Whether you are a terrorist, pacifist, war-monger, freedom saviour or freedom fighter depends largely on your point of view.

You may well think whales are pacificists, but you mightn't think so if you were a piece of plankton.

Terrorism is not a political philosophy, but a tactic used by those who are (in their minds) waging war against an enemy, the tactic is to induce fear into the people you are attacking. The people who did the dreadful deeds of September 11th succeeded in doing this. The American bombs reigning in on Kabul have no doubt had a similar affect on the people there. Since September 11 it seems to me that CNN, Sky News and other blanket coverage of this war has been doing a great job of keeping up the fear in this part of the world, so much so that when a terrible thing like last Monday's air crash happens, everyone assumes this is another attack and is terrorised by accident. This by the way (appears to have been) an unfortunate accident. 'Collateral damage' is not an unfortunate accident - it is a direct consequence of the bombing. If thirty people get killed by a car bomb in Omagh this is a terrible outrage - if it happens in a red cross centre in Afghanistan it's an unfortunate side effect of war ! Don't get me wrong, neither event should ever happen, but what it is called and how the news is presented and received will greatly colour your perception of it.

There has been a serious amount of rubbish been talked in this thread about the situation in Northern Ireland. It is true that some Americans funded the campaign of the IRA, while the US Government supported the British 'side' in the conflict. At other times the US Government helped significantly with the current Peace process which I and other Irish people voted overwhelmingly in favour of in the referendum on the subject. The IRA has waged a savage campaign during the last 30 odd years, but thankfully their guns are now silent. Not all 3,500 deaths were at the hands of the IRA, some were at the hands of fanatics on the other side as well, many were at the hands of the 'security forces', members of which acted in collusion with terrorists to defeat the 'terrorist' enemy and in this way became terrorists themselves. By the way the referendum I spoke about substantially altered the territorial claim on the 6 counties of Northern Ireland (Ulster is a province consisting of 9 counties, 3 of which are in the Republic). This did not however affect the rights of the people of the 6 counties to call themselves Irish if they choose to do so.

While I'm at it, there's no such thing as the UK Mainland. That's another smallish island off the coast of Europe.

If we could stop pinning labels on each other, try to understand each others point of view, discuss our diferences and try to get along a lot of this stuff might never happen.

If that point of view makes me a pacifist I'm glad to be called one.