The Bajorans were terrorists. Terrorism is a tool, the Bajorans happen to have a more just cause to use it than the folks the word has recently been applied to. If the show had been produced after 2001, no way the word 'Terrorist' would have been used. Technically the founding fathers were also terrorists. It's pretty clear that, although the Bajorans primary targets were always Cardassian military personnel, they didn't care about innocent bystanders.
Terrorism is a tactic that less powerful groups use when they feel too strongly about an issue to give up, won't get satisfaction any other way, and are too weak to win a battle. It pretty much always gets the terrorists a little dirty, and generally gets the occupying force dirty trying to fight them. It doesn't matter whether it's the Americans against the plains Indians, the British in Ireland, or the French in Algeria.
^ So what is the difference between "terrorism" and "guerrilla warfare"? Because I would call the above guerillia warfare while terrorism, in my definition, is something that actively targets the civillian population in an attempt to cause fear(=terror) It would not necessarily be preformed by less powerful groups, look at the "Reign of Terror" during the French Revolution. i.e. in my understanding: Smuggling a bomb into a ammunition factory, bowing it up along with its workers=guerrilla warfare. Get's the group in question dirty, but still targets the military/leadership. Smuggling a bomb into a school bus and blowing it up, later issuing a statement that no one and nowhere will be safe until your agenda is met = terrorism. Here the group actively targets the civillian population in order to cause fear/terror and hopes that this will cause the changes they wish.
^I agree. Fighting an oppressor with deadly force is not automatically terrorism. We don't know enough about what went on to label them definitively one way or the other. Did they blow up weapons factories and the homes of high-ranking officials? Yes. Doesn't make them terrorists. Did they blow up schools or shopping centers or intentionally target the civilian population? We don't know, not that I can recall. (If they did though, I would certainly call them terrorists.)
As JirinPanthosa has alluded to, part of the reason the colonials were so successful against the Empire during the American Revolution is because the natives fought with what is basically terrorism -- they used guerrilla warfare, which the highly drilled Army soldiers sent from Britain simply couldn't adapt to tactically. By many modern definitions, they used what would now be seen as terrorist tactics. I like to draw a distinction between that and, say, the 9/11 hijackers. I can't easily call those f***ers 'Freedom Fighters', because I can't see what freedoms are fought for by taking control of passenger aircraft and running them into commercial buildings. Sure, it's sending a message to the West. But it isn't being a freedom fighter, it's slack-jawed-top-to-bottom terrorism. There are two sides to the Bajoran/Cardassian coin. The allegory for me has always been that we sympathise with the Bajorans as kind of ersatz Jews in WWII, or perhaps occupied France, with the Cardies as the Germans. Do we tend to look at, say, the French Resistance as being terrorists? They did do many things of a terrorist nature, but they were doing it against an occupying regime.....
"Freedom Fighter" is a euphemism. It means a terrorist we like, in contrast to "terrorists" who we don't like.
I think there's an important distinction to be made when the "terrorists" are fighting invaders on their own home. The Bajorans fighting Cardassians who were strip mining their planet, enslaving the Bajorans...the Bajorans are morally on a whole different level morally and ethically than real terrorists who hijaked a plane to crash into the Twin Towers.
I was surprised that Kira and her friends called themselves "terrorists", people never call themselves terrorists. That's a term with negative connotations.
I don't think the connotations of the word terrorist were as strong then as they are now. I choose to interpret that line as Kira judging her own actions harshly, revealing that she feels guilty over some of the things she had to do. Possibly you could view it as an inaccurate interpretation on the part of the universal translator. Kira probably didn't actually say terrorist but a Bajoran word that was translated as terrorist.
That's possible but they have a slew of other words that the terrorists use to call themselves, like "fifth column," "army in the shadows" and of course the famous "freedom fighters", always a big seller...
Kira seemed genuinely sorry for some of the things she did when the deaths of non combatants came up early in the series. I can rationalize that over the years she just let go of the guilt.
But in many real life cases you don't find out whether it's "their own home" or not until after the conflict is over. Were George Washington and his followers freedom fighters fighting for their own homes, or terrorists against the legitimate authority of their own government? Both, really... Same with the Israelis and Palestinians, or the IRA during the troubles, or most of the troubled spots.
I find something lacking in the occupation of bajor. We never learn what really prompted the invasion, nor why after two generations, there weren't permanent colonies of Cardassians on Bajor. It seems that the only ones there were the military and the civilians tending to their needs. But nothing is said about cardassian colonists. Who occupies a land for fifty years and never tries to colonize it?
Good call! I never noticed that! I guess I was too distracted by Dukat's craziness but that's no excuse. Still , it puzzles me that they never tried a full scale colonization. I have a hard time believing that the resistance was what was stopping them.