Letters to the Editor
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"war on terror"
The basic conundrum of a "war on terror" has been from the beginning: Who gets to decide who is a terrorist? Is not the prosecution of Briana Waters an "attempt to coerce a civilian population?" So are not the FBI and the prosecutors "terrorists" by their own definition? Defining 'terrorism' presents related problems; the US has had great difficulty defining it in a way that includes what the bad-guys do but excludes what we, the good-guys, (also) do. The result: broad (indeed, I would suggest, constitutionally overbroad) definitions are written and enacted, with the result that terrorism is what we say it is, and terrorists are who we say they are, and if you disagree with our designations -- well, then, you must be a terrorist too.