Revisit terrorist acts in BSG

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#1

After the subway bombing of Moscow, the right response installed in me by my buddhist upbringing should have been to condemn all acts of taking innocent life. But while i feel those who died or injured by the bombing suffered unnecessary injustice, I feel like i can understand why the terrorists felt like that is the only option left for them to take.

While other terrorist acts such as the Bali bombing and 911, I feel the conspirators are manipulating religion for their own political gain and killing innocent people who have little to do with why the manipulated suffer.

So I am thinking really hard why I feel that way towards some terrorist acts. And it led me back to what happened on New Caprica.

Granted when the series ended, the main conspirators in the terrorist group were cylons… Tigh, Chief, Anders all are cylons. But they didn’t know that, and there were plenty of humans willing to join their cause. So to me they might as well have been all regular humans. If Tigh, Chief, Anders weren’t there to lead, other humans would have started that terrorist actions.

Along with killing Cylons, they were ok with causing collateral damage to humans, even intensionally killing humans who chose to work along the cylons to maintain peace. Yet, I identified with their position, and never felt what they did was wrong.

Because the Cylons are directly responsible for the situation of the colonists. And the Cylons are not allowing dialogue and true cooperation, they just wanted to keep the colonist under-control and follow their plan. I feel like the colonist are doing the only option left to them.

Can the same be said about the Chechen Black Widows? It is true that the argument about manipulating religion still applies to some degree in this case. But Russia did not exactly leave a peaceful option for the Chechen people to pursue their goal. When it was Chechen’s will to secede, Russia’s invaded the nation twice, killing more than 50,000 civilians combined and left many widows.

Now Chechnya is no longer independent, these widows blew up themselves in terrorist acts. Is that the same as other terrorist acts such as Bali bombing or 911?

Should any terrorist acts be condemned, or are there instances the situation that leads to people taking up terrorism are more to blame?

#2

I don’t really want to touch on the motivations and the pros/cons there of but I will say that in BSG, the specific suicide attack was a valid military tactic for that situation.

#3

just to go deeper. what makes the New Caprican resistance’s attack an military action.

i mean what separates military action and terrorism, when one side has been occupied and no longer have a legitimate military?

#4

Mainly? Uniforms. If both sides are wearing uniforms, its a military action. Terrorism and old fashion warmaking share one very important commonality: mass murder. The rest is just window dressing.

#5

by that definition then the actions taken by the resistance on New Caprica can not be counted as military action then.

though i would argue that modern warfare aims to avoid mass killing of non-enemy-combatants.

#6

Codes of Conduct in warfare seems to be a particularly European idea (I’m open to correction) and even there it’s tenuous at best. The Catholic Just War Doctrine, The Geneva Convention, etc. are honored most often in the breech (even today.)

#7

I disagree it’s the Colonial Military taking out the NCP both are uniformed forces, the NCP are clearly paramilitary in nature, and it also took out Cylons who are identified enemy forces

#8

the “colonial military” are on the battlestars, those on the surface are already discharged. i am not even sure they considered themselves as the military. let’s say they are military, they don’t fight in the conventional way, they were not even close to fighting a guerrilla war. and the NCP attack was actually aimed to kill Baltar, that was the main purpose.

what about Anders’ Seabucks terrorist attacks on the Cylons back on Caprica? In his mind he is blowing up enemy forces, but not all Cylons are for war against humans, and one of his blast caught two of the anti-war cylons. so is that terrorism?

#9

Would assassinating the head of Vichy France be terrorism? Of course not. Also how can you say they didn’t fight a guerrilla war? What would you call it?

Collateral damage, it happens in all forms of war. And if you remember at that point it was literally only them that were anti war lol. Those two.

#10

Guerrilla Warfare involves small coherent military forces fighting and retreating to harass the enemy, disrupt enemy supplies and communication. A guerrilla group’s aim is eventually grow to the size big enough to overpower the enemy force. example of that would be the Chinese Liberation Army fighting the Japanese and the Nationalist, or Fidel Castro back when he was hiding in Sierra Maestra.

The goal of the New Caprican Resistance and Ander’s cell on Caprica was just to inflict damage and pain. They are not planning to gain strength in numbers by their actions. They are not expecting to eventually over take the Cylons or any military target. All they want is to hurt the Cylons till the Cylons find it too costly to continue. That is pretty much the aim of terrorists.

#11

China had the notion of just war as well. Before invasion, both side will draft up reasons for the war, and it will often be read on the battle field. In the article both sides will recount the unjust acts of the other side. Though often they just made stuff up. There were also just conducts, including disclaiming ones rank and title before engaging in combat. Many of these notions of “just war” were transfered within the sino-spheres.

Though these notions were lost pretty much by Song dynasty after centuries of repeated warfare and occupation by the tribes from the steppes.

#12

One big difference comes to mind between the Moscow bombings and what happened on New Caprica: on New Caprica, they targeted infrastructure and “military” forces (ie. Cylons, NCP, etc.); in Moscow, the bombers specifically targeted civilians to cause as many deaths as possible.

Consider Red Dawn for instance. The Soviets invade, and the Soviets intently and maliciously cause lots of civilian deaths, and as such the Wolverines are forced to use guerrilla tactics against a much larger enemy military. Now, if the Wolverines were going around slaughtering Russian civilians who traveled and settled in the US under Soviet occupation, then you might not feel as good about their cause.

#13

but in a way you are argue that the skin jobs are not the Cylon military either. the Cylon military are the centurions and the raiders. certainly there are skin jobs working as military decision makers, but not every skin job is a military decision maker. even though every cylon have to agree with the decision makers in their line of model, but that was pretty much just taken for granted that everyone in the model should agree.

now transpose that to our society, where people have to vote for their decision makers. When the decision makers decides it is a good idea to invade another nation, while the people didn’t voice their disagreement, vote for another party or when neither options are available, raise up to stop their leaders, doesn’t like make them just like the skin jobs who are not in power?

#14

Yes looked at logically no matter what form of government the country you are a part of uses ultimately each and every one of us is responsible for it’s actions and despite what many might say there is always something that can be done, even if that something is the ever present extreme of violent rebellion and should you not be doing such then clearly you don’t care that much about it do you.

With the above combined that military matters require the material support of the population of a country to function then you can see that attacking them is just as valid a target providing you do so effectively and really those attacks mentioned in the first post are far to tiny and few to do anything apart from piss people off.

Of course culturally certainly Europe and it’s descendants have developed over a few thousand years of killing people you know(other Europeans largely) some rules as to what is fair play and what isn’t in warfare and the idea that the military/government and the populous are separate entities, these rule are really only able to be created when culturally connected people fight a reason why you see historically when alien cultures meet and first start killing each other they tend to get very upset that the other side isn’t playing by the same rules.