No, the WTC was not a valid military target. Generic economic value isn't enough to make something a military target. The fact that an army marches on its stomach does not make farmers combatants.
The destruction of the WTC disrupted the entire economy. It caused the US Stock Market to lose value.
Exactly. A thoroughly civilian target.
And depriving an army of food is also a valid military objective.
Of course. And if you do it by blowing up the enemy army's supply convoy you're a commando and if you do it by rounding up the enemy country's farmers and machine-gunning them you're a terrorist. Methods matter.
That definition implies that a serial rapist who makes women afraid to go outside is a terrorist. Is that what you mean to claim?
That is one end of the spectrum. Terrorism on the very small scale.
So you're speaking your own private language.
Your opinion that it takes magic to induce intent does not make magic any part of others' claim.
Of course nobody is admitting this is their claim.
But divining intentions is akin to magic.
Whereas divining what those people really mean but aren't saying is something you can do without any magic at all, huh? Do you have any idea how ridiculous you're being? Figuring out other people's probable intentions from observation of their speech and behavior is something everybody who isn't autistic does constantly the whole time he's interacting with other people.
The others you're referring to propose to evaluate intent by means of evidence. Law courts do that every day when they decide whether a killer is guilty of murder or only of manslaughter.
The intentions decided in courts don't go far beyond premeditation.
Nonsense. Premeditation is how they distinguish between first degree and second degree murder. Intention is how they distinguish between second degree murder and manslaughter, and pretty much everything else for which "I didn't mean to" is a valid defense, such as deciding between a criminal assault prosecution and a civil personal injury lawsuit. You aren't going to beat an assault charge with "Sure, I beat him up on purpose, but I wasn't planning to in advance.".
Of course it was. The attackers obviously intended to murder noncombatants.
They were merely collateral damage.
The intention was to weaken an enemy that was intruding into the internal politics of foreign lands.
So the intention was self defense.
The intention was to weaken an enemy
by killing civilians who weren't fighting them. That means those civilians weren't collateral damage; they were the intended targets. The fact that a distinction that others rely on is not important to you doesn't mean they're speaking their own language wrong. The term "collateral damage" isn't your personal property, Mr. Dumpty.
When we play with intentions they can be twisted and never really known for certain.
And that goes for everything else outside of the truths of mathematics. When we call bin Laden a terrorist there's always a chance we're wrong. There's a chance he sincerely thought the WTC was actually a giant ICBM silo and we were about to nuke Afghanistan, just as there's a chance he wasn't involved at all and the videos where he appeared to take credit were actually made by Santa Claus wearing a rubber bin Laden face mask. But he probably intended to kill noncombatants.
Some claim the US invasion and destruction of Iraq was not terrorism based on the claims of noble intentions on the part of the attacker.
Well then, tell those people they're wrong. Other people saying something unreasonable doesn't justify you saying something unreasonable.
The examination of intentions is just a can of worms with intransigent sides all claiming to know the true intentions.
So? You propose to replace intentions with moral justifications. The examination of moral justifications is also a can of worms with intransigent sides all claiming to know what's truly justified. We're opening a can of worms regardless; we might as well do it without also committing language abuse.
If I use weapons of sufficient killing power in sufficient amounts that I know for certain I will kill many innocent civilians, have I intended to kill some innocent civilians?
Welcome to the
Trolley Problem. If you push a guy off a bridge so his body mass stops the trolley, then you intended him to get hit. If you throw a switch so the trolley veers away from the track with five guys on it onto the track with only one guy, you may know for certain that he'll get hit, but you didn't intend that result; you only caused it and expected it. You may well disagree with making a moral distinction between the two actions on that basis -- many ethical philosophers do -- but that's how English works and that's how typical human moral intuition works.
