William Kristol has an article in The New York Times today talking about the commentary on the terror attacks in Mumbai and how our vocabulary in describing and analyzing these attacks matters.  Islamic terror has to be identified as Islamic terror.  Not all muslims are terrorists, but when the terrorists are muslims who believe they are attaining some sort of religious goal, they have to be dealt with.  These terrorists were evidently part of a militant group protesting India’s role in Kasmir.  Their gripe had nothing to do with Americans, Brits, or Jews.  Why then were those groups their primary targets?  According to the article–

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group that seems to be responsible for the terrorism in Mumbai, Haqqani explains, is a jihadi group of Wahhabi persuasion, “backed by Saudi money and protected by Pakistani intelligence services.” He notes that “Lashkar-e-Taiba has adopted a maximalist agenda for global jihad.” Indeed, the political arm of the group has conveniently published a pamphlet, “Why Are We Waging Jihad?,” that lays out all kinds of reasons why the United States, Israel and India are “existential enemies of Islam.”

I really am beginning to wonder if the terrorists are simply unhappy youth trained to love violence and chaos.  I wish we could find an island somewhere that we could use as an island prison (not Cuba) where the terrorists could be left to set up their own society which would not interact at all with those of us who choose to be civilized.  We could periodically drop off food and medicine, but never land, because there would have to be no way off.  Terrorism is a crime against humanity, and until we recognize it as such, we will never be able to deal with it.  If the governments harboring terrorists will not deal with them, other governments have to.