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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

Your definition is not quite accurate. Some forms of violence performed to promote an ideology are called war.

In fact, war is by far the most common, and the most destructive form of 'violence used to promote an ideology'.

Perhaps war is a form of terrorism.

One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't. Deliberately targeting civilians in war is usually considered a war crime, while deliberately targeting civilians in a terrorist attack is considered ... a standard terrorist attack.

> One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't.

Citation needed? Unless every party to a war ever signed the Geneva Convention or something (and even then, war crimes exist which are arguably acts of terrorism). See: the use of agent orange, the bombing of Dresden, etc.

Lol yeah, Total warfare[0] has no rules:

"A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

What about terrorists that primarily target a government, or various government institutions? Note that nearly every government organization[1] is generally considered a perfectly acceptable target in a war. It should also be noted that government offices tend to be full of civilians. What about factories producing war materials? They are also staffed by civilians. Factories producing materials that are used by factories that produce war materials? The list goes on.

The rules of war are not all that confining, and largely go out the window when one side starts losing.

[1] With a few exceptions.

War has rules? Until it doesn’t. Look at the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was concluded by an agreement for a total withdrawal of PLO forces from Lebanon with promises by the Israelis not to attack Palestinians. This was negotiated through US mediators. So what did the Israelis do? They lit the sky for their proxy forces to roam the newly defenseless refugee camps and carry out their killings [1].

In the end, I wonder which has destroyed more human lives?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre

There is truth to this, particularly the sorts of war that target civilian populations to demoralize the enemy. Another term for 'strategic bombing' is 'terror bombing'.

> One of the strategies of war is to demoralize the enemy so that peace or surrender becomes preferable to continuing the conflict. Strategic bombing has been used to this end. The phrase "terror bombing" entered the English lexicon towards the end of World War II and many strategic bombing campaigns and individual raids have been described as terror bombing by commentators and historians. Because the term has pejorative connotations, some, including the Allies of World War II, have preferred to use euphemisms such as "will to resist" and "morale bombings".[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing

You could define it like that but why?

Why do you think war is not terrorizing/terrorism?

Generally speaking the definitions of terrorism preclude state actors from being included (kind of a cop out, but they literally have carve-outs for the state).

See the US legal definition of terrorism:

    premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents

Title 22 Chapter 38 U.S. Code § 2656f

Generally speaking, wartime actions by one state against another don't seem to be included in this group. That being said, there's not exactly an agreed upon definition of terrorism, the best I can come up with is "acts of political violence that don't fall into the category of war"

A good place to start for more reading on the differences between the legal definitions of terrorism in different countries is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism#In_nat...

It's not just the US, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_terrorism

Isn’t the part that makes it less like terrorism that you ‘declare war’ on a different nation first?

That’s why pearl harbor is seen more like terrorism, and the rest of the war more like war.

Pearl Harbor is not seen as terrorism. It's seen as a military attack on the United States, and an act of war.

United States hasn't declared war since 1942: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...

"The last time the United States formally declared war, using specific terminology, on any nation was in 1942, when war was declared against Axis-allied Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, because President Franklin Roosevelt thought it was improper to engage in hostilities against a country without a formal declaration of war. Since then, every American president has used military force without a declaration of war."

The rules that apply to countries is different than those that apply to non countries. Declaring war doesn't change much. Many terrorist groups declare war before blowing stuff up, it doesn't let them off the hook.

The current popular meaning of terrorism was made up by certain state actors to justify their actions. So naturally they included a "doesn't apply to states" clause in their definition.

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