ter·ror·ism

The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

Funny how I looked up the definition of "terrorism."

It reminds me of that time I took "Mystics & Mysticism" - when I was determined to be a Comparative Religion major - and lost a helluva lot of points on the midterm by failing to correctly answer question #1: Define "mysticism".

Apparently bullshit don't fly when you got no idea what the course is about.

Ah - how does this relate? My Spring 2006 philosophy course - "War & Terrorism" - has been my least favorite out of my major fulfillment classes. But I have to admit that it introduced me to a million things I had previously never given any thought to.

Just War Theory, the standard theory adopted by most thinkers, divides into three parts: jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum. (Fancy Latin for "justice to war", "justice in war" and "justice after war.") To discuss just ad bellum with terrorists is most fruitless, so the most meaningful thing to assess here is jus in bello.

To be clear, jus in bello deals with the "laws of war" - not what lead to war or what will lead from war, but strictly, what is right and wrong during the course of war. In Just War Theory, jus in bello is comprised of two key factors: discrimination and proportionality.

Discrimination means attacking the right people. Who the right people to attack is a question with, unfortunately, more subjective answers than most of us would wish. Is it weapons-knowledge that makes one target-worthy? Is it working in the Pentagon? Is it fattening the wallet of the most power-hungry nation in the world?

Proportionality means using the right amount of force to the right amount of people. This, of course, is another concern that proves to be more subjective than desired. Thinking of examples for this is making me cringe, so forgive me for jumping ahead.

Just War Theory says that jus in bello must be independent from jus ad bellum. This means, if I got this right, that whatever the reasons for aggression were, and no matter how just or unjust those reasons may seem, bost sides must respect the laws of war.

So here I am, spelling out Just War Theory to my audience of three, trying to make sense of what is going on in the world today.

I've always tried to put myself in the shoes of these Muslim martyrs. And for a long time, I thought I could somewhat understand... but I forgot one of the scariest things about terrorism - it sees no end. And I cannot imagine what will satiate these terrorists. Discrimination, proportionality - deeply-pored-over issues made nonsensical in a momentous second or two.

It scares me to have my world shook like this, in what may first appear to be a subtle movement. I studied this, I read about this, I thought about this, I believed in this, and now these 24 Pakistanis have completely disregarded this and left me so confused. How could they? Isn't there some uniform justice system lying in our collective unconscious? We can't all equally register an evil as being terribly wrong?

I just don't understand.