After more than six months of trying to figure it out, I've finally realized what the official U.S. Government definition of "terrorist" actually is: people we don't like.

Back in the heady days following the attacks on New York and Washington, terrorists were the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network (rumored to be centralized in Afghanistan). Our targeting systems painted a really big bulls-eye on Afghanistan because everyone believed that was the rat's nest, and the bombing began.

Over six months later, we're still bombing Afghanistan, and the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network are still around. We found out that almost all of the suicide bombers were from Saudi Arabia (not Afghanistan), but we're still after the Afghans. We've turned the rat's nest into a burned out hole with scattered warring tribes and refugees. Nothing is better, and, actually, things are much worse.

Things are worse because our country has set a bad example. A bad precedent. We named the people we didn't like as terrorists, and made every country in the world denounce terrorism so we could bomb who we wanted. Now, in the name of stopping terrorism, all the countries that have a group of people they don't like, have called their adversaries terrorists and started wars of their own.

There's never been a time in my life that people weren't in wars against other people. There's never been peace in the Middle East. Africa has always been in turmoil (from tribal wars and later A.I.D.S.). There was an Iron Curtain in Europe when I was born. When that came down, always-tense central Europe became completely destabilized. When the U.S.S.R. failed, all of the separate nation-states took what they could and then tried to take more from their former countrymen. For almost half of my life, the U.S. has been bombing Iraq (even though before this started, Iraq was an ally).

I have come to realize that distinctions people fight bitterly over are petty and ultimately inconsequential.

I am not Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist or any other religion. I don't even like to say I'm atheist because most of the people who say that sound like pricks as they self-righteously explain away the concept of a god.

I would never join a club that would have me as a member. And I would never join a club where the entire point is to hate another club. I've got my own concept of self-worth, and I don't need to denigrate someone else's to make me feel better.

According to Israel, the Palestinians are terrorists. They use suicide bombers as weapons. They have kids fighting for them. They don't have tanks, their leader can't leave his compound, they throw rocks.

The Palestinians think that Israel is an illegal nation state. That the Israelis have no right to the land they occupy. And they (the Israelis) are better funded, have tanks and international support. I think the Palestinians think Israel is a bully.

For as long as I've been alive, Israel and Palestine have been fighting over the same dirty spot in the sand. How can a few square miles of rancid, unusable land mean anything anymore? If it was ever holy for either of these people, that time must have passed. It's been bombed and turned to glass and broken up into sand again.

If holy people from the past could see what has been done to their former homeland, they would tell both countries to just forget it. This isn't what they meant. What they really wanted was for the Egyptians or Romans or whoever was in power to leave them alone and let them believe what they wanted. And, I think, if they'd known there were better places in the world to live, they'd have gone there. They never meant for millions of people to die in their name. I'm pretty sure of this, even though I never met them and they died thousands of years ago.

But the U.S. can't back down now. And the Israelis can't back down now. And the Palestinians can't back down now. So nobody is going to back down now. We are under siege. We are under constant attack--or so they tell us. Even though, now, all we get are news reports that something MIGHT happen or that something was GOING to happen, but was stopped before it actually DID.

Every time someone asks me if I'm a pacifist (which I am), I give them my one liner on the subject: Nobody's mind was ever changed by killing them.

The U.S. didn't start most of these wars, and we're not going to finish many of them either. But we have set up a bad situation. We are still bombing Afghanistan. We are contemplating larger scale bombing of Iraq. And, this weekend, our Prez told Israel to stop their offensive. Which is really noble if we weren't doing exactly what we're telling them not to do.

"Do as I say, not as I do" isn't really the best philosophy. It makes us look like pricks and idiots--something more and more people in the world think the United States already is.

Matt Worley doesn't believe anyone is right.