But a lack of compassion and respect for others are terrorist attributes, possibly even advantages. Attacks on less-defended targets - in what they avowedly see as a war, remember - make military sense: and, also, produce more outrage and publicity because we find them even more abhorrent.
What we see as cowardice - because they do not attack strong targets, openly, announced, in uniform - they see as practical military effectiveness. Anything else would be suicidal stupidity, and not help their cause. It just isn't how guerilla armies work.
They might claim we are cowards for not sending in ground troops to Afghanistan to fight them, man-for-man: instead we bomb them from a distance. Military effectiveness. They are virtually as defenceless against our attacks, as we against theirs. Or do you disagree with that?
They're our enemies. They are murderous scum who attack our least-defended sites, areas which we could never have conceived as 'military targets'; they aim to maximise our grief, our horror - and hopefully sap our will to respond.
It doesn't help us to see them as something they aren't - be it fools, cowards or bullies. If we label something incorrectly, we're likely to act against our (caricatured, stereotyped) prediction of how something with such a label would respond...
One who shows ignoble fear in the face of danger or pain.
I maintain that people living a poor existence, gone to a hostile land to train in destructive techniques, and ready, even eager to die for a holy cause worth more to them than their miserable lives are not best defined as cowards. |
