A NEW DEFINITION OF TERRORISM?

Terrorism on the rise.
This week, Prime minister Paul Martin spoke to a group in Montreal, stating that terrorism is on the rise since the invasion of Iraq.
"But I think that if we look at the situation today in comparison with even two, three years ago, that the problems of terrorism are probably even more serious,"

According to the Globe and Mail, Claude Bachand, an MP from the Bloc Quebecois, took issue with Prime Minister Martin's assertion that terrorism is not caused by poverty, but by hatred.

But isn't that essentially the current definition of terrorism, at least as the term terrorism has been used in the past 4 years? If you are a rich country and you have a beef with a smaller country, you invade. If you are a poor country, without the massive resources that the US can draw from, then any action you might take is defined as terrorism.

I'm not talking about the acts of individuals, the sort of acts that resulted in 9/11, or the suicide bombings in Israel. Rather I'm referring to what are lately being referred to by GW Bush and his handful of remaining supporters as "terrorist regimes".

These include the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. These are examples of governments which might not be palatable to those of us in the west, but which are (were) nonetheless perfectly valid and legal governments.
Neither government is suspected of taking part in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but in the wake of those attacks, both of these governments had the scarlet letter of terrorism hung around their necks by the Bush Administration.
In the case of the Taliban, their country was invaded by the US because they did not turn over Osama bin Laden, and in the fury that swept the western world after 9/11, certain facts like the detail that Afghanistan was a sovereign country were temporarily overlooked. Has there ever been another war in history that was started over extradition issues? Anyway, now the word Taliban has unfairly become synonymous with terrorism. When I say unfairly, I should point out that the Taliban was certainly guilty of many civil-rights abuses in their own country of Afghanistan, but so far no evidence has been provided that the government of Afghanistan took part in 9/11.

However there has been a trend lately that whichever third-world country the Bush Administration has a beef with, is labelled as a terrorist state. And any attempts that country makes to defend itself are pointed to as evidence of terrorism. Take for instance the current civil war in Iraq. It's just so much neater and cleaner for the Yanks to define those opposed to the occupation as terrorists, rather than try to accept that their occupation is not going as smoothly as they had planned.

I can't help thinking that if the Vietnam war was going on right now, we'd be hearing in the news about actions by the "terrorist Viet Cong".