American. No subhuman terrorist at all. A human terrorist. I'm unclear on the difference, but perhaps one of our fellows can enlighten us both. I'm hoping it involves more than being American.

However, I don't believe many Constitutional rights are geographically specific. It's not like you can avoid the American legal system by committing crimes against it in another country. If American justice can prosecute Americans for patronizing juvenile Thai brothels and extradict them for statutory rapes from 30 years ago, I think they can prosecute foreign nationals for mass murder, too. A lot of our laws are exaggerated on the defendants behalf, but we had to choose whether to prioritize guilt or innocence and did so on the basis of that John Adams quote I like so much. When people lose respect for the law they soon ignore it (indeed, it's happened to some extent already) and that is not in societys interest any more than executing the innocent is.

Regardless, I'm not going to call bin Laden a general or his people soldiers. I can respect the soldier willing to die for his beliefs, but the terrorist murdering unarmed innocent bystanders for them does nothing respectable. I won't treat him like an animal, because neither of us is one, but I'm not going to grant him any special status either. No, we weren't at war with "The Aryan Republican Army" in Oklahoma and we aren't at war with Al Qaeda now. That gives them far more honor than they're due, and insults real soldiers.