Show of Hands

You don't need to attack the US to be a terrorist. Attacking your own people to terrorize them into submission, as the Taliban routinely does, counts as terrorism just as much.

No, they are terrorists. The Taliban routinely uses terrorist tactics by targeting civilian populations within Afghanistan.

so dis the US military

Maybe not every last one of them, but they are a kind of blended fundamentalists that basically reject the modern world and use terrorism fairly indiscriminately to promote their vision of a future as a past that never really existed. The bad guys.

How many politicians execute and keep girls from going to school? Or use that glorious option of honor killing a female because she doesn't, as a 12 year old, like the 45 year old her parents picked out for her to marry? Get real they are terrorists!

They harbored terrorists.
In the US view after 9/11, when we were hunting terrorists, if you harbored terrorists you were just as guilty.

Getting wrapped around the term is pointless. The Taliban are waging war against the Afghan govt and the US troops assisting them. They are "the enemy" in Afghanistan.

The US has aided and supplied arms to countless groups one could consider "terrorists." Does that make the US government a terrorist organization?

Typical liberal thinking, until they kill you, this kind of thinking is stupid!

There is no standard, generally recognized definition of terrorism. I go with the classic: "The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims."

There is a reason there is no generally recognized definition of terrorism.

The word itself is used to provoke certain feelings, like fear and anger. Politicians have popularized it because of its power to further an Us vs Them dichotomy.

Consider the colossal stupidity of negotiating with the man who was the leader of the Taliban when we invaded in 2001, and agreeing to return his top lieutenants just as we are preparing to leave.

13 years and 3,435 deaths later we leave with the same people in charge as when we arrived. Brilliant.

I agree in part. They now sometimes conduct terrorist actions, but that's not all they are about.

Still the bad guys.

Only semantically

Wouldn't that definition make any war a terrorist act?

By generalizing a complex organization by simply labeling them a terrorist group, we no longer feel compelled to understand them as people with motivations, needs, and desires.

They aren't people anymore. They are the enemy.

youtu.be/fXHkrxhDNcc

Human. I think any nation with leaders like this is beyond uncivilized. They're animals. Period. They are however, NOT an international terrorist group. Never have been. I hesitate to call them "Afg domestic terrorists" only because that broadens the

It's just a catch-all phrase to scare the American people into making us think we HAVE to be over there.

No. They're terrorists. Plain and simple. You should see what they do to their own.

If you are harboring a fugitive, you're in deep sh*t. You may not like that , but it's reality. That's what the Taliban were doing. Harboring/getting in the way.

As for the US being a terrorist, I guess it's all perception. I don't see it that way.

ZOD - i hear what you're saying, and I want to agree with you. The problem I have is that makes that chubby Korean guy, The king of Saudi, pretty much any dictator or group of dictators. Terrorism is different. Or at least I think the word should

Mean something different - it's defined differently too.

No, I don't believe that's the case. Democide implies they are a legitimate government that controls the country. The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the government that controls Afghanistan, not the Taliban. Perhaps the Taliban has formerly

They're as much terrorists as politicians are, of we're going by definitions

I do not like the Taliban. Truthfully, i think everything the group stands for is the opposite of what I consider "humanity." That being said, they are not terrorists. They have never attacked anyone from US with the exception of those within AFG,

About this whole damn thing? We started the damn Taliban's rise to
Power following the ending of the USSRs involvement in AFG. We trained them, armed them, and helped them start the takeover. Now here we are again 20 odd yrs later training, arming

I don't like the Taliban as much as the next guy. However, labeling them as terrorists is not only incorrect, it is a dehumanizing process.

This is why I refuse to call anyone a terrorist. The word is just a dysphemism.

Excellent use if the word dysphemism - I'll have to remember that. Lol.

Yeah....that's convenient, but inaccurate. They also tried very hard to advert the war, but GWB and Cheney would not be dissuaded. I think we could have handled it better, but honestly, at the time we were all so hurt and pissed, there really wasn't

Another course. They're not terrorists though. They have never attacked the US in any way.

Blows me away that we're cool with labeling them as such.

DUEY - calling this "liberal thinking" is a misnomer. This poll was in response to the POTUS releasing 5 Taliban leaders in exchange for our only US POW. I think the Taliban is an organization that commits acts that go everything I would define as

What are they? Aren't terrorists people who try to instill terror in others? Like 9/11, bus bombings, shootings, etc.?

Nope! Just scumbags! Shoot little girls because they want to learn. Beat women. very nice group.

Still, terrorists. ;)

They ARE "Afg domestic terrorists." To us, those held in GTO can only be classified as POWs or maybe political prisoners right? We (to the best of my knowledge) do not have a foreign policy (nor have we ever) that advocates the US imprisoning DTs

False!

SKINNER - i've been reading a lot about this tonight. the correct term is "DEMOCIDE."

from other countries right? That means that exchanging 5 enemy POWs for the one US POW is a completely legitimate action. It also means the remaining 77 AFG POWs should be released as soon as we have a peace treaty in place with AFG right? I hope you

Never attacked the US in any way? They've killed plenty of US soldiers.

KRAZY - read my comments to DEUY above, or SKINNER below. Does what I am trying to say make sense?

DUEY - look at the history of "enemy combatant." It is complete bullshit designed to give the POTUS carte blanche. A uniform is NOT necessary to be in a country's armed forces under the GC.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant

DUEY - I agree they're not politicians by any stretch. However, like I said, i think there's things worse than terrorists, and I'd lump them into to that. I don't mind for this argument calling them "Afg domestic terrorists." If we presuppose that,

Media/TV news is an entertainment venue now. I don't have any sense of getting the truth from them. They play everything up to fear or fake fear.

You can call it bullshit all you want but believe it or not there is a law that legalizes GITMO.
www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantanamo-detention-obama

Last political Q for tonight. We now return you to your regular broadcast schedule.

As the war ends these murders will be released. Would you want these people in a prison in your neighborhood and imagine the BS court dramas.

The fact is, the terms do matter. Downsizing a committer of Democide to a terrorist is ricockulous. Pol Pot and Mao are not anywhere close on scale to Timothy McVeigh. And the Taliban is nowhere near Al-Qaeda. You know what also really pisses me off