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<blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 49322" data-attributes="member: 126">Re: running commentary on middle east policy and news.I&#039;ll try...&nbsp; I suspect focusing on a useful definition of &quot;terrorist&quot; is part red herring, and part PC language police. The actual important distinction is combatants without a national affiliation. It&#039;s hard to hold non-national organizations responsible and impose punitive sanctions in say the UN or a world court for behavior of some vague groups members with no nation of their own to hold responsible and apply non-military sanctions against.&nbsp; We (the US) are absolutely responsible and accountable for the behavior of that one US soldier in Afghanistan who killed apparent innocents he was tasked with protecting. Regarding the WTC attack, I am not sure I understand your point. It mainly differed in place and scale, not the actual type of attack against innocent civilians, while they were reaching for a symbolic impact beyond the thousands killed. In the US we have a tendency to view world from a distance, but this has been going on for some time, even previous attempts directed at the WTC that failed.&nbsp; &nbsp; While little reported because too much publicity is counter-productive (like parading that seal team around in the press shared a little too much information about them). There have been numerous attacks thwarted by solid (police) intelligence work. I do not want to ignore the risk to personal liberty and privacy that over-reach in these same strategies expose us to. I fear this will be a decades long problem, until the muslim community themselves stand up and expunge this modest fraction responsible from within. We don&#039;t appreciate outsiders messing with our internal problems and they surely don&#039;t appreciate us meddling in theirs.&nbsp; We need to find some constructive way to get from here to that better end point for all of us... I don&#039;t see an easy path, and many mistakes so far. But ignoring that it exists as problem, is how an ostrich might deal with it, and IMO not a successful strategy. Of course opinions vary... JR</blockquote>

[QUOTE="John Roberts, post: 49322, member: 126"] Re: running commentary on middle east policy and news. I'll try... I suspect focusing on a useful definition of "terrorist" is part red herring, and part PC language police. The actual important distinction is combatants without a national affiliation. It's hard to hold non-national organizations responsible and impose punitive sanctions in say the UN or a world court for behavior of some vague groups members with no nation of their own to hold responsible and apply non-military sanctions against. We (the US) are absolutely responsible and accountable for the behavior of that one US soldier in Afghanistan who killed apparent innocents he was tasked with protecting. Regarding the WTC attack, I am not sure I understand your point. It mainly differed in place and scale, not the actual type of attack against innocent civilians, while they were reaching for a symbolic impact beyond the thousands killed. In the US we have a tendency to view world from a distance, but this has been going on for some time, even previous attempts directed at the WTC that failed. While little reported because too much publicity is counter-productive (like parading that seal team around in the press shared a little too much information about them). There have been numerous attacks thwarted by solid (police) intelligence work. I do not want to ignore the risk to personal liberty and privacy that over-reach in these same strategies expose us to. I fear this will be a decades long problem, until the muslim community themselves stand up and expunge this modest fraction responsible from within. We don't appreciate outsiders messing with our internal problems and they surely don't appreciate us meddling in theirs. We need to find some constructive way to get from here to that better end point for all of us... I don't see an easy path, and many mistakes so far. But ignoring that it exists as problem, is how an ostrich might deal with it, and IMO not a successful strategy. Of course opinions vary... JR [/QUOTE]

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