The problem here is that our enemies are not nations.
Steven,
That made me think.
Are the various entities within the Nation of Islam a nation?
If they are politically organized, yes.
Are the uncontrolled areas of Africa (with borders) nations?
If they have their own territory and government, yes. There is no requirement that a government be effective to attain nation status.
Is a federation of tribes a nation?
Yes.
On the other hand...
The UN Treaty Reference Guide refers to treaties, agreements, conventions, charters, protocols, declarations, etc, as well as statutes, covenants, and accords between states and regions. It does mention nations.
UN members are called member states. The only reference you will find to nation in that complicated document is to The United Nations (UN) itself. That seems incongruous or at least illogical since the term United Nations would seem to imply a body of nations.
According to Webster our 50, so-called, states, are actually constituent units of a nation having a federal government.
I am sure the UN disagrees.
The UN considers America to be the state and the UN to be the nation.
In the case of the Taliban, they governed and controlled territory. That meets at least one definition for nation as well as the UN definition for state.
If you carefully examine the leadership of many/most of the terror sponsoring groups that are presently attacking us and others, you surely must see the intricate web carefully interwoven between most terrorist groups' leadership and the governments of the states where they reside.
When GWB and Colin Powell talk about state-sponsored terrorism, they are using the internationally recognized UN definition of state. They mean nation sponsored terrorism too.
Our enemies are tight knit conglomerations of terrorist orgs and nations and states. We also have enemies who are organized into (for lack of a better term) gangs that are loosely confederated with each other. Still others seem to be quite independent. Some like to call terrorist orgs groups. I don't because that is the term used to define our major Special Forces unit organizations.
Our terrorist enemies are complicated, multi-faceted and impossible to pitch under one heading. Taken collectively, our enemies meet the definition of any type of organization one could imagine...including: political entities, nation, state, regional force, country, religion, military org, etc..
uw |
