Defining "terrorist"

The point is not to define "terrorist" -- we know that terrorists are those who do not fight on a battlefield but among a civilian population, i.e. creating "terror" by means of random attacks against those not armed for or actively engaged in battle.

The point, as I see it at least, is, with the kind of weapons now available widely to activist splinter groups, that it is the presence of these terrorist factions which are now re-defining war.

The potentially widespread availability not only of ballistic but nuclear weaponry has changed the rules of the game -- and as a consequence we are all at risk.

Those who assert their cause -- just cause or no -- by terrorist means, diminish the impact of negotiation and diplomacy, not only for their adversaries but for themselves and everyone else.

How are those under this type of assault to behave within previously agreed upon limits of force and power?

How can the Geneva Convention remain relevant when one's adversary pays it no mind and it is not even applicable to them, for they wage war without being a "convention"al nation?

I am not asking snidely -- I am wondering how we can continue to define the boundaries of warfare by the same standards in a world so different from the one for which they were designed. Or how we may better understand a world so changed by those same bombs we've leveraged previously for peace.

It is difficult to take the high-road when there's threat of it being unexpectedly blown up.