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Your post on the distinction between terrorism and war bears repeating:

The reason they are called "terrorist" attacks instead of "acts of war" is because the bombers weren't acting in the furtherence of any "state's" foreign policy.

I saw a post somewhere on FR where someone distinguished the Cole attack from the Twin Towers because one target was military and the other civilian. That can only be a product of modern education. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

War is diplomacy by other means. Terrorism is NOT war by other means. It is cowardice driven by fear purported by political failures.

Our fear is righteous. We do not fear irrationally. We fear with reason, and we act upon it.

You do not have to act on behalf of a "state" to commit an act of war. What if there was a conclave of people on a secret island never before discovered, and they launched some missles at our military installations. That is war. Doesn't matter that they are not a state recognized by the U.N.

So what if they were acting in fear?

You seem to be saying the terrorist act/act of war distinction hinges on the rationality of the fear behind it. This thing about terrorists are fearful cowards . . . what if they are full of hate, or are sociopaths. No cowardice, just lack of conscience. There is no irrationality there.

It just seems that it doesn't matter who you are, and why you do it, if you attack another country's military apparatus, you (and/or your state or clan or whatever) are carrying out a war on that country.

I think we have learned that we can no longer, in the 21st century, cling to a map-like borders view of who is who and what is what.

Mostly the poppycock was at your ad hominem regarding my education. It does me well; obviously as a staunch conservative I have not been brainwashed by my higher education.