Any American citizen reading about the United States’ military activity in the Middle East has in recent years been swamped with facts regarding the vast number of groups fighting there. It has now truly become a challenge to figure out the players and their goals because of the ever-increasing formation or transmogrification of some groups into new and different groups.
Sometimes all of the groups are referred to as “terrorists,” but this is confusing because many of them are now fighting each other.
Further, the United States is supplying arms to some and not to others, and fighting with some and not others.
It should be made clear that the United States is not giving arms to terrorists to later kill our soldiers.
There has never been one agreed-upon definition of “terrorist”; one problem is that the term describes a way of attack rather than a group identity.
Each of the fighting groups should be designated by their adopted name or given name so that the American people can analyze and understand who is fighting whom and for what.
— Thomas H. Fegan, Chicago
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