Dseid - I wish I could get more enthusiastic about what might, or might not be classed as terrorism but, I find I get bogged down in the minutia of a given definition. Which doesn’t really take the discussion on very far.
FWIW, I pointed out, what I perceived to be the flaws in the definition of Caleb Carr, as posted by Doug Bowe, because that definition seemed to do no more than serve his purpose – just as many other characterisations do the politicians. Maybe it is helpful but arguing who’s a terrorist (or even an ‘eco-terrorist’) doesn’t really get us anywhere. The real issue, for me, is that members of a society – not estranged from that society but a radicalised wing thereof – feel so motivated as to want to kill and maim. Why do they do that and what can be done to make them desist ?
In general and as stated above, sure you can, and should, go after them but they’ll simply be replaced by others, in that generation or succeeding. As I’ve stated often before, the truly worrying aspect of 9/11 (in this respect) is that the perpetrators were educated, mature and professional, (predominately) family men with a lot to live for – they weren’t hot-headed kids on the West Bank with an AK47 and a malleable mind: Once radicalism passes into the middle-classes you’ve truly got serious problems.
IMHO, the US has to go after the perpetrators but it also has to go at the causes of terrorism. And that requires that US Foreign Policy – as practiced by all shades of political persuasion – sheds a mind set of some 30-40 years duration. For example (and as far as Arab society is concerned), someone has to be responsible for three generations of refugees on the West Bank, someone has to be responsible for exploitation, for high taxation to repay loans incurred by exploiting, corrupt and self-serving former western-friendly leaders (example: Pakistan), someone is pursuing an agenda in the region that isn’t in our best interests, someoneis/has screwed us over, etc, etc…and the US is perceived to be that ‘someone’.
And, ultimately, no one’s going to be convinced otherwise by mere attempts at perception changes, or ‘spin’.
Hence and in IMHO, Bush has already initiated steps to put in place the kind of political process needed as a precursor to attempt a Mid East Conference later this year. Again IMHO, that is a long way off but the log jam is beginning to move just a little.