Terrorists are those who deliberately kill non-combatants. Guerillas attack combatants using non-traditional methods. Blowing up a bus full of workers is terrorism. Blowing up a Bradley full of armed men is not.
Unfortunately for clarity, our enemies in Iraq do both. It would be nice if the Baathists were all attacking military targets, and the Islamist/Zarqawi factions were doing all the terrorist acts, but it isn't that simple.
I will freely admit that I may not be rigorous on these definitions in all my posts, and sure as hell a lot of others in the media, the military, and elsewhere blur these terms too, but that doesn't change the basic validity of the definitions.
When people are worried about breeding "terrorists" that are a danger to us all, it is natural to assume that they are mostly talking about those who would target places outside Iraq's war zones, and people other than our military forces. Like attacks on Britain, the U.S., Spain, or other countries.
Almost exclusively so far, all such attacks and attempted attacks have been from members of al Qaeda, or related organizations. Radical Islamists, often not from Iraq at all.
I submit that it is ludicrous to assume that radical Islamists around the world would be any less pissed off at us if we had attacked only Afghanistan, a former heart of the radical Islamist movement, and nobody has said anything to convince me otherwise.
Current Events » in reply to So sorry, thought terrorist was synonymous to insurgent to you guys...
Shouldn't be.
The whole thread (59 posts)
- Rumsfeld makes excuses for administration's incompetence
- Rumsfeld makes invalid excuses for administration's incompetence
- So is the armour adequate or not?
- Once again you prove your ignorance of military history
- Looking like another MSM soundbite attack.
- Meanwhile: 1,276