This whole "what to do about terrorism" debate seems to boil down to the old "where do you draw the line", aka "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".

I think you cross a line when you target innocents.

If country A is occupying country B and some of country B's people use guerilla tactics to attack a superior occupying forces I don't have a problem with those people even if some of A's forces get killed. I call that war, even if undeclared and "low intensity".

If they start killing off non-military people (aid workers in Iraq, kids & parents in Russia) that is a different story. Hunt 'em down and hang 'em high.

Yes I realize where this leads. In WW2 both Axis and Allied powers crossed that line when they bombed major cities outside of the industrial areas. We probably crossed that line in Vietnam in a few cases as well (burning villages etc..).

IMO the big question is "what happens if you leave them alone -- do they go back to being farmers and doctors or do they grow into an arrogant, repressive dictatorship ?".

Maybe I'm oversimplifying this, but I do not see any inherent good in the groups capturing and killing workers in Iraq or the group who occupied the school this week. Those are not freedom fighters, those are the animals which breed in conflict situations and which grow into the worst kind of regimes if we let them flourish.

For the record, I don't think Bush was completely honest about his reasons for going into Iraq, but "someone had to do it". My big criticism of the move into Iraq was that the US was not really ready for what happened after Hussein's forces were defeated.

If the post-war logistics had been handled better I don't think this debate would be happening. Every Iraqi ex-pat I know was cheering when the US took Saddam down -- but 6 months later they are all squirming a bit because it's hard to say that the Iraqis are better off today on balance.

It's easy to snipe from the sidelines, but if Calpine can set up 10 or 20 natural-gas-fired power plants in 6 months in the US I can't understand why we couldn't get the power back on faster in Iraq. You don't win hearts & minds by waging a war then fumbling the rebuild.

What do I know. I live in Canada and we wimped out anyways...

JB

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