Terrorism and Crime

Crime often turns out to be the funding method used by revolutionaries and terrorists. No matter what the motivation to start the operation the crime part of it takes on a life of its own. The people who operate the fund raising wing can become more powerful than the idealist wing. Then the fund raisers have no motivation to actually end whatever stuggle they are involved in.
The warlords in Afghanistan, and rogue factions of the IRA are examples of how this happens.

I often hear people say you can't have a "war on terrorism" because terrorism is a tactic, not a group, organization or nation. A corollary to this is that terrorism at home should be treated as crime, not an act of war. This all sounds good to me, but a view I haven't heard is that making "war on terror" you are elevating the people who use that tactic to the status of a quasi-nation. We should treat terrorists for what they are; criminals. For instance, the "eco-terrorism" that happened a few years ago where some hummers were firebombed and a ski resort construction site burned should not even be elevated to the status of terrorism. It is just vandalism. The people who do it are just some bad boys and girls looking for a little excitement.

We should treat them all as mere criminals. A particularly nasty kind of criminal, but just a criminal none the less. If we view them as bad guys that just want to blow stuff up it takes some of the wind out of whatever message they are trying to make. Who is going to listen to a bunch of vandals who get a kick out of breaking windows?