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TERRORISM

                                             December 4, 2006


Daniel Okrent boldly announced that
he thinks that the New York Times has         New York Times, March 6, 2005
been too timid about using the word           "The War of the Words:
"terrorist" in, say, talking about a          A Dispatch From the Front Lines"
PLO bombing that kills a bunch of
civilians.

  This completely misses the real
  problem with the common usage.

  Terrorists are people who target            Or pick a more literal
  innocent, civilian populations,             definition, if you like:
  correct?  So that means you                 "Shock and Awe" --
  should use the word to describe             doesn't that sound like
  Israel's assault on Lebanon,                an attempt at inducing
  right?                                      terror?

     Are you not allowed to
     call them terrorists
     because:

         o  They're killing *lots* of
            civilians and terrorists         (But you'd think the 9/11
            are pipsqueaks who only          bodycount was high enough
            kill by the dozens.              to qualify Osama Bin Laden
                                             as a statesman.)
         o  They're doing it with US
            weapons.

         o  They claim they're not
            targeting civilians.

            (Somewhere or other in                      THE_TRUE_FISK
            the thousand Lebanese
            dead, there may be a
            few members of Hezbollah.)


                       "Yet the fact that Hezbollah fighters
                       mingled with the civilian population in
                       some places does not mean that all attacks
                       on civilians were justified. If that were
                       the case, it might also be argued that
                       attacks on Israeli cafés and buses
                       are justified because Israeli soldiers
                       patronize cafés and ride
                       buses. Such a stance would clearly be
                       monstrous."

                                 -- Aryeh Neier,
                                    "New York Review of Books"
                                    [ref]



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