Talk:Terrorists execute 19 Turkomen and two Kurds in Diyala province, Iraq

Ealturner 23:19, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Terrorist is used in this article. While I recognise a Sunni insurgency is happening in Iraq this is not the BBC. We are wikinews: we conform to a neutral point of view. Therefore we can call the violence what it is, depending on the situation. Using "insurgent" to describe killing of unarmed civilians is not only biased in this instance to do so would be sloppy, inaccurate reporting.

The wikipedia definitions

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist

>> Terrorism is a controversial and subjective term with multiple definitions. One definition means a violent action targetting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, economic, religious, or ideological goal. ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgent

>> An insurgency is an armed rebellion by any irregular armed force that rises up against an established authority, government, or administration. Those carrying out an insurgency are “insurgents”. Insurgents conduct sabotage and harassment. Insurgents usually are in opposition to a civil authority or government primarily in the hope of improving their condition.

Hmm. Interesting argument. I was just about to complain about the use of the word in the article, but you have a point here. One option to avoid this controvercy is to refer to the perpetrators as "gunmen", which is accurate and NPOV (but less descriptive). --vonbergm 23:46, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Ealturner 01:13, 5 June 2006 (UTC) Gunmen would be accurate but that would be to sacrifice detail to someone's ideological preconceptions about the word terrorist. Neutrality should mean we aren't affected by ideology in both what we say and NOT say. I posit both the words "terrorist" and "insurgent" are part of the English language that can be objectively defined; we can agree on what they mean, and they mean slightly different things. Would you replace "insurgents" for bombers/gunmen in each article about the Iraq insurgency? No. NPOV ought to be saying what it is. As such my position is in this case the perpertrators fit the description of terrorists, so those gunmen were terrorists.

I can accept a violent action targetting civilians exclusively as a definition for terrorism which justifies use of the term here. Thanks for bringing up that viewpoint. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 14:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

What is wrong with "gunmen"? There is no dispute that they were gunmen. - Borofkin 08:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the word "terrorist" is that no group or person self-identifies as being terrorist. If we asked these guys they would specifically deny being terrorists. It's okay to quote someone calling them terrorists, but we shouldn't label them as terrorists as though it is a fact. - Borofkin 08:06, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ealturner 08:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't know they'd prefer to be called "gunmen" over "terrorist" - we'd need to ask them.

Terrorist is an accurate term. There is no need to use a weaker one when a more specific word does the job.

Ealturner 08:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Coordinated terrorist attack hits London

It seems the argument we're having here crops up every time there is an attack on civilians - see link. My position is we can't strike "terrorism" from the English language because, maybe, some people think America is a terrorist. Let those people call America terrorists if the definition fits. Don't censor a word altogether. Let's get real - it's a word and that's it, if it fits use it. Being activist about not using it shows bias.

Iraqi?

how do we know that these terrorists are Iraqi? how about a title change to "21 dead in suspected ethnic killing in Iraq" Doldrums 11:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Ealturner 21:14, 7 June 2006 (UTC) The killers have a political purpose and had targeted civilians specifically. Ethnic killings happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. They targeted civilians mostly but to use that phrase might bring up images of village-village ethnic cleansing. The definition of terrorist seems to fit this case better than any other word so far suggested. Violence against civilians that does not appear to be "cleansing" but which most probably has a political purpose.

>> how do we know that these terrorists are Iraqi? <<

I agree with this point, thanks for bringing it up.