To: skinowski who wrote (117207 ) 10/19/2003 1:13:21 PM From: marcos Read Replies (2) | Respond to Warriors have allies, while criminals have only accomplices, accessories, a lower status ..... the less status you hand to perps in enforcing the rule of law, the better, as you stand a chance of handing them less allies .... in no way does doing so make less heinous such a crime as murder of civilians, rather the contrary, it empowers the law and weakens the criminal's justification for his actPerhaps, one criterion for the new definition should be that such an organization should be able - at least potentially - to cause massive damage to a nation-state and its citizens, and maybe even threaten its survival. In this case - especially with all the killing power which money can buy nowadays - the present conflict with extremist Muslim groups would qualify as war. 'massive damage ' any time in the near to medium term .... there is the possibility of some group acquiring a nuclear weapon, and we definitely need our police forces to forestall this, with the aid of our security and military forces where appropriate .... however, even with a nuke, no nation is going to have its survival threatened .... maybe Singapore, with a large enough bomb, yes it's not out of the question ...... but it would be a crime to set off a nuke in the desert and kill one goatherder, so the risk must be pursued with all vigour, and effectively ..... doing so is simply part of building civilisation, of augmenting respect for basic principle of law, 'thou shalt not murder' is pretty universally regarded as useful, murder is a crime, it is not particularly helpful to call it 'war', a state of affairs under which rule of law is always degraded
