No, I don't expect that terrorists to "play by the rules". The choice is simple: you are either a criminal, or a combatant in a war. Terrorism, like it or not, looks like criminal acts.
"looks like criminal acts"? What does that mean? Because OBL was the "guest" of the Taliban instead of an official head of state, does that mean he couldn't launch an act of war, even though he actually did declare war on America and he launched an unprovoked attack on New York?
Unless you're a proper state actor, it doesn't matter what your goal is, your ideology, your number of soldiers, the size and organization of your attacks, you're just a "criminal" and may only be addressed using laws designed to catch art smugglers? Is that really your argument? And people accuse the Bush administration of being too hung up on state actors.
If Al Qaeda manages a bigger hit next time, will you still call them "criminals"?
9/11 was an act of war, declared by OBL against the US. Now, how do you treat combatants who will never follow the Geneva conventions, that is the question? It's certainly not very safe to let them go back to the fighting while the WOT is still raging. |
