The September 11 attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon have been nearly universally condemned as barbarous acts. About the horror, there can be no doubt. Yet even as they watched the Towers fall, and in the pivotal days that followed, leaders disagreed about how, exactly, to define what they were seeing. Was it war? Terrorism? A crime against humanity? An unprecedented combination of atrocities? Definitions matter, for they determine what sort of response is permissible and what body of international law applies.DEMI TEXT DEMI TEXT DEMI TEXT DEMI TEXT. At least 13 unarmed civilian women, children and elderly Vietnamese were killed by US troops in a 1969 mission led by former senator and current university president Bob Kerrey. Kerrey says that ever since he has been tormented by what happened, but acknowledged recently that he read the laws of war only within the last year.   The current clashes between Israelis and Palestinians have refocused world attention on a conflict many had hoped was nearing resolution. There is no shortage of news stories from the region, but the reports of pitched battles and political proclamations rarely address crucial points of international law.   Human rights experts roundly agree that Augusto Pinochet's 1998 arrest in London has made for a "new moment," a "turning point," "a whole new calculus for transnational justice." Yet the climate remains volatile, marked by unprecedented legal advances as well as dramatic setbacks.   This survey addresses the question of whether the war in Chechnya is an internal armed conflict governed by international humanitarian law.