Not a drop of spillage!

That red head in the bar - it was a great place and all, great feel, atmosphere. But I've never been tended by a bar maid in my life that didn't keep the tab lighter the more you padded her own pocket. Next time we ask which girl in there has kids to feed at home, that's our gal.

I was thinking about this question, Titus. It's along the lines of the quintessential "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", a phrase that typically induces my eyes into a noticeable roll. You went a bit further, asking when is it simply a matter of waging "total war", as part of grand strategy. It's a good question, particularly concerning the Irish.

And I have 2 quick points that I think help identify a possible answer.

First: terrorism - the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature.

Cruise the web from trusted sources, and you'll find variations on this theme, but that's the gist. Some excerpt "civilians", most do not.

With that in mind I started ticking off "groups" in my head. Al Qeada - terrorists. French underground - resistance (freedom) fighters. Nicaragua Rebels; Castro's merry band of thugs, etc, etc. And with most it was fairly easy to say "terrorists" or "freedom fighters." And I thought about why.

It seems to me that there are 2 qualifiers that more often then not get you rather quickly tossed into one group or the other (far as I can tell):

1.) It matters what type of government the "group" is attacking. In other words, I can't think of a single act of violence against a democratized nation that was NOT called an act of terrorism. I assume this is because democracies (as the West defines them today), are not (theoretically) in the business of "oppression." And the converse is true: I can't think of a single act of violence against a despot or authoritarian regime that wasn't labeled an act of "resistance" (at least until, in certain cases, the resistance fighters assumed control and asserted their own despotism). Attack a democratized "free" state and your likely to be condemned as a terrorist. Attack a dictatorship and your likely to be glorified as a "scrappy rebel."

2.) It matters what form of government the "group" is fighting to establish. If the stated goal is a representative republic, or some other form of democracy or "freedom", then obviously the likelihood is that both contemporaries and historians will judge them "resistance" (especially if that goal is carried out - it was in India, it wasn't in Cuba). If the stated goal is to form a world-wide fascistic Caliphate, well ... you see where this is going.

Again, I'm just thinking extemporaneously. But these 2 parameters seem to be fairly consistent gauges. Which is what makes the Irish question so complex - they qualify as terrorists under #1, and as freedom fighters under #2.

Just a thought...

And just for the record, the IRA did engage in acts of terrorism, which must be utterly rejected, period. But the total war question when applied to various "groups" is a much more complex narrative (i.e. I'm not going to listen to anyone call my Founding Fathers "terrorists").