Warfare is alway despicable. Every nation with any kind of military history has indulged in acts equally as horrible as those peformed by the current crop of terrorists. From Hiroshima to the sticking of heads on pikes outsite the city walls, these acts have only one purpose, which is to break the enemy's will to fight through sheer horror. The use of children and the mentally incompetent as bomb carriers is despicable. So is the use of cluster bombs, napalm, thermobaric bombs, anti-personnel mines and torture. Despite the Geneva Convention, everyone has performed atrocities. Is it so much more moral to kill hundreds of civillians by dropping bombs and missles on them as opposed to attaching the bomb on the civillian directly? Is an embargo that stops medicines and food from reaching children and the old any less despicable? So long as we benefit from the use of force on others, we have no right to condemn others for responding in kind. Terror tactics were not invented by the Muslims or any other particular religious group. These tactics are the logical outcome of a certain set of circumstances - an overwhelmingly powerful enemy, lack of equivalent conventional forces, desperation, extreme oppression, extreme poverty. Humane, honourable warfare has never existed.

All else is Point of View. Do we not cheer or laugh when the movie good guy sticks a grenade down the pants of a villain and pushes him into a room full of his colleagues? When the action hero blows up a villa full of drug dealers, who expresses concern for the innocent prostitutes, girlfriends, servants and other employees who get dismembered in the process?