The great Palestinian hip-hop group DAM (I met them in person last year during their stop in Madison) are famous for asking min irhabi -- Who's the Terrorist? Let's apply that question to Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who recently carried out a successful martyrdom operation against a group of CIA agents in Afghanistan.
Time Magazine reports: "So why did al-Balawi, a seemingly trusted agent, switch sides? The Jordanian intelligence sources who spoke to TIME speculate that al-Balawi had become enraged at the Americans for killing a high number of civilians in their hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. And al-Balawi, who felt partly responsible for these deaths because of his role in pointing out the targeted villages in which al-Qaeda militants had been hiding, may have been consumed by guilt. 'It's very possible that he decided to take revenge for the death of these Muslim civilians,' says a senior Jordanian official."
A standard definition of terrorism is "attacking civilians in order to spread fear." Al-Balawi's martyrdom operation did not target any civilians. It targeted CIA agents who are part of an occupying force. Under international law and basic justice, occupied peoples have the right if not the duty to fight back against their occupiers, and anyone who cares about international law and basic justice has the right if not the duty to help them. So al-Balawi's act was not only NOT terrorism, it was perfectly legal, even laudable, according to international law and simple justice.
And since
the CIA, along with
Mossad, helped carry out and cover up the 9/11 atrocities, al-Balawi's act could even be seen as one of revenge against the real perpetrators of 9/11, who designed and used that event to launch their campaign of terrorist mass murder around the world.