The Glade 4.0

Wow, dude. Its threads like this that really make me question your sanity.

Just to be clear -

Major Hassan - crazy guy, kills people in the name of his ideology. He is a terrorist.

Scott Roeder - Crazy guy, kills an abortion doctor in a totally mis-guided act of defense of the unborn. He is not a terrorist.

What is the difference between these men? Well, one of them is Islamic, and has a funny name. The other is Christian, and has an American name. Both men were so crazy, and devoted to their ideology, that they took life in it's name. One was classified as a terrorist (by you, if I recall correctly). The other is not.

The only difference between the two is how many people they killed.

And I'm the crazy one?

Ahh, so Scott Roeder's murder of an abortion provider was merely "misguided". Do you then think that Major Hassan was merely "misguided" in his sincere beliefs about the war in Afghanistan?

You could make a good argument that neither of those men are terrorists.

Is not the description of a terrorism an attack on a civilian center or civilian infrastructure? Hassan's attack was clearly against a military installation... doesn't that make him an "insurgent" rather than a terrorist?

I didn't say he was "merely" misguided. He is a murderer, after all.

Hassan is a terrorist. There is a difference.

Is not the description of a terrorism an attack on a civilian center or civilian infrastructure? Hassan's attack was clearly against a military installation... doesn't that make him an "insurgent" rather than a terrorist?

Scott Roeder killed one person in the name of his ideology. The incompetent fool, pawn and murderer was quickly caught and will be behind bars the rest of his life hopefully. He deserves life imprisonment at the minimum, but was not a true terrorist.

Major Hasan was an attempted suicide by cop unfulfilled. He is a coward and an indiscriminate murderer. He wanted to be a martyr, to die in the fight, and he didn't succeed.

We will continue to disagree on what constitutes a terrorist. The term is overused with little understanding of what it truly means, and you are among the worst offenders in this misuse Monte, you use the term as a political tool with what I see as no real understanding of what it means.

If they do, then every police officer, every soldier, and every prison guard in every country could be classified as a terrorist.

Then again, you believe that already anyway, don't you?

True, but he did attack in an area where the military was unarmed. He had no illusions that he was going to single-handedly capture the entire base, barring total insanity. An insurgent would have such a goal in mind; bring enough men to capture the base or part of it to achieve an objective.

No. Terrorists attacked the US Cole, the Marine Barracks back in the 80's, and continue to hit both civilian and military targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If *they* are terrorists, than so too is Scott Roeder.

If Islam is a violent religion because of their acts of terror, than Christianity is a violent religion because of Scott Roeder's act.

I would say, if my understanding of the definitions are accurate (again, not a military man, but we like to play semantics on this board), the Cole and Marine barracks were not terrorist attacks anymore than the Maine. We just politically didn't feel like pressing the issue as an act of war.

Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against them.

The Year in Review (1984)
The pace of international terrorist activity around the world continued unabated during 1984. We recorded nearly 600 international terrorist attacks involving personal injury or property damage, representing an increase over each of the previous four years. Deaths in 1984 exceeded 300. These numbers, when viewed in the context of the past 15 years, suggest that the overall threat may again be increasing.

US citizens and interests remained a prime target of foreign terrorists around the world, followed by those of France and Israel. More than 20 percent of international terrorist incidents in 1984 involved US targets. This notwithstanding, in 1984 the United States was the victim of fewer attacks than in each of the four preceding years and suffered substantially fewer casualties than in 1983. The year 1983 was anomalous, however, because of the extraordinarily high death toll of 241 in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon in October.

The major trend apparent in 1984 was the growing dominance of the Middle East as the crucible of terrorism. In 1984, nearly half of all international terrorist attacks either occurred in the Middle East or were committed elsewhere by Middle Easterners. Indeed, of the eight incidents that resulted in US fatalities last year, four occurred in the Middle East, and a fifth had a Middle Eastern connection. Among the major incidents were the truck bombing of the US Embassy Annex in East Beirut, which killed two US citizens in September, and the hijacking of a Kuwaiti Airlines flight from Kuwait to Tehran in December. Two US AID employees were murdered by the radical Lebanese Shia hijackers before the latter incident ended.

Umm, Al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, and I don't think you and I would disagree that they are terrorists. Terrorists can attack both civilian and military targets, depending on their desired outcome.

Umm, Al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the Cole, and I don't think you and I would disagree that they are terrorists. Terrorists can attack both civilian and military targets, depending on their desired outcome.

Terrorism is crime. You know who said that? Reagan. I think this is an interesting bit of perspective -



Interesting how far we have come. And before someone tries to argue that things are so much worse now -



In 2008, we had fewer terror attacks than at this point in history. Ronald Reagan, the face of this, promoted the rule of law and criminal courts to prosecute and deal with terrorism, both as a means of success, and a means of disputing their ideology.

Terrorists are criminals. Which, ultimately brings me to the point I am trying to make. In our country, we have decided that Terrorists are extra special enemies that we have to deal with militarily. We don't like categorizing our own people in that light. What would that mean? How could christian americans be the same as Islamic terrorists? Our lizard brains don't like it one bit. And the reason for that is simple - since 9-11, we have decided to stop thinking of terrorism as what it is, and instead have chosen to lionize terrorism into something it is not. We allowed ourselves to be scared into this outlook. We let Fox News, and the Bush administraiton, and sensationalist 24 hour news cycles tell us that the terrorists were a massive coordinated shadow organization that could only be defeated militarily.

Thus, we concluded, nothing domestic could possibly be classified as terrorism.

Scott Roeder, the Shoe Bomber, the Underoo Bomber, abortion clinic arsonists and bombers, Major Hassan, and Tim McVeigh have a lot in common. They are all violent. They are all extremists, both ideologically and religiously. They are all willing to kill for their ideology. They are all willing to kill unarmed civilians for their ideology. And they are all merely criminals. They are also all terrorists.

When Dick Cheney goes on Fox News and says that Obama is approaching terrorism erroneously because he's not approaching it from the perspective of a declared war, he is not only being disingenuous on the facts, but he's ignoring the reality of terrorism. It's organized (more or less) crime, when it comes to organizations like Al Qaeda. It's still terrorism when like-minded extremists use violence to push their political agenda.

Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization, yes, I agree, because of their tendency to attack civilians. That does not make the specifics of the Cole attack terrorism.

Just to be clear -

Major Hassan - crazy guy, kills people in the name of his ideology. He is a terrorist.

Scott Roeder - Crazy guy, kills people in the name of his ideology. He is not a terrorist.

What is the difference between these men? Well, one of them is Islamic, and has a funny name. The other is Christian, and has an American name. Both men were so crazy, and devoted to their ideology, that they took life in it's name. One was classified as a terrorist (by you, if I recall correctly). The other is not.

The only difference between the two is how many people they killed.

And I'm the crazy one?

The fact that terrorists are criminals does not make all criminals, even violent or ideologically-motivated ones, terrorists.

A terrorist has to be trying to create fear in the ppulace or the government in general to affect political change. This guy wasn't doing that.

He was a violent nutcase with a personal agenda.

He was not claiming that abortion needed to be stop or more people would do as he did; he argued that what he did was perfectly legal.

The claims that "more will come" ar ebing fabricated by the feminazi abortion groups.

peration Rescue denounced Tiller's murder in numerous statements, describing it as "cowardly"[17][18] and "antithetical to what we believe"[19] The group also noted that Roeder had "never been a member, contributor, or volunteer with Operation Rescue."[20] Roeder responded to Newman's charges by declaring, "Well, my gosh. I've got probably a thousand dollars worth of receipts, at least, from the money I've donated to him."[21]

However, the phone number for Operation Rescue's senior policy advisor, Cheryl Sullenger, was found on the dashboard of Scott Roeder's car[22]. At first Cheryl Sullenger denied any contact with him, saying that her phone number is freely available online. Then, she revised her statements, indicating that she informed Scott Roeder of where Dr Tiller would be at specific times:

"He would call and say, 'When does court start? When’s the next hearing?'" Sullenger said. "I was polite enough to give him the information. I had no reason not to. Who knew? Who knew, you know what I mean?"[4]

Cheryl Sullenger was also convicted in 1988 of attempting to bomb abortion clinics in the San Diego area.[23]

Arson, bombing, and property crime

According to NAF, since 1977 in the United States and Canada, property crimes committed against abortion providers have included 41 bombings, 173 arsons, 91 attempted bombings or arsons, 619 bomb threats, 1630 incidents of trespassing, 1264 incidents of vandalism, and 100 attacks with butyric acid ("stink bombs").[10] The first clinic arson occurred in Oregon in March 1976 and the first bombing occurred in February 1978 in Ohio.[15] More recent incidents have included:[5]

* December 25, 1984: An abortion clinic and two physicians' offices in Pensacola, Florida were bombed in the early morning of Christmas Day by a quartet of young people (Matt Goldsby, Jimmy Simmons, Kathy Simmons, Kaye Wiggins) who later called the bombings "a gift to Jesus on his birthday."[16][17][18]
* October 1999: Martin Uphoff set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, causing US$100 worth of damage. He was later sentenced to 60 months in prison.[19]
* May 28, 2000: An arson at a clinic in Concord, New Hampshire on resulted in damage estimated at US$20,000. The case remains unsolved.[20]
* September 30, 2000: A Catholic priest drove his car into the Northern Illinois Health Clinic after learning that the FDA had approved the drug RU-486. He pulled out an ax before being shot at by a security guard.[21]
* June 11, 2001: An unsolved bombing at a clinic in Tacoma, Washington destroyed a wall, resulting in US$6000 in damages.[19]
* July 4, 2005: A clinic Palm Beach, Florida was the target of an arson. The case remains open.[19]
* December 12, 2005: Patricia Hughes and Jeremy Dunahoe threw a Molotov cocktail at a clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana. The device missed the building and no damage was caused. In August 2006, Hughes was sentenced to six years in prison, and Dunahoe to one year. Hughes claimed the bomb was a “memorial lamp” for an abortion she had had there.[22]
* September 13, 2006 David McMenemy of Rochester Hills, Michigan crashed his car into the Edgerton Women's Care Center in Davenport, Iowa. He then doused the lobby in gasoline and then started a fire. McMenemy committed these acts in the belief that the center was performing abortions, however Edgerton is not an abortion clinic.[23]
* April 25, 2007: A package left at a women's health clinic in Austin, Texas contained an explosive device capable of inflicting serious injury or death. A bomb squad detonated the device after evacuating the building. Paul Ross Evans (who had a criminal record for armed robbery and theft) was found guilty of the crime.[24]
* May 9, 2007: An unidentified person deliberately set fire to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Virginia Beach, Virginia.[25]
* December 6, 2007: Chad Altman and Sergio Baca were arrested for the arson of Dr. Curtis Boyd's clinic in Albuquerque. Altman’s girlfriend had scheduled an appointment for an abortion at the clinic.[26]
* January 22, 2009 Matthew L. Derosia, 32, who was reported to have had a history of mental illness [27] rammed a SUV into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul, Minnesota.[28]

Fine. He's a terrorist.

Now what?