

Suicide Bombing Makes Sick Sense in Halo 3 - shayan
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2007/11/gamesfrontiers_1105

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cglee
Kamikaze pilots are not the same as terrorists. Terrorists, as the name
suggests, mean to inflict psychological damage -- terror -- to the population,
including civilians. They do this by committing the most atrocious thing
possible. Kamikazes, as far as I know, are soldiers who have decided to give
their lives in combat.

Giving up your own life in combat is not the same as tossing a bomb into a
crowded supermarket when not under any immediate danger.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
My definition: the use of stealth to deliberately attack civilians in order to
affect political change.

That way the firebombing of Dresden and use of the a-bomb doesn't qualify, as
there was nothing stealthy about it. Likewise inadvertent civilian casualties,
like the four thousand French civilians who were killed in D-day, are not
counted. No doubt having a bomb kill your whole family during a large sea
invasion is pretty terrifying, but it's a different concept for _society_ than
somebody sneaking up to you in a market with a suicide vest on.

But choose your own. Definitions are very important when talking about
terrorism. Some people think everything is terrorism. For those folks, it's
really hard to discuss.

I really hope I didn't start a political discussion. Nothing to see here,
please move along.

~~~
mynameishere
_use of the a-bomb doesn't qualify, as there was nothing stealthy_

"Stealth" as used here is a pathetic weasel word. Such rhetoric comes up all
the time in order to demonize the tactics used by the poorly-equipped, in
contrast to the expensively-equipped.

But, FYI, the Japanese had an air-raid system which normally functioned
whenever bombers were detected. In the case of the atomic attacks, the alarms
weren't set off because one bomber does not signify a bomb-run. Hence, they
were as "stealthy" as anything could be.

EDIT: To head off the argument "But we warned them," it is pretty clear that
no one is going to evacuate entire cities on mere warnings. Completely
impractical.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
So you're saying that even though we DID warn them, it doesn't count because
there's no way the warning could have been heeded? Sounds a little self-
serving.

We killed a lot more Japanese civilians in conventional bombing than we ever
did with the A-bomb, not that most people know that. I guess it was fine to
continue killing them with one kind of bomb, but not with another?

Glad to use a weasel word. It was called for. It's a tricky definition, but
I'm happy with it. I'm sure that others will disagree, hence my concern at
even posting it. But I'm a fan of the way language works, both in politics and
user interaction, so I thought it was germane.

For those wishing to engage in a good political debate (probably not me, as
people have a tendency to down-mod me for days after I express political
opinions as a way of "paying me back"), the use of force in wartime is a good
one. There was an interesting editorial along those lines in the Wall Street
Journal yesterday commemorating the death of one of the pilots that flew the
A-bomb missions. You can check it out here:

[http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=11001...](http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010827)

~~~
mynameishere
Conventional bombers are also terroristic, according to any dictionary
definition of the word. Even lexicographers are subject to political whim, I'm
sure, so you can make up whatever definition you want.

We should understand at minimum that it is not _more_ honorable somehow to
attack from a greater distance, using more elaborate machinery, using
different words to describe the same results, etc. None of those is morally
positive.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
If your definition is "that which causes terror" then it is over-broad,
including everything from chemical warfare to late night Alfred Hitchcock
movies.

Yes I can make up whatever definition I want, not in some effort to "get my
way" in the argument, but simply as a way to disambiguate the conversation.
Words with overly broad meanings lead to sloppy analysis (hence the
relationship to hacking)

War is not honorable at all in my opinion, and it's not a game that should be
played fairly like some inter-collegiate hockey game. It's a messy and
horrible business and no amount of weaseling or moralizing can make it any
better. The goal, as best I can tell, is to make the other side want to stop
fighting before they do the same to you.

Having said all of that, it only takes one party willing to use force to make
all parties use counter-force, so war is going to be with us for a long while.
So it's simply not enough to throw our hands up in disgust and cast a pox on
the whole affair -- we need to be intimate with it. The same way we are
intimate with cancer, or terror, or death, or any number of other cruel
realities in life.

~~~
mynameishere
You're getting just a tad trollish. I did not suggest casting poxes at any
point, though I would suggest that various diplomatic structures prevent war
in a more-or-less predictable way.

There is an explicit branch of strategic bombing which is explicitly
terrorism. No ambiguity involved.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_bombing>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'll watch my tone. But conversely, sometimes trolls are just people that
disagree with you in a manner that you find uncomfortable. I will attempt to
be polite and respectful, and will apologize if I'm not. That's all I can do.

If you are using the Wiki article as an argument that due to international
treaty terror bombing was illegal/immoral/defined as terror, etc then I
disagree. As far as I know, the word "terror" was not used in the treaty and
even if it was, it does not describe the same thing as what I'm describing.
Once again, my definition is nothing but thin air, but it does describe a
unique thing that this does not.

Other treaties such as the Kellog-Briand Pact did all sorts of things, like
outlaw the use of war in the furtherance of national policy:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg-Briand_Pact>

Reviewing the pact (and several others) is a good reference for the difference
between diplomacy and reality, the difference between treaties that make the
populations feel better and treaties that actually accomplish something. If I
remember correctly, terror bombing was conducted by all sides in WWII. The
Washington Post article makes a great case for utilitarianism in warfare --
trying to see fifty years down the road and doing the thing that causes the
least harm overall. Does this require a conviction that you are right and the
other person wrong? Absolutely. But I can't imagine conducting a war in which
both sides agree that, hey, it's all kinda relative anyway. Sort of a struggle
of the apathetic. There are some deep issues here, and I'm opposed to anybody
that claims to be able to handle them all in a soundbite.

When I think of terrorism and western civilization, I think the best analogies
are the American Civil War and the struggle on the plains with the American
Indians. While I understand we have somewhat cartoonish views of both
conflicts now, they have great parallels to the current situation.

You're welcome to pursue various definitions of terrorism. Another overloaded
fuzzy word is the word "war", which has lost all sense of meaning in the last
100 years. It's reached the point where "war on terror" could mean anything
from a land invasion of Iraq to a bake sale to collect money for preventing a
motorcycle convention from coming to town. You can't have any kind of
discussion without first a definition of terms, as old Socrates understood.

------
ced
Bah, dying in games is not any worse than losing a point in a sport, or chess.
Kasparov sent a "suicide pawn" to be massacred by the "enemy queen". It has
really nothing to do with the individual act of suicide bombing.

The interesting thing about his strategy is that it might increase his chance
of survival. He is playing a variant of Tit for Tat. If other skilled players
knew that he was doing this, they would actively avoid him. Are there stats in
Halo for "Kills from beyond the grave"? If so, he would benefit from making as
many people as possible aware of the strategy. In theory, at least.

------
Shorel
Is that one of those games that auto-aims for you?

Good luck against a seasoned Quake player (if they dare to enable that
option). XD

