Terrorism and War - Definition

Terrorism and War: If terrorism, in general, is the use of violence for political, religious, or ideological ends, then any war carried out for this purpose is terrorism. However, wars can also be classified as having an economic goal -- analogous to a criminal robbing a bank; genocide -- clearing the land for occupany; or, they could be defensive or preemptive (as the United States claims about the recent invasion of Iraq).

However, when talking about terrorism and war, what one normally has in mind is the use of terrorism, i.e., violence against civilians, as a means of winning a war. The example that readily comes to mind is the dropping of atomic bombs by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Other examples that are often cited are the napalm bombing of the German city of Dresdan, the French city of Royan, and the Japanese city of Tokyo -- all by the United States. In the film Fogs of War, Robert McNamara (Secretary of Defense under President Johnson) talked about using napalm also on 67 Japanese cities, other than Tokyo, in World War II; as well as the napalming of Vietnamese villages during the Vietnamese War.