Now there they go again, public officials lining up to denounce the "cowardly" rocket attack on Ashkelon.


Barack "Lightning" Obama was among the first. "Today's cowardly rocket attack and tragic injuries remind us of the ongoing threats that Israelis face with courage and resolve," he said.


Obviously Obama's denunciation of the Arab attack was welcome, as was his use of the "T" word, correctly

Even terrorists pin the word "coward" on other terrorists.

identifying it as a terrorist attack. But why would he characterize it as "cowardly"? What would he prefer? Brave terrorists?


Obama's choice of words is hardly unique. In London, former Mayor Ken Livingstone frequently denounced terror attacks on Britain as "cowardly" - although to Livingstone, they were attacks by "militants", not terrorists. When Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, President George Bush followed tradition and denounced it as a "cowardly act by murderous extremists." American presidents have made a mantra out of the "coward" allegation. Way back in 1996, The Weekly Standard noted, "If there is one act more predictable than the Pledge of Allegiance before school, it's the invocation of 'cowardice' by US presidents every time a bomb goes off."


It's not just Americans, either. Even terrorists pin the word "coward" on other terrorists. Last February, when arch-Hezbollah-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated, Syria's interior minister, Bassam Abdul-Majeed, told the press that Syria "condemns this cowardly terrorist act and offers condolences to the martyr's family and to the Lebanese people."


Surely the greatest condemnation of "cowardly terrorists" occurred after 9/11, when virtually everyone who stepped in front of a microphone chose that word. Even at the time, it seemed wildly inappropriate. Evil as the 9/11 attacks were, surely the problem wasn't a lack of bravery. Anyone who has the steely resolve to fly an airplane directly into a skyscraper doesn't seem to be lacking courage. To not flinch as the building filled the windscreen? To push ahead to a fiery death? The act is heinously evil, of course, but lack of courage is hardly the problem.


Jonah Goldberg, writing in National Review, defends the "cowardly" characterization, tracing it all the way back to 1097, when Pope Urban II outlawed the crossbow. Crossbows were instruments of cowards, it was said, because a peasant, standing a safe distance away from the knight's broadsword, could still kill the knight with a crossbow. "The crossbow leveled the playing field," Goldberg writes. "It destabilized the rigid social order. (It) reduced the ability of the knights to ride roughshod over the populace."
 
As a result, crossbows became morally suspect. "Killing from a safe distance is cowardly," Goldberg argues. So how does he explain suicide bombers, who themselves perish in the act? They're 'mental cases', he says, brainwashed young men. "They're brought to cemeteries and told to lie down in a grave, to get over their fear and experience how 'peaceful' it is in a tomb.


"Remember that it takes some 60 people to organize a suicide bombing. What are those people, if not cowards?"


That's a pretty big stretch, just to justify using the word "coward". My guess is that it's more of a 'guy' thing, a remnant of the playground, when calling another kid a coward was just about the worst thing you could say. The male of the species matures, but the inclination to demean or disgrace an enemy by questioning his courage lingers. It's a sly way of questioning his manhood, suggesting that he lacks the manly stuff.


So today, as legions of Arabs sit in civilian backyards in Gaza, igniting rocket fuses as a way to kill Jews, is cowardice their greatest sin? Obviously they're aware of 'work accidents', where something misfires, and the

My guess is that it's more of a 'guy' thing.

launcher himself is blown to smithereens. Would those of us who live in the path of those deadly rockets and missiles feel better if Arabs found some more courageous way to do us in?


What would it take for Senator Obama to drop the element of cowardice from his litany of terrorist denunciations? Maybe what we need are specific standards for courage for the terrorists among us – set distances, maybe, on just how up close and personal a terrorist has to come if he wishes to escape that "coward" label.


Seems to me we're demanding the Dirty Harry standard, where the only terror attack that satisfies the contemporary canon for courage is when the guy wearing the white hat stares the other guy in the eye and does his "Make my day" thing.


As for me, it's not the terrorists' lack of courage that bothers me. It's their utter lack of humanity.