Well, it is done. It seems to me that if this weren't an effective tactic, it probably would have gone the way of the dodo. Attacking civilians has for millennia been a part of warfare. In WW2 the civilian populations on both sides were seen as fair game, insofar as the military machine was ultimately backed up by a civilian population. Al Qaeda had a policy of attacking only military targets until a fatwa was issued calling for attacks on civilians, as they "backed up" this military.

WHat if the civilians are the enemy? In many conflicts, this seems to be the case.

I can't quite buy into those assertions. They just defy common sense.

The US has attacked "civilian" targets in just about every war we have ever fought. Look at the fire-bombing of German and Japanese cities in WWII, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the "carpet bombing" of North Vietnam as just a few classic examples. Those were not military targets. They were civilian targets, and we bombed them in order to "break the will to fight on" of our enemy (the enemy civilians) in those countries so they would quit their fight against us. Presidents Johnson and Nixon both claimed publicly that "The massive US bombing campaign is designed solely to force North Vietnamese people to come to the negotiating table." Same-same Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a lot of other places around the globe. The US government was out to change the opinions (or break the will) of the civilian populations of those countries, by force if necessary, and even by using "terror tactics" on the civilian populations of those countries if necessary.

You seem to presume that the only legitimate "enemy" that one can ever justifiably attack is a nation's military forces. I don't believe that is really ideally the case at all.

A nation's military forces are just another "instrument of policy" of the leaders and the civilian people of a nation. One instrument of many. And war is just an extension of "civilian politics" by military means. Except in military dictatorships, the military itself can not and does not decide any political or national policy matters, ultimately only the civilians of a nation can do that. Defeating a nation's military does you little good if that nation's civilian populace does not also conceed defeat. If they don't they will probably just raise another army to send against you eventually.

A smaller and less well-equipped group or faction may not have any real hope at all of ever defeating a well organized and equipped national military force, and their "complaints" probably do not even concern that nation's military force anyway; but rather they are complaints against the civilian people of that nation (or nations). The civilians who elect or otherwise support their nation's leadership, and who thus truly define the policies and politics of the nation itself.

The PLO's grievance is not against the Israeli army, it's against the Isreali government; the civilians that established that army and that gives them their day-to-day marching orders. Both the civilian political leadership, and also the civilian population that elected and supports them.

Osama bin Laden's grievance is not against the US military, per se, it's against the US government (who are civilians) and their perceived interference with and oppression of Islamic fundamentalist cultures by most western cultures in general (again, against the civilians of these nations).

The Iraqi who plants a bomb in Baghdad is not making a political statement directed toward the US military personnel that the bomb may kill, he's making a political statement directed toward the entire United States and all it's civilians, that he wants our people out of his country. He is also making a statement to any Iraqi civilians that may be injured or killed to stop passively supporting the US presence in their country, or they will be subjecting themselves to this sort of violence for as long as they continue to do so.

When you get right down to it the problems these 'terrorist" (or freedom fighters) groups are so actively protesting (in the only way that they really can) are not the military forces themselves - these forces are just a "tool" of the civilian people of a nation. The actual "enemy" IS the civilian population of the nation that sent them. Of their nation or another nation; it makes no difference. The civilians run the government and make all the real decisions. If you want to change something you may have to shock or scare the civilain population of an entire nation - the civilians themselves, not their military forces - into making some political policy changes that begin to address and rectify your fundamental grievances against them.

In other words it can be true and valid to claim that: Enemy=Civilians

The whole point of "terrorism" or "freedom fighting" is simply to change "civilian" opinion. To cause a change - hopefully for the better (as you see it).

Vietnam was a fair example of how the power of civilian opinion alone can change an entire national policy. The North Vietnamese never did win militarily, but they did succeed in reuniting their country eventually because the civilians here in the US eventually lost the "political will" to continue the war. The views of the US civilian population clearly changed over time from support to non-support for the war. What ultimately changed the civilians minds was the knowledge of all those young American men killed - their own friend and family members - men who had also been "civilians" right up until the moment that they were drafted into the military solely to fight that war - that and the knowledge that this enormous sacrifice had gained virtually nothing in over a decade of hard, bloody effort. Had the Vietnamese had the ability to directly attack US civilians here at home the end result would have been exactly the same, I think.

If you want to win you have to change the minds of the civilians themselves - it's the only thing that can work if you are unable to defeat their national militarily force head-on. Thus, the best targets are definitely the civilian targets, if you really want to be effective at changing the civilian's opinions.

I really don't see why civilians should think they are somehow entitled to "immunity" from attack anyway. Why should that be so?

We civilians voted a guy like Bush into office, and he begat war; don't you think that an Iraqi that lost his country, his friends and his relatives in that war has a right to blame the civilians of America for his plight? I damned sure would! Saddam is not killing Iraqi civilians in Falluja today; US soldiers are - but only at the behest of their civilian leaders, who claim to be doing it to protect the civilians here; civilians who have shown their support for this leader and for his war plans by electing him, and by letting him continue to do what he's doing now in places like Falluja.

We civilians elected him, we civilains apparently continue to support him, and we civilians need to accept the fact that in doing so we have made ourselves legitimate targets to all those who would have a grievance about that or who would have us change our ways.

To claim that we civilains have had nothing to do with any of this is just a cowardly lie. It's our war. And thus we are all legitimate targets in that war.

If you don't have the guts to face up to that relationship and to own it truly you're pretty pathetic. It's not just US soldiers that need to be prepared to make the "ultimate sacrifice" for our political ideals -- we ALL need to be prepared to make that sacrifice for our ideals -- or else we better be willing to change them.