Non-state actors have adopted their own rules of warfare to justify what they do, even as we justified Nagasaki. To us, Timothy McVeigh is a mass-murderer and a terrorist. To McVeigh, the United States was the enemy on which he had declared war, and he attacked a U.S. command post with unfortunate “collateral damage” – i.e., the kids in that daycare center. Seeing himself as a soldier, McVeigh was no more remorseful than the British bomber pilots who did Dresden.
Of Nagasaki and Dresden, we say, “That was war!” But Osama bin Laden declared war on us, and al-Qaida says it is waging war to drive Americans out of their region, as we once drove the British out of ours. We reply, “You are terrorists!” They reply: Before 9-11, our targets were U.S. embassies, Marine barracks, the USS Cole and Khobar Towers – all political or military command sites.