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Originally Posted by horatio
if my family/country/planet was threatened I wouldn't hesitate to torture and kill either.
I say screw tolerance, nobody needs to tolerate his enemy.
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Unless your Spock and decide you don't want to save the person who destroyed you're entire planet and was threatening another deliberately, of course.
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What about the terrorists who founded the US aka founding fathers? One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
Don't get me wrong, I don't condone the 9/11 criminals, on the contrary mass murderers are mass murderers. This case is crystal clear, these terrorists suck.
But if you take a look at Palestine or Northern Irish terrorists the waters become a bit muddy.
Or take dissidents in a tolaritarian regime, they are labeled terrorists by the ruling nazis/communists/autocrats. This case is crystal clear, these terrorists rule.
So I think that the term terrorist is too broad to be useful.
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This is part of the problem to a great degree - definition and perception of who or what actually 'is' a terrorist.
To the British in the 1700s the revolutionary American colonists could easily be termed as such in todays terms, yet from the Colonists side they were merely taking a stand against their distant rulers.
For every relatively clear case - there is a distinctly muddy one.