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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: michael97123 who wrote (77812)	2/26/2003 3:30:44 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"....addrressing global terrorists (note the emphasis on global) such as Al Q." Mike, I think the only terrorists that it's in our self interest, narrowly construed, to rid the world of are the ones responsible for 9-11. That's Al Q and, possibly, allied groups. I think the Palestinian stuff has to be read in the context of a long running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians; I think the Chechnians should be read in that context; I think the Hezbollah and Hamas issues should be read in the context of the ME; etc. Occasionally, those issues might bleed over into our self interest but the defining line should be that they are not. So, you guessed it. I think the first big mistake the Bush folk made is their quite self consciously expansive use of the term terrorists. You weren't around when we had a good and healthy debate as to which groups and/or actions were terrorists. The general consensus was attacks on civilian targets. That lead to an interesting discussion of US and British firebombing of German cities in WWII. No one here, I'm certain, wants to return to that discussion, but it's instructive in terms of just how difficult the term is to apply with any serious precision.