The overwhelming number of cases you are thinking about are Communist, aren't they? Communists are not exactly democrats.
What about the foundations of Israel? The Haganah were not terrorists. Irgun/Lehi, who were a splinter group, did sometimes use terrorism, but even so, most what the Brits then called terrorism, we would now call sabotage as it was aimed at military installations. The handful of terrorist Irgun incidents (or alledged incidents, since the Irgun disputs some of them, like Deir Yassin, which they say was a pitched fight), might as well be referred to by number, they each are used so often, there being so few of them. The Mufti's men used terrorism and assasination of Arab as well as Jewish opponents, just like Arafat did after him, or the insurgency in Iraq today.
After the war, Israel established a democracy. Is that true for any of the cases you are thinking of? Any of them become democracries?
It is our lack of confidence in the ability of traditional methods prevailing in the WOT that has led to pushing the envelope in this area
Well, yes. Obviously, neither treating them as POWs nor as common criminals fits the bill. The Geneva Conventions don't help much, though they do note that you can shoot saboteurs out of hand, a point all the purveyors of new "international law" seem to have missed. |
