It's no great insight to point out that the words terrorist and Muslim (or Arab) have fused to such an extent that an act of terrorism by a Christian, Jew or otherwise gets classified as something else -- something benign and isolated. Not worthy of a neato acronym like GWOT anyway.

So a couple weeks back when a firebomb was thrown at an abortion clinic in Shreveport, Louisiana, the story died a quick media death, despite being classified by Shreveport Fire Department spokesman Brian Crawford as: "an arson crime -- and because of the nature of this crime, someone could also be charged with domestic terrorism as well."

Frederick Clarkson writes:

"The National Abortion Federation notes two arsons at clinics this year; one in Florida and one in Washington state."

"In addition to shootings and murders, anthrax attacks, stalking, death threats bomb threats and more, abortion providers have been the targets of more than 200 bombings and arsons in the past 3 decades."

But antiabortion violence has become a public relations inconvenience for the broad theocratic movement in its several parts -- which would prefer not to have terrorism associated with it's cause. It is also political inconvenience for the Bush administration, which has built so much of it's identity based on the fight against terrorism...

One can only imagine what would have happened if say, a seeming Islamic person had tossed a firebomb at say, an airliner. There has always been a deep double standard in how antiabortion violence is treated by society at all levels.