Treating terrorists as combatants is a mistake for two reasons. First, it dignifies criminality by according terrorist killers the status of soldiers. Under the law of war, military service members receive several privileges. They are permitted to kill the enemy and are immune from prosecution for doing so. They must, however, carefully distinguish between combatant and civilian and ensure that harm to civilians is limited. Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
A nice pre-9/11 editorial to the effect that terrorists and terrorism is a criminal manner and we should deal with it as we would deal with any ordinary crime. The problem that the writers overlook is that such a path followed since the advent of terrorism in the early 1970s did nothing to stop terrorism. Since terrorists are in the authors' eyes are akin to pirates, they should then take heart that under President Bush we are following the path of His Majesty's Navy. Find the pirates and kill them taking no quarter. A better solution I cannot propose.
