Arrr Qaeda?

An interesting op-ed in the NYT on the similarities between piracy and terrorism from a legal standpoint. Nevertheless, I'm a little tired of all these "whatever I don't like=terrorism" arguments, perhaps because they're akin to the truly absurd "whoever I don't like=Hitler" screeching. Furthermore, the "pirates=terrorists" argument is a specious one on several other levels (in most senses, the obvious analog to pirates is not terrorists but brigands), and that sloppiness of argument muddies the editorialist's legal point.

We don't have to remake pirates into terrorists in order to know what to do about them or galvanize the will to act against them. They're pirates. You're not going to have to worry about pro-pirate sentiment among your constituents or the pro-pirate lobby derailing your UN mandate to extend navies' jurisdictions to acts of piracy.