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If a target of no military value is blown the fuck up, everyone involved who knew it had no military value is guilty of a crime.

A target with 'military value' is a vague concept.

If an entire city is considered as having a military value. Bombing the shit out of it is acceptable, then.

Right?

I imagine the accepted rate of collateral damage varies depending on the target's size.


Anyway.
Just arguing for the sake of argument.

For example, Dresden? Or the firebombings of civilian areas of Tokyo?

For instance.

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I read something about that on my hair dryer. Oh, "hair dryer" is the word I use for computer.

Well, a better example would be a term like refugee. In common parlance it means anyone fleeing some kind of natural disaster or oppressive social system, but in law it usually means someone who satisfies the considerably more narrow definition under the UN Convention on Refugees as that definition is interpreted by the local courts - which, oversimplified, is someone fleeing persecution for one of the five reasons mentioned in the Convention. So, like that.

I don't understand how any of this matters to a soldier or civilian on the ground.

Does the victim of a bombing, their guts splayed across an advert for Nokia, care whether it was act of terroism or war?

No. Terminology is used to sell the myth of war to the public. The rest is incedental semantics for those caught up in the actuality of the beast itself.

Debating the philology of war is like telling the minimum wage worker at McDonald's that the term supersize will now be known as "premium."

If we can accept the notion that the power to define is the power to control, then these words become important not to those suffering under the conditions of war but to those who either wish to bring a war to an end or to continue it.

In the moment, such distinctions may go by the wayside. But at a distance (where most of us, here, operate), we owe it to those who are in harm's way to be precise.

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
If we can accept the notion that the power to define is the power to control, then these words become important not to those suffering under the conditions of war but to those who either wish to bring a war to an end or to continue it.

In the moment, such distinctions may go by the wayside. But at a distance (where most of us, here, operate), we owe it to those who are in harm's way to be precise.

I don't think precison alters the impetus to go to war. I think the debate over semantic terminology merely serves to further obscure and distance the essentiality of the thing being discussed. It leads to elliptical results while the object, as such, is left unmolested.

Which is recisely the point of such debates on the part of decision makers, they use the morass of language to affiliate it with morality and in so doing obfuscate the war that continues to plod along whilst people are caught in the ruse of philology.

What I'm trying to figure out, though, is how, exactly, you expect to call them on their bullshit without first being able to pick apart their meaning?

Isn't getting closer to the "essential" quality of the problem being discussed a matter of linguistic precision, what with language being what little we have to go on? Beyond, of course, Samuel Fuller's chestnut about how a truly realistic war film should have snipers firing live ammunition into the audience.

I think I largely agree with you about the obfuscation. I'm just not clear on how an end run around the increasing complexity of definitions surrounding war is strictly possible without creating a competing set of definitions/terminology: hijacking the language, for example.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
Thomas Mann

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Originally posted by Justy:
What I'm trying to figure out, though, is how, exactly, you expect to call them on their bullshit without first being able to pick apart their meaning?

Isn't getting closer to the "essential" quality of the problem being discussed a matter of linguistic precision, what with language being what little we have to go on? Beyond, of course, Samuel Fuller's chestnut about how a truly realistic war film should have snipers firing live ammunition into the audience.

I think I largely agree with you about the obfuscation. I'm just not clear on how an end run around the increasing complexity of definitions surrounding war is strictly possible without creating a competing set of definitions/terminology: hijacking the language, for example.

I don't believe an end run is possible. I think language is a tool used to bolster the myth of war I do not belive it is otherwise casusal. I don't believe there is such a thing as "highjacking language" as language is a wholly human construct lent meaning only insofar as we allow ourselves to do so. True, one can skew the census opinion of the meaning of a word, but I believe that people are only played to the extent that they want to played in such an instance. Terminology provides a convenient rubric of jingoism, nationalism, imperialism and so on under which man can pursue war. Which, in my opinion, is a force unto itslef, beyond language, beyond individual reason.

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Originally posted by oddmanrush:
War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
Thomas Mann

I can agree with Mann to a certain extent I think Ben is trite and I think quotes free one from putting their own opinion on the line.

Both those quotes represent my opinions.

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Hi! This is a nice town, ain't it?

Yer back! Welcome so.
Could you believe the friggin' weather yestiddy?

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Originally posted by Justy:
What I'm trying to figure out, though, is how, exactly, you expect to call them on their bullshit without first being able to pick apart their meaning?

Isn't getting closer to the "essential" quality of the problem being discussed a matter of linguistic precision, what with language being what little we have to go on? Beyond, of course, Samuel Fuller's chestnut about how a truly realistic war film should have snipers firing live ammunition into the audience.

I think I largely agree with you about the obfuscation. I'm just not clear on how an end run around the increasing complexity of definitions surrounding war is strictly possible without creating a competing set of definitions/terminology: hijacking the language, for example.

"For an exact science, an exact language is needed."

I see this arguement dealing with the manipulation of the language itself. Terrorism is being used in this context specifficly because it invokes feelings in the mind of the reader wether they feel that way or not, or even realize why they feel that way. The powers that be would like to use "terrorism" to define what the bad guys do. When the same powers that be do something bad themselves, wether it is in fact called something else, the word "terrorism" is applied to them by their opposition in order to say "the powers that be are just as bad as the bad guys".

The problem this poses is, when I read "terrorism" I may not want those feelings to be invoked. When those feelings are invoked, if it strikes me as a feeling that doesn't fit my opinions of the situation, I become offended.

This is the same reason people get offended when they hear or read "Fuck You!" instead of "Frack You". The former is a more emotionally charged phrase, where the latter means the exact same thing, but has been stripped of it's charge because it doesn't have the same historical connotations and doesn't invoke the same feelings.

So in the interest of reporting, it is best to use the most speciffic and accurate definitions of the words to describe the situation so that the reader can make his or her own decisions on how he or she feels about the situation.

The American English Dictionary, circa 2000

Terrorism: Any group that doesn't have its own UN-recognized flag taking military action. If a group DOES have it's own flag, it's merely conducting warfare, not terrorism.

At least, that is essentially what we've been told. Burma cracks down (literally) on protesters, killing many and imprisoning more? It's a military action, an internal one at that, so we can't do shit about it. A few Kurds get angry enough to pick up weapons, and it's terrorism, and then it's OK for Turkey to invade Iraq...it's not like there wasn't precedence for it.

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Originally posted by Boogerhead:
"For an exact science, an exact language is needed."

War isn't science, it's expressionism.

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Originally posted by Clark Nova:So in the interest of reporting, it is best to use the most speciffic and accurate definitions of the words to describe the situation so that the reader can make his or her own decisions on how he or she feels about the situation.

I put unbiased reporting in the same category as unicorns.

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Originally posted by UberDog:

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Originally posted by Boogerhead:
"For an exact science, an exact language is needed."

War isn't science, it's expressionism.

Ok, so now you're Webster? Fuck that, war is the reason for science.

War is not the reason for science. Fortunately. But it is the turbocharger for its advance. Mainly, it is the huge resources that suddenly become available for research when there is a war on that just are not there in peaceful times, rather than any particular link between one and the other.