You would therefore have to conclude, would you not, that the RAF and USAAF were terrorist organisations?
I don't think you can actually argue this. There's a common misconception that WW2 area bombing deliberately targeted civilians, but this isn't really true. The problem was that aerial bombing in that day and age wasn't particularly accurate, and the military targets they were bombing (such as factories, rail yards, and so on) were located amongst civilian areas. Thus, as a result, civilians were killed in the attacks. Some of the cities considered for the Atomic bombings were rejected precisely because it was felt they didn't offer a sufficient military target to justify an attack.
Theres also the question of what counts as reasonable steps to ensure you dont harm civillians. Is blowing up a bar frequented by members of the armed forces terrorism, even if 80% of the victims are civillians?
You know, the laws of armed conflict are pretty clear on all of these questions you're asking... blowing up a bar frequented by members of the armed forces
might be legitimate, but only if you believed that, at the time of the bombing, there were military personnel in the bar.
How about drone strikes that routinely kill and maim civillians? Isnt that also terrorism?
There's a world of difference between unintentionally killing civilians and deliberately targeting civilians. Perhaps not to the civilians, but in the realm of law, big difference.
At this juncture I'd like to point out that there is no internationally accepted definition of "terrorism", which makes any discussion about it problematic. What further complicates the issue is that terrorism, by it's very nature, is very closely linked with armed conflict and therefore the laws of war, however the increasingly prevalence of fourth generation warfare has made our historic understanding of what constitutes war problematic.
An interesting definition of terrorism I've heard proposed is acts carried out in time of peace, that would, in an armed conflict, constitute a war crime.
The problem with this definition is that with fourth-generation warfare it's increasingly difficult to determine what is or isn't a war crime, who is or isn't a combatant, or indeed whether a party is or isn't at war.
My gut instinct is for the west to totally redefine our entire attitude towards terrorism, and view it for what it really is; a tactic employed in fourth generation warfare. Perpetrators of terrorism are therefore combatants, and should be prosecuted for war crimes. Of course, to do this, the west has to recognise and accept that we are in a state of perpetual low-intensity war, with dozens of different state and non-state entities. The reality is we
are, but because that sounds far more scary than it actually is, I doubt the western public will ever accept it. So we stick to this fantasy that terrorists are just criminals, like burglars or rapists.
Which is why I said I rather than we...
