primarily a victim of the context they were raised in is an over-simplification.

To suggest that this was the full extent of the point being made is arguably an oversimplification in itself.

The core problem being described is a tendency to oversimplify as regards attempting to ascertain the mindset and motivations of those who offend us. Whether or not little Jimmy grows up to be a fireman or a suicide bomber unfortunately tends to get boiled down to "well, poor little Jimmy was just born EVIL". Changing one's perspective so that you exclusively consider "well, poor little Jimmy was just born among evil people; If Only poor little Jimmy had grown up among good people" is not a solution; it's oversimplifying again - now instead of having someone who's born a mutant, they were instead surrounded by other mutants who made him into a mutant. It's an ADDITIONAL factor, not a replacement for the existing assumption. And there may well be others.

The solution as I understand it is not "you should think of X as opposed to Y", but rather "you should think of X in addition to Y."

[Brian Shanahan]

We'll have to disagree on events - I mostly put our fragile peace down to John Major's courageous decision to negotiate with the IRA in the early 90s, but I don't know if that was the tipping point.

This is pretty much it. There were extra factors like the immediate support of Major's initiave by all parties in the Republic (my side of the border) but especially the Taoiseach at the time John Bruton, and the willingness of the SDLP to act as a conduit between the British Government and SF before the ceasefire, and their willingness to accept actions which would mean the party's sidelining in the name of peace. And finally the recognition by a number of unionist politicians that their bullying of everybody into following their formulation (essentially "Ulster says NO!") could no longer work tipped the scale in favour of the peace process.

@ Darrell, your whole formulation depends on the subjective judgement on who's a terrorist being right. In some cases it is, Mohammed Atta was undoubtedly a terrorist, but in a lot cases it isn't. For example the whole population of Iraq was essentially branded as terrorist despite having nothing to do with the Sept 11 attacks, while the State of Israel has never been described as terrorist despite having an active policy vis a vis Palestine which is most accurately described as Lebensraum Nach Osten.