Posted on 08/08/2006 6:43:16 AM PDT by IrishMike
Among the many reasons to beware the United Nations as a vehicle for peace in Israel, Lebanon, or any other part of the globe now threatened by Islamic terrorists, there is one item so obvious that in the current debate over “ceasefires” and Security Council resolutions it has almost entirely escaped notice. Quite simply, while terrorism may be the defining security threat of our time, the U.N. has failed — literally — to define it.
If that sounds like a minor semantic lapse, far removed from the bloody conflict in Israel and Lebanon, it is anything but. The free world faces a war in which victory — if one may be allowed such a blunt word these days — starts with understanding the real nature and tactics of our enemies. So, with top U.N. officials calling for instant peace that would effectively equate “both sides” in the war launched out of Lebanon last month by Hezbollah against Israel, I e-mailed the U.N. Secretary-General’s office recently to ask: Does the U.N. consider Hezbollah a terrorist group?
Back from one of Kofi Annan’s spokesmen came the answer: “The designation of ‘terrorist’ would require a definition of what terrorism entails.”
Let us note that in the case of Hezbollah, the group has entailed enough atrocities to have earned it the nickname, “the A-Team of Terrorism,” even before Hezbollah on July 12 launched its killing-kidnapping-and- rocket-firing assault on Israel. Hezbollah’s prior record entails well over two decades of kidnappings, hijackings, suicide bombings, massacres, and collateral carnage worldwide, in countries including Lebanon, Israel, Spain, Denmark, Germany, France, and Argentina. Created by the totalitarian ayatollahs of Iran just after their 1979 Islamic revolution; trained and bankrolled by Iran; supported by Syria; seasoned in extortion and smuggling operations reaching as far as South America, Canada, the U.S.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
What's your definition Mike?
Hezbo in action
Thanks for that.
In your simpler, personal definition, who gets to decide who "needs killin"?
I am not disagreeing. Just want to be careful about who decides. Obviously the Chinese government today , or the British Monarchy in the 1770s might have been able to use your definition to label some of those we rightfully call freedom fighters as terrorists.
My definition is: "Terrorists are those who wish to impose their worldview on others via force and compulsion. Their ideal for society tends to be of vastly limited freedom and rigid and harsh enforcement. Their preferred choice of tactic is to attack civilians and tend to be unwilling to negotiate a compromised peace, but rather seek the total destruction of their given adversary or their own death."
This helps us keep the Chechen's on the borderline as being terrorists. Since they have adopted terrorist tactics, but probably could have been defined as freedom fighters before they did. To me they remain a question mark as opposed to some other more obvious examples.
ETA and IRA are tough calls, but for me the primary issue always revolves around the tactics and the demands.
If the demand is that your advesary "leave or die"", it is going to be difficul to create a negotiated settlement of any sort.
If one is fighting for independence or autonomy, but can live with the other people, just not their troops, then they are freedom fighters. When the freedom fighters adopt terrorist tactics as in teh case of the ETA and IRA, they lose their moral high ground. It is usually when they adopt these tactics that these freedom movements are about to lose, or the more moderate ones are trying to make a deal.
Thus the timing in Israel is not so surprising given that the chance for a real solution might have been at hand if Gaza would have stayed quiet.
Palestinians who wanted to have a state in a negotiated deal that created reasonable borders wouldn't be terrorists because they wouldn't need to be. Too bad there don't seem to be many of those around.
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/in_the_media/in_the_media_show.htm?doc_id=387435&attrib_id=7374
Hezbollah's Psych-Ops
(I posted this thread a few days ago.... good reading)
Hezbollah and its foreign sponsors deserve credit: They understand the perverse psychology of the Middle East. They knew they could launch a war against Israel and then have Israel get the blame for the devastation that inevitably would follow.
They knew also that if Israel failed to respond forcefully to their ground and missile attacks, they could say Israel was cowardly. And if Israel did respond forcefully, they could say Israel was a bully, its response “disproportionate” – even while insisting that Israel was doing them no serious damage.
They knew they could target Israeli civilians and hide combatants and weapons behind Lebanese civilians -- in homes, hospitals, schools and mosques. Even so, whenever Lebanese women and children were killed, they could accuse Israel of “war crimes.”
Give Hezbollah, Syria and Iran credit for this, too: They understand the equally perverse psychology of Europe, the U.N. and the “international community.” Two years ago, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559 demanded that Hezbollah disarm. Hezbollah refused to comply. In response, the international community shrugged its collective shoulders.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has been taking delivery of increasingly advanced weaponry from Syria and Iran – while U.N “peacekeepers” in southern Lebanon avert their gaze.
These peacekeepers remain silent even as Hezbollah fires those missiles at Haifa, the one city in the Middle East where Jews, Christians and Muslims most successfully coexist. And when Hezbollah uses the otherwise useless UN peacekeepers as human shields and some are killed, the UN and Europe are outraged – not at Hezbollah for this blatant violation of international law but, again, at Israel.
Hezbollah's leaders figured correctly that it would not be long before Europeans would be calling for a cease-fire – one that would reward Hezbollah by allowing it to remain armed, effectively repealing UN Resolution 1559, and to acquire new and better weapons for future use.
Many Europeans and some Americans also are calling for Syria and Iran to be offered “incentives” in exchange for helping to end the conflict they started. What if Syria and Iran accept such tributes, promise to rein in Hezbollah and then don't? That's the nice thing about appeasement: The appeasers always have something more they are eager to give and the appeased always have something more they are eager to receive.
Give credit where it is due: Hezbollah propagandists understand how to manipulate the Western media. They show reporters bombed buildings and dead bodies. They say: “These were innocent civilians. No fighters or weapons here.” The news crews report what they are told and shown without verification – out of ignorance or fear or both. Hezbollah exaggerates its battlefield successes and understates its losses and, with too few exceptions, the media take it in and spew it back out.
If progress is to be made in the Middle East, it must begin with an understanding of the psychology of Hezbollah and its supporters. Hezbollah's immediate goal is not to drive Israelis into sea – that's for later -- but only to establish itself as the dominant force in Lebanon, politically as well as militarily. If that happens, the dream of Lebanese democracy would again be deferred. Anyone who wants to live in Lebanon –“live” in the existential sense – would have to cut a deal with Hezbollah.
Syria's goal is obvious: It wants to again be the colossus of the Levant. With a war-hardened Hezbollah at its side, Syria would “restore stability” to Lebanon, perhaps by returning as the occupying power, carrying out assassinations of Lebanese patriots with impunity as it has in the past.
Finally, Iran's ambitions: nothing less than to be recognized as the leader of the global jihad against the West. Al-Qaeda would have to accept the status of junior partner in the Holy War against the Great Satan and the Little Satan and all the other sundry Satans.
The Geneva Conventions tried to put some definitions about what constituted war. I will assume then whatever is not covered is beyond the pale. In this curernt conflict there is a persistent effort to extemporize legitimacy for Hezbollah, and demonize Israel. Terrorists such as Hammas, al Qaida, and Hezbollah are not insurgents or freedom fighters, and when captured, certainly not prisoners of war. They are not armed forces, militias, or volunteer corps of any country or authority. These killers are not members of an organized resistance movement carrying arms openly, and they have no distinctive identifier. By Geneva Convention they are even ineligible for the summary trials and executions graciously afforded spies and saboteurs, who covertly destroy infrastructure, industrial capacity, and armed forces used to wage war.
Fabricated orthodoxy for Hezbollah disregards their exclusive responsibility for civilian deaths occurring when hiding among or thrusting forward, instead of removing from danger, Protected Persons as defined by Geneva Convention. Civilians become biodegradable sandbags to sustain terrorist sanctuaries and operations, and in death serve as theatrical props duping a gullible public in a public relations campaign.
By intent focus on mutilation and murder of civilians, including their own tribes and families, terrorists most nearly reflect definitions of a cancer or virus, which brings fatal malignancy and disease to adjacent living organisms and itself. By treating terrorists as legitimate authorities, apologists and supporters, whether media, political parties, or countries, promote an allegorical biological war against a billion people of Muslim faith, and billions more terrorist’s ghoulish heresies consider sub-human, permissible objects for slaughter.
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