Off on a Terror
How to be intellectually honest about terrorism.

By the same token, the al-Qaida attacks on the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 and on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000— because they focused on purely military targets without intentionally endangering civilians—were horrible, but not terrorism. And yes, these attacks were sneaky, but so what? War is not fencing, where the rules require the prior issuance of an "En Garde!" If there were such a requirement, then for instance the nighttime U.S. special ops raids last October on a Taliban airbase and on a Mullah Omar compound were terrorism too, since our troops attacked without warning.

Let's face it: We cannot define terrorism so that only the other side's military can be destroyed or so that only our weapons can be used.
[read more]