[Low spark]

Originally Posted by Totenkopf

I was thinking about this whole situation last night as I was at the local bar playing pool and getting drunk. Yeah, there weren't any cute chicks around. Anyway, there are some interesting cultural and socialogical factors that need to be looked at when talking about terrorism, and war in general. If you look back on history, you will see that many cultures looked on the killing of women and children as a fact of war. Native American tribes killed them, the Mongols wiped out entire cities despite there being women and children, the Vikings, and not so long ago, it was an accepted fact that civilians were going to be killed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dresden, the bombing of London, carpet bombing in Cambodia and Vietnam, etc.

When did it become such a deplorable act to kill civilians? Surely, the Western socities did not care very much about it just 50 years ago. This can be seen by the examples above. Or perhaps we only care when they are "our" civilians.

Now think about this. Say you are raised in a culture, where the killing of women and children is a fact of war, for some even a means to win a war. This is what you have been taught your entire life. Through your perceptions, strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing up a bus is in fact an act of bravery. To us it is an act of cowardice because we have been raised so. When two opposing cultures and/or societies clash, there are really no "rules of war". These things have to be understood when we begin opposing different cultures.

Just some more food for thought.

Very well said.