After noting a recent attack by Tamil Tiger terrorists against a Sri Lankan naval transport convoy sailing under a truce flag in violation of a ceasefire, the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad which damaged a nearby spinal cord injury treatment center, the kidnapping of a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq and the murder of one team member, and the renewed fighting between Somali warlords and radical Islamists forces in northern Mogadishu, Wretchard echoes a recent question asked by British Defense Secretary John Reid, whether the Geneva Convention should be updated to reflect the reality of asymmetrical warfare by and against terrorists.

In an age when Buddhist monks and Christian schoolgirls are hacked to death by machete-wielding Islamists in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, when children on the streets of Baghdad are used as live bait by terrorist bombers, when hospitals, and buses, and pizza parlors are considered fair targets by terrorist suicide bombers, and civilians are counted as fair game from New York’s Twin Towers to Dahab, to Beslan, to Bali, maybe it is time to re-examine just what we are prepared to do to win against such an onslaught of horror.

“…how should one deal with combatants who have no regard for ceasefires, women, children, flags of truce, churches, mosques or the Rules of War?”

How indeed?