CHEONAN SINKING NOT TERRORISM

So says the Obama administration.

Obama administration officials say they will closely monitor North Korean activity for signs of a return to international terrorism. But they say they consider the sinking of the South Korean warship the Cheonan to have been a military-against-military operation and not an act of terrorism

.I agree. One doesn't have to condone the sinking of the ship to conclude that a military attack even if covertly done is not quite the same as "terrorism." The DPRK regime has done any number of objectionable things of late, but the last act that clearly falls within a conventional definition of terrorism was the 1987 KAL bombing (an event that always gives one an excuse to invoke the story of Kim Hyôn-hûi, the North Korean "Jane Bond" who is thought to have carried out the attack (photo below).



Anyway, to call the sinking of the Cheonan "terrorism" robs the latter of any real meaning above and beyond the idea of "doing something bad that we don't like."