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June 17, 2005

There is No Such Thing as Terrorism: If Your Civilians are Getting Killed, You’re in a War

U.S. JETS DROP 500 LB BOMBS IN IRAQ OPERATION.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. F-16 fighter planes dropped a series of 500 lb (220 kg) bombs on insurgent targets in western Iraq overnight as the U.S. military launched a heavy offensive against rebels near the Syrian border.

Nine of the powerful bombs were dropped, the U.S. military said, two of them targeting suspected rebel safe houses near the town of Qaim, an insurgent stronghold on the Euphrates river about 20 km (12 miles) east of Iraq’s border with Syria.

This is the right way to proceed. Iraqi civilians are being killed by car bombs, and this is how you have to deal with those who are killing them.

Lately I’m thinking, there’s no such thing as terrorism. The correct word for it is war. If people are killing your civilians, you’re in a war. That’s all. And the correct response is to deal with it as such. It’s not pretty. But when not responding in such a manner, the entire world recognizes that you have accepted the killing of your civilians, and that people can make war on you without you making war on them in return. The result, as we have recently seen proven in Iraq, is that more of your civilians get killed.

As I posted recently:

I’m beginning to think that this whole approach of, the terrorists kill our civilians, but we don’t kill their civilians, is just a mistake. It sounds good, but it doesn’t work, and in the short run as well as the long run, leads to more deaths on your side.

The whole notion of, “but then you’re no better than the terrorists” sounds good, but again, it doesn’t work, and it gets your people killed. If people are killing your civilians, you have the right and duty to fight back.

The notion that “we’re not at war because no nation declared war on us” is also a mistake. If your civilians are getting killed, you’re at war.

The notion that “we’re not at war with the other side’s civilians, only with their terrorists, so we are wrong to kill their civilians” is a noble attempt, but it gets your own civilians killed. It’s also false. As in Iraq, where the Sunni population is supporting those who are killing Iraqis, it is evident that only with the support of the surrounding civilians can terrorists persist.

The U.N. approach that “it doesn’t matter who started it, if both sides are at war then both sides are equally to blame,” doesn’t work because the terrorists keep killing your civilians regardless of anything the U.N. says.

It’s not pretty. It’s part of a world we’d like to leave far behind, as we move to a world governed planet-wide by law rather than war. But we’re not there yet. And when one side unilaterally rejects war, their civilians get killed by people that do not do so.

Conversely, terrorists fold quickly when they are responded to as nations have historically responded to those who declare war on them.

All this trouble we’re in due to terrorists could be over far more quickly if they are responded to in this manner. They would quickly be forced to sue for peace.

The terrorists have neither the heart nor the military wherewithal to stand up to us treating them the way they treat us.

Say one of our cities were to get nuked. Five hundred years from now, historians would be looking back on this, and asking, “how could the U.S. have let that happen? They were the most powerful country in the world.” That’s the situation we’re in.

There is no such thing as terrorism. There’s just war. And those making war on your civilians must be responded to in kind.