User talk:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-TerrEssay

Glossary or other guide?

This was originally posted at WT:SLR

Forgive me if this is present and I missed it, but, as someone who is not a Project member but encountered a problem, resolved amicably with everyone involved learning things, that was caused by a combination of different usages of "general" phrases, as well as being aware of the SRL project's usage. I'm not trying to criticize anyone, but simply note the "Lessons Learned". The Military History Project is creating an assortment of essays to record lessons learned (a common military term of art), and give guidance to editors in finding certain materials. Perhaps there can be some equivalent "lesson learned" here, although I don't know how to solve the problem when an editor does good faith edits that do not reflect what the SRL project considers neutral language; the best I can suggest is not immediately to revert or edit, but to bring up the concern on the article's talk page, and initially to assume good faith if the editor does not seem familiar with the details of Sri Lankan matters.

In the specific, everyone agreed, I think, that "war on terror" and "global war on terror" are essentially meaningless terms used by politicians and lazy journalists. Even "terrorist group" is marginal, and, at least to military specialists, says nothing about ideology, who is right, etc. Perhaps an analogy would help: it is fair to call the US and Russia "nuclear powers". That could probably be rephrased to "nuclear weapons groups" without any real loss of meaning. One could call the UK and France and Japan and Argentina "naval powers", without judging who was right or wrong in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict.

There was a sensitivity about my referring to antiterror and counterterror, apparently because it implied, to some, that using these terms somehow made one side a "bad guy" in the "global war on terror". That was not the intention; it was first to establish that one side used terror tactics/weapons just as the above used ships or nuclear weapons. Antiterror and counterterror are specific sets of measures used to reduce the danger of terrorist attacks.

Please correct me if I misunderstand, but, on scanning through the project pages, it seems as if the terms "government" and "rebel" are considered descriptive and neutral. It might be very helpful if there were a section on "neutral terminology" that editors, not intimately familiar with the Sri Lanka situation, could use without setting off protests, reverts, etc. In the particular case, there was a lack of knowledge on both sides; I was using counterterror and antiterror (in the Counter-terror article) as specific terms of military art, while an editor, expert in Sri Lanka, interpreted this as both labeling a side as using counterterror or terror makes it "bad", and also that using the terms made the issue part of the "Global War on Terror". We were talking past one another, although after several exchanges of moderately heated reverts and talk comments, we began to see one anothers' positions, and User:Black Falcon was extremely helpful in mediating.

There are other terms that might be even more difficult to define, but will come up. Some, at least when used in a military context, carry no implicit condemnation. For example, "assassination", especially of a military or political leader, has "mainstream media" negative qualities, but sometimes is a perfectly legal act in a war -- consider the WWII interception and shootdown of the commander of the Japanese Mobile Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto. While killing him was the goal -- a sad one in a way, because, in hindsight, many on both sides regard him as an honorable man -- he was in uniform, in a military aircraft, and attacked by US military aircraft over the ocean, where there were no civilians at risk. I don't think there's a serious military historian that would call this terrorism. Again with WWII examples, I haven't seen the Japanese kamikaze attacks called terror, because they were exclusively directed at military targets at sea, away from civilians. "Suicide attack", then, does not imply "terrorist". A rebel boat ramming a government boat is not a terrorist attack.

Not to limit the examples to Sri Lanka, while LCDR Gerard Roope, RN, may not have intended to die when he rammed the German cruiser Admiral Hipper with his badly damaged destroyer, HMS Glowworm. Showing honor among deadly enemies, Roope received a posthumous Victoria Cross based on a letter, sent through the International Red Cross to the British, He received this honour in part due to the recommendation of his opponent, Captain Hellmuth Heye describing the courage shown by his opponent. Perhaps we will again see such chivalry in war.

Does the SRL project have an accepted term for assassinations or other targeted attacks that appear to use methods that would be likely to injure or kill civilians as well as the target? In military writing, a distinction gets drawn between the situation where civilians are not targets, but the nature of the weapon used, perhaps the only possible weapon, causes "collateral damage" among innocents. When the weapon is chosen to maximize civilian casualties, that may be called a terror attack, but that does not mean the entire group are terrorists. One sad example from WWII was requested by the Danish underground: bombing the Gestapo headquarters in urban Copenhagen, in order to destroy records, kill secret police, and possibly free prisoners. The Danes understood that with the weapons of the time, there would be civilian casualties; one especially bitter incident was when one of the bombers was shot down and crashed into an orphanage. The Nazis might have called this "terrorism" in their propaganda (although the word was not yet in common use), but neither the UK or the Danese regarded it as such. See Aquinas' Principle of Double Effect for an ethical guideline.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:56, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a great suggestion that will resolve a lot of un warranted discussions. ThanksTaprobanus (talk)

I'm working on an "essay" for the Military History Project, which has some "unencyclopedic" project pages intended to give informal guidance to editors. Perhaps that draft can be reviewed by people from this project, at least with respect to things such as "terror", "counterterror", "antiterror", and how little any of those terms of military art have to do with the "Global War on Terror".

Your project, however, could have its own reference that would have helped me -- apparently, "government" and "rebels" are considered fairly neutral? I don't know if there are any particular meanings you assign to "assassination" or "suicide attack". As I mentioned above, there are examples of both from conventional warfare between nation-states, which no one seriously called terror. That is not to say there were no state-sponsored acts of terror in World War Two, ranging from the "dehousing strategy" of deliberate population bombing by British Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur Tedder, to Japanese reprisals against China after the Doolittle Raid.

In general, it starts with the premise that military methods are separable from ideology and perhaps culturally dependent views of good and evil. Just to avoid falling immediately into the emotionally laden issue of terrorism, I plan to start with air warfare, and then explain how there are defensive methods that either disable the enemy air force at its bases ("Offensive counter-air") or protect targets from air attack ("Defensive counter-air"). You may observe that "anti-" and "counter-" are not universal terms.

Following this example, I am going to give a rough definition of terrorism, not to be exhaustive but as a working reference. Counterterror is the "far" defense and antiterror is the "near" defense, or, if you will, counterterror is "offensive" and "preemptive" while antiterror is "defensive". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 23:02, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

An essay on terms

See User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-TerrEssay as a starting point for disambiguating terms relating to terror. Perhaps it might help be a template for other sensitive terminology. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 21:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)