On terrorists and freedom fighters
Before I even begin to try to address any of the comments, I should let you know that the publication of the last post was kind of an accident. I meant to edit it more carefully, and to be honest some of the comments were in response to what should have remained internal thoughts. Some would have been altered or taken out of the whole post. And then there are things pointed out that I concede are straight up mistakes.
This post is a comment response one. After responding to comments from my last post, I figured that three pages may as well be a separate post. For background or reference, this is a response to the October 9, 2006 post. Here’s the web link-- http://smokeyspice.blogspot.com/2006/10/welsh-terror-raid-leads-to-arrest-of.html .
Anyways, after responding and again letting myself get carried away, I found that I had such a big comment that it might as well be a post. And since I’ve been lagging on the posts, I figured that it made more sense to make this a post.
Jeames- You're right about the term freedom fighter and how it's ultimately used or misused. I made the mistake of not really looking at the word itself and its meaning outside of my own head in this particular context.
The conventional use of the term invokes the idea of armed resistance, which now in American terms translates into terrorism in most cases. Okay, but...
I personally would include recently murdered Anna Politkovskaya as a freedom fighter. How was she armed? With a voice and a pen that she made public. And that was enough to make her a threat to someone, a terrorist in one sense of the term.
PC: Please understand that the term 'Islamist' to me means little in the context of this discussion. Please allow me that for the sake of communication.
Islamist, to me, means little more than a title that gives some understanding of where an organization goes to for justification. The interpretation may be different than what was originally intended, just as the interpretation of the US Constitution seems to be different for armed militias in the US. I don't take the militias' interpretation to then question the entire document, but I do take it as a reference of their supposed basis.
Given that-
Victory for whom or for what?
An organization can be founded and connected with anybody and be considered anything. Are organizations that defend/appeal for convicts on death row in the US saying they support murder or violent crime? No. But they are saying that there may be a problem in a system that disproportionately convicts people of lower economic classes that can’t afford super star lawyers and that these problems may be beyond the legal system. Is it treason or terrorism to defend convicts that are affiliated with gangs or that sometimes women who are supposed to be maternal flip out and kill their own children? Where does the concept of rights actually stem from if it’s not universal? Am I supporting either by raising the question or do I wonder what might lie below the surface?
Back on the international note- the Taliban was a 'freedom fighting' group during the Cold War. They were championed, funded, and supported by the US much like Hamas was supported by Israel as an opposing organization to the PLO. You tell me what changed.
They were Islamist back then too, but Islamists weren't the problem. Now they are.
Also tell me what happened with Iraq, Iran, and Libya. What worth is left to calls of democracy when they're abandoned by the very callers? And this is exactly what I think you or Jeames do not make space for nor come close to understanding though you act like and think you do.
The Cold War was really cold to you, but it was actually HOT in other parts of the world and its legacy is what we're still experiencing in my opinion. While in the US, people practiced hiding under desks, people in other countries were actually bombed and responded because they felt they had to.
If there's anything you can relate to as a patriot of anything especially after 9/11 in the US, it's that feeling of need to react to attack. And the general American amnesia doesn’t take away from what happened between WWII and 9/11 and how it’s influenced people since.
My position on the detainees in Guantanamo is quite simple: either try them of something—let justice or some semblence of it take its course—or let them go back to the lives they had before. I'm against the indefinite detention of any human being without due process.
What I don’t understand is why this is difficult for anyone to understand.
After years of legal gambling and hodge-podge justifications, we discover that people who should never have been in Gitmo in the first place are being let out. Great… except that, now, detainees that were held for nothing in the first place have to re-prove innocence to countries and bureaucracies that already approved their need of refuge or that supported their opposition in the first place. Only now, after being in jail for years, they come out and find that the likes of the Q-man are now allies. People are being sent to their graves because someone was suspicious or was unable to say they were wrong about this person’s involvement with anything. And, now, people who were not may actually be threats—if they’re not completely mentally incapacitated.
What is not frustrating about this situation?
In terms of law, is this military, criminal, or immigration law? Or does it not matter because everything’s been collapsed since 9/11 and is it okay that it’s been collapsed since then? What are the ramifications of immigration law bleeding into criminal law? Does anyone care?
I can’t respond to anything about LIFG because I don’t know enough about them. However, it seems to me that your comments referred to this paragraph:
The man, who has not been identified by the authorities, is accused of being a member of the terrorist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which sympathises with Al-Qaeda and has links to extremist groups in Egypt and Algeria. The radical group, formed in 1990, is believed to have planned the Casablanca suicide bombings in May 2003.
Yes, there is an association in that paragraph with Al-Qaeda, which is pretty much a phantom organization with little if any actual organization. Who the hell is Al-Qaeda. And if it really is the problem and Bin Ladin is the head, why have we heard nothing about him for a really long time? Why was the intelligence group devoted to finding him disbanded?
No, the British don’t have to agree with my definitions of terrorists or immigrants or refugees or even what a cat is (unless it’s actually in the UN Charter, which I’ll look up later). Nor do you or Jeames or the US. Detain, deport, or screw whoever you want. Just don’t freak out when people aren’t unsupportive or are belligerent or militant.
And the Islamists don’t have to like what I say either. I’m sure they don’t in other regards anyway.
So what? Does that mean any of the above is just?
The world is made up of people and if we’re so caught up on being ‘right’ than being sincerely just then of course the stupid world is going to be hypocritical. It’s like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly. How many toes do we have left anyway?
This post is a comment response one. After responding to comments from my last post, I figured that three pages may as well be a separate post. For background or reference, this is a response to the October 9, 2006 post. Here’s the web link-- http://smokeyspice.blogspot.com/2006/10/welsh-terror-raid-leads-to-arrest-of.html .
Anyways, after responding and again letting myself get carried away, I found that I had such a big comment that it might as well be a post. And since I’ve been lagging on the posts, I figured that it made more sense to make this a post.
Jeames- You're right about the term freedom fighter and how it's ultimately used or misused. I made the mistake of not really looking at the word itself and its meaning outside of my own head in this particular context.
The conventional use of the term invokes the idea of armed resistance, which now in American terms translates into terrorism in most cases. Okay, but...
I personally would include recently murdered Anna Politkovskaya as a freedom fighter. How was she armed? With a voice and a pen that she made public. And that was enough to make her a threat to someone, a terrorist in one sense of the term.
PC: Please understand that the term 'Islamist' to me means little in the context of this discussion. Please allow me that for the sake of communication.
Islamist, to me, means little more than a title that gives some understanding of where an organization goes to for justification. The interpretation may be different than what was originally intended, just as the interpretation of the US Constitution seems to be different for armed militias in the US. I don't take the militias' interpretation to then question the entire document, but I do take it as a reference of their supposed basis.
Given that-
Victory for whom or for what?
An organization can be founded and connected with anybody and be considered anything. Are organizations that defend/appeal for convicts on death row in the US saying they support murder or violent crime? No. But they are saying that there may be a problem in a system that disproportionately convicts people of lower economic classes that can’t afford super star lawyers and that these problems may be beyond the legal system. Is it treason or terrorism to defend convicts that are affiliated with gangs or that sometimes women who are supposed to be maternal flip out and kill their own children? Where does the concept of rights actually stem from if it’s not universal? Am I supporting either by raising the question or do I wonder what might lie below the surface?
Back on the international note- the Taliban was a 'freedom fighting' group during the Cold War. They were championed, funded, and supported by the US much like Hamas was supported by Israel as an opposing organization to the PLO. You tell me what changed.
They were Islamist back then too, but Islamists weren't the problem. Now they are.
Also tell me what happened with Iraq, Iran, and Libya. What worth is left to calls of democracy when they're abandoned by the very callers? And this is exactly what I think you or Jeames do not make space for nor come close to understanding though you act like and think you do.
The Cold War was really cold to you, but it was actually HOT in other parts of the world and its legacy is what we're still experiencing in my opinion. While in the US, people practiced hiding under desks, people in other countries were actually bombed and responded because they felt they had to.
If there's anything you can relate to as a patriot of anything especially after 9/11 in the US, it's that feeling of need to react to attack. And the general American amnesia doesn’t take away from what happened between WWII and 9/11 and how it’s influenced people since.
My position on the detainees in Guantanamo is quite simple: either try them of something—let justice or some semblence of it take its course—or let them go back to the lives they had before. I'm against the indefinite detention of any human being without due process.
What I don’t understand is why this is difficult for anyone to understand.
After years of legal gambling and hodge-podge justifications, we discover that people who should never have been in Gitmo in the first place are being let out. Great… except that, now, detainees that were held for nothing in the first place have to re-prove innocence to countries and bureaucracies that already approved their need of refuge or that supported their opposition in the first place. Only now, after being in jail for years, they come out and find that the likes of the Q-man are now allies. People are being sent to their graves because someone was suspicious or was unable to say they were wrong about this person’s involvement with anything. And, now, people who were not may actually be threats—if they’re not completely mentally incapacitated.
What is not frustrating about this situation?
In terms of law, is this military, criminal, or immigration law? Or does it not matter because everything’s been collapsed since 9/11 and is it okay that it’s been collapsed since then? What are the ramifications of immigration law bleeding into criminal law? Does anyone care?
I can’t respond to anything about LIFG because I don’t know enough about them. However, it seems to me that your comments referred to this paragraph:
The man, who has not been identified by the authorities, is accused of being a member of the terrorist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which sympathises with Al-Qaeda and has links to extremist groups in Egypt and Algeria. The radical group, formed in 1990, is believed to have planned the Casablanca suicide bombings in May 2003.
Yes, there is an association in that paragraph with Al-Qaeda, which is pretty much a phantom organization with little if any actual organization. Who the hell is Al-Qaeda. And if it really is the problem and Bin Ladin is the head, why have we heard nothing about him for a really long time? Why was the intelligence group devoted to finding him disbanded?
No, the British don’t have to agree with my definitions of terrorists or immigrants or refugees or even what a cat is (unless it’s actually in the UN Charter, which I’ll look up later). Nor do you or Jeames or the US. Detain, deport, or screw whoever you want. Just don’t freak out when people aren’t unsupportive or are belligerent or militant.
And the Islamists don’t have to like what I say either. I’m sure they don’t in other regards anyway.
So what? Does that mean any of the above is just?
The world is made up of people and if we’re so caught up on being ‘right’ than being sincerely just then of course the stupid world is going to be hypocritical. It’s like we’re shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly. How many toes do we have left anyway?
posted by smokey spice at 4:19 AM
3 Comments:
Thanks Smokey for this candid reply. Of course as an Arab and Libyan and Muslism I understood exactly what you meant without the need to further clarify. Hopefully there would be less misunderstanding.
as far as this applies to me, i just wanted to be clear. i am saying that ANYONE who uses military violence against civilians as a means to produce a political result is a terrorist. this applies to soilders, resistors, pilots in stealth bombers, and all the like. there should be no doubt that george w. bush is also a terrorist.
this is inaccurate but usable: they are all wariors. they are freedom fighters if they are on the "good" side (a euphemism), and they are terrorists if they are on the "bad" side (a dysphemism).
i didn't think you misunderstood me, but i just wanted to be clear.
Eid Mabrouk habibti
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