the outcome of the election

[Occhidiangela]

First of all, this is what we are talking about, please try and avoid shifting context...
It is arbitrary.  As has been exemplified in Iraq, bombs need not fall from the sky to be effective military tools.  Perhaps my examples made my comments unclear, but they were drawn from Ashock's own post, so I thought they might be effective.
That purpose being?  Intimidation.  Terror.  Revenge.  Dresden had no strategic significance, aside from being a temporary home for thousands of fleeing refugees. 

That being said, my comments had nothing to do with the context of the bombings.  It had everything to do with the fact that a bomb falling from the sky is not somehow inherently a more legitimate tool than is one set up on the roadside or in a car.  By this I was referring to the situation in Iraq, in particular, which is currently a nation in full-scale war - certainly not a society at peace.  I find it amusing that our news automatically reports Iraqi insurgents as 'terrorists' when they are, in fact, more like underequipped military combatants.  The distinction re: a nation at peace is a good one.  I think that it applies perfectly in Iraq.  If the Iraqis had invaded, let's say, Saudi Arabia, I sincerely doubt whether we would be referring to Saudi resistance fighters as 'terrorists'...
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The attempt to equate two actions as equivalent due to superficial similiarty, such as an explosion being involved, is an old rhetorical device. That does not make the analogy accurate. Let's see, soccer and basketball are the same game, via your attempt here, since they both use a round ball to score points and make their successful stars wealthy.

As far as terrorist classification, the problem the Sunni Triangle's insurgents have is that they have allied themselves with terrorists, such as Zarqawi, and they use a terrorist's methods: murdering Iraqi National Guard Recruits, car bombing police stations, IED's and car bombs versus not only non combatants, but also peaceful foreigners who are in Iraq trying to rebuild it for whoever is next in charge.

Their common, terroristic, illegitimate aim is almost apocalyptic, sort of an Iraqi Gotterdamerung: if I can't be in charge, I will bring us all down in a great battle in flames, and no one will have anything to be in charge of. Or, maybe that's Samsonian! Hehehe, one might want to tell those Arabs that they are acting like a Hebrew, that would probably send them spinning into the ceiling! Snort.

I agree with your disappointment in the mixing going on in reportage. The Sunni faction, Sadr's faction, and Al Qaeda/Zarqawi's faction, to name just three (there are some others up north who get less press, and I think Ansar Al Islam is still mucking about in the eastern borderlands) are using the tools of terror for their own ends. Each has, other than killing Americans -- who they really want out of there -- the explicit aim of the violent and bloody destruction of stability, loss of confidence in the interim government, and sabotage of the election. I could go on.

The mortar attacks and RPG attacks and the IED's versus military convoys are typical partisan activity, Lawrence of Arabia 90 years later. :rolleyes: Terroristic attacks, undisciplined and careless of who dies so long as the threat of dying remains as blackmail and a threat "if you don't do it my way!"

That activity is completely different from what comes from the sky, and is completely different from trying to end a war, and is also different from a reprisal. You miss the point about what a strategic ami is: the strategic aim of a reprisal as payback is indeed a strategic aim - strategic aims in a war ARE NOT EXCLUSIVELY MILITARY IN NATURE!

As to the folks in Fallujah and elsewhere in Iraq, "military combatants" do not cut off the heads of kidnapped aid workers and send the film the BBC or Al Jizz Here, Yeah. Your lack of precision, your half an analogy, does not add to the discussion. The underequipped combatants in Karballah, back in May, foreign recruits who ran into well disciplined troops and died with incredible dispatch, are a different case, and at present, not even on the playing field.

That said, those advocates of air power who try to "break the will of a nation by bombing them into submission" (Julio Douhet and Curtis Lemay come to mind, as do John Warden and Wesley Clarke-Bill Clinton-Jacques Chirac) more closely approximate what you are referring to in terms of terror bombing. . . when a state of war already exists between two states. The terrorists at hand in this discussion are not states, though some of the Sunni rebels were well connected to Saddam's power network. To borrow one of Jester's favorite terms, they have no legitimacy. They are by every measure outlaw, in the oldest and fullest sense of the term.

Dresden is the usual red herring. An explicit harnessing of the emotions of a nation in the grips of total war extrapolated into another context. Unless you were a participant of some of the pre Iraq War protest rallies in Canada, I don't think you have a grip on the power of emotion, particularly public emotion, and its influence on policy. The anti war protests would have given you a thin glimpse of that: try imagining that level of emotion being sustained, for about 4 years. War is a significant emotional event. If you want to second guess Winston Churchill 60 years later, go ahead, but your lack of context is showing.

Dropping bombs in a war is an accepted convention when one is at war. When one is attempting to destroy a civil society, or an emerging civil society, or to change civil society via the use of fear and terror and the threat of more, one is attempting a far different aim than simple destruction of selected targets. I can promise you, what is going on in the skies over Iraq today is explicit, discrete, incredibly restrained, target oriented attack. I spent some months involved in that. Your attempt to equate legal military action, as bloody and lethal as it is, with criminal activity is not only wrong, but insulting to anyone who has served honorably under the colors -- of any nation. I immediately forgive you, however, as I am probably too close, in both time and experience, to that particular piece of the manure pie that is Iraq of 11 November, 2004. :D

Occhi