I understand what you're saying, LEJ, and I am partially in agreement with it...

However, it is quite clear that an operation such as the "Shock and Awe" bombing of Iraq in 2003 had multiple objectives....and one of them was to terrorize the population of Iraq to the extent that their will to fight would collapse. That was also the intent of the German bombings of Rotterdam and London and Guernica, the Japanese bombings of Chinese cities in WWII, and the Allied bombings of German and Japanese cities in WWII, and the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The intent was to terrorize another group of people into surrender.

And that is what I call terrorism on a really large scale.

I believe that governments and national armed forces have always practiced terrorism on a far larger scale than scattered groups of people like the terrorists who attacked the hotel in Mumbai. That is simply because governments have a lot more firepower at their disposal and much more efficient means of bringing it to bear.

Penny-ante terrorists like the guys who attacked in Mumbai are bit players compared to governments. They get no respect...and they don't deserve any...but the main reason they get no respect is because they don't have public sanction by way of a uniform...and because they employ stealth and attack helpless targets. Why do they do that? Because they think they can succeed at doing it, that's why. Their primary objective is not simply to kill "as many people as possible", their primary objective is to make a powerful political statement that would change the status quo in some way deemed useful by the attacker.

The primary objective of the US Air Force when it dropped A-bombs on 2 Japanese cities was not necessarily to kill "as many people as possible" either (at least I don't think so...)...it was to make a powerful political statement that would change the status quo in some way deemed useful by the attacker. (at least...that is what we are told). It was furthermore an attack done with virtually NO risk to the attackers.

Where is the difference? (other than that the Mumbai attackers were facing much greater personal risk) They are both, in my opinion, acts of terrorism...but look at the casualty rate that resulted, and tell me who is the greater terrorist.

I know you can offer justifications. Well, so can the attackers at Mumbai or at any other place that has ever been attacked. Just ask them. They will offer their own justifications, and it will always have to do with "defending" their own people against some "evil" threat from someone else...or taking revenge for some previous attack by some "evil" enemy against their people.

They are all heroes and "good guys" in their own eyes. That's why they do it.