Quote Originally Posted by IAN 2411 View Post
I find it strange that you find something so serious so amusing. I wonder if you would be saying the same remark if it were your mother being hacked to death in front of you by these “Freedom Fighters.”
What I found amusing was the denuseri had the EXACT same thought that I had, to the exact words! While I can understand, sometimes, the need to kill to defend one's country/family, I don't find any kind of killing to be funny, regardless of who's doing it.

But the statement is nonetheless true, for the most part. Whether a group is termed Terrorist or Freedom Fighter can all-too-often depend on who's doing the naming. During WW2, the French Underground were considered patriots by the French, but criminals by the Germans. The American's who rebelled against England were, for the most part, considered criminals and even terrorists (though I doubt they used that term) by the British troops and the Loyalist civilians. Especially those "irregular" units that used guerrilla tactics, such as Francis Marion's group. Even those as nasty as the IRA and al-Qaeda are considered heroes by at least some of their own people.

For my part, when you start deliberately targeting civilians rather than military or infrastructure, you are crossing the line into terrorism. But even that line is blurred. Were the men who bombed German (or English) cities in WW2 acting as military units or as terrorists? When bombing factories, for example, there's little to question. But what about the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo, for example? Where they actually aiming at military targets, or terrorizing civilians?

Again, it's all a question of who's doing the defining.