Accusing terrorists of cowardice is a bit of a tradition, but it really doesn't make much sense. I'm remembering an incident here several years ago, in which a group of communist guerillas ambushed and killed a US military advisor, a much-decorated Vietnam veteran. The official US responses repeatedly used the words coward, cowardly, and cowardice to refer to the assailants, suggesting that they would never have the balls to come out and face their quarry man to man.
This is, of course, ridiculous. That military advisor fought in Vietnam. If he saw enemy troops there, would he leap out and challenge them to a quick-draw showdown? Of course not. He would shoot them from ambush, or call in artillery or air strikes. That's war.
When we want people to stop doing something, we bomb them, even if they have no capacity to defend themselves from bombing. Many of those we bomb probably think us cowardly, and wish we would come and fight them on their own terms. It would of course be dumb for us to do so, just as it would be dumb for Osama to come out of his cave and challenge our army. Like anyone else that understands warfare, we engage in the way that we find most favorable to our objectives, and avoid engagement under unfavorable conditions. Osama does the same.
Osama is - by my definition at least - a dangerous lunatic, but I do not think he is either stupid or cowardly. |
