[ExI] Religions are not the ultimate cause of war

[Tomasz Rola]

On Sun, 30 Sep 2012, Charlie Stross wrote:

> 
> On 30 Sep 2012, at 04:47, Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > 
> >> (e.g. resistance fighters against WWII German invaders).
> > 
> > Uh, not agreed. Sorry to be such a rightous prick (I guess this is how I 
> > look) but resistance was not a terrorism.
> > 
> > Terrorists are, for me, some kind of brain washed borgs directed by 
> > cowards, going after _unarmed_ and _unprepared_ civilians whom they never 
> > before met.
> 
> 
> Er, no. Cognitive failure mode here. Repeat after me:
> 
> "Terrorism is a TACTIC, not an IDEOLOGY."
> 
> This is an important distinction to make. We designate people as 
> terrorists because of WHAT they do, not WHY they do it.

Well, up to now I thought this was exactly my point in my previous email - 
if not expressed in letter, then maybe in spirit at least. What they do is 
important. But I realise it is very important to understand why they do it 
and how they see the world. Otherwise, we are doomed to fighting the smoke 
instead of treating the fire.

> Unfortunately over the past decade we've run into a witch hunt in the 
> west, in which certain ideologies have been labelled "terrorist 
> ideologies". Which of course makes it impossible -- unacceptable -- to 
> negotiate with the moderates on the same side as the lunatic radicals 
[...]

I find it interesting subject of study, how the language gets mangled by 
various groups aiming for their own goals. It is fascinating, scary and 
pitiful. After all, our language is probably the only real thing 
distinguishing us from animals and the only tool we have against the 
Universe. Shitting into it for the purpose of selling more apples, this is 
really disgusting. Yet another reason to dislike humans. Or maybe help 
them. I am not decided.

> Here's the distinction: terrorism is a term applied to any tactic 
> designed to *terrify* a civilian population into doing something that 
> the user of those tactics want. The British RAF fire-bombing of German 
> cities during WW2 was pretty clearly an act of terrorism intended to 
> demoralize and scare the German civilian population towards surrender. 

RAF (and I guess USAAF) bombings were quite an "achievement" - what was 
little talked about, they managed to kill more civilians than both 
infamous atomic bombs in Japan. Or so I heard. BTW, it happened there was 
little or none important military targets, they were aimed just at 
civilians in some cases. Also, I have heard interesting story when a city 
had been razed, some important monuments including, but at the same time 
some places had been spared, like a research institution from which a lot 
of paper was transferred after the war. So this does not look like they 
did this with a big mop on a kilometer-long stick, no, seems like it was 
possible to do precisely as was required.

OTOH, it could be argued that without all those bombings the war would 
have lasted longer and the total number of victims would have been about 
the same or bigger.

OTOH, history is such a slut.

> So were the Nazi mass-reprisals against civilian populations in 
> territories they'd occupied, killing large numbers of random civilians 
> for each German soldier killed by the resistance.

And someone could point it was German soldiers who started this, by 
getting some civilians on the street and executing them there... And 
someone else could point that the soldiers did it as a reprisal for 
alleged (or maybe true) killing of some German minority members... I don't 
want to scratch too deeply, it is old story now, and it does not get any 
younger. It should be remembered from time to time, it should serve as 
learning material, but it should not be a basis for reasoning about today 
or tomorrow.

But since we are at it, it is good time to share my observation, that the 
ball was at German side few times when it came to making friends or foes 
from locals and IMHO this was busted every time because of some 
ill-adviced ideals, implemented mechanically without regard to the facts. 
>From what I heard, my uderstanding is, this happened in Poland and in 
Soviet Russia (and perhaps in Slovakia, too) - all cases later proved 
crucial for winning the war... or loosing it.

(Perhaps each side implemented their own ideals disregarding facts, it is 
possible, it may be discussed, from what I learned about human nature, 
something as idiotic as this would not surprise me at all - if anybody 
has problem understanding what I mean, try to imagine armies of blind 
idiots fighting each other in the middle of the night, with a big 
elephant in the middle of battlefield). 

This may sound like yet another offtopic that I specialize in, or maybe 
not. Depends who wants to learn from the past.

Say, if we came to a hypothesis, that terror was - at least in part - a 
result of failure to comunicate and applying wrong means to misunderstood 
problems. Or maybe it is too trivial to be called a hypothesis, maybe.

[...]
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samina_Malik
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/12/anattackonliberty
> 
> It may be bad taste, and it may be stupid, but it's not terrorism. 
> 
> We should be much more careful about how we use that term ...

Oh, I did not know about this. Interesting. I can see, there is quite a 
big part of Western society disconnected from whatever ideas are shared by 
another part, the one owning television. Sounds like a recipe for Guy 
Fawkes fireworks or something.

It is possible her case was to be a warning for members of this first 
part, who are illiterate enough to not understand true meaning of their 
words, and are trying to find some kind of hero they could imitate. Girls 
below some age, they seem to love martyrs of all kind (claim based on 
anecdotical evidence from Polish history).

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **