If our geo-political adversaries were isolationist, we could be too. But they are not. Ergo, etc. Or is this the fallacy of Denying the Antecedent?
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You may seek to withdraw from politics, but it won’t return the favor. So a certain measured engagement is unavoidable out of self-interest if for no other reason. Retreat routes include suicide, burying oneself in a monastery, and losing oneself in the private life of bourgeois self-indulgence. None of them can be recommended without reservation, but of the three the monastic route is the best. There are of course other ways of avoiding the political.
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It is reasonable to hold that the power stations and other infrastructure of a rogue state that exports terror and credibly threatens to nuke the USA and Israel are legitimate military targets, despite their civilian use. But then the same goes for oil refineries, sewage disposal plants, reservoirs and water delivery systems, roads, and so on. All of these elements of infrastructure are necessary for the health and safety of the civilian population many of whom oppose the rogue regime and play no role at all in supplying them with materiel. This fact puts serious pressure on the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, and the related judgment that it is immoral always and everywhere to target noncombatants, a judgment one would surely like to uphold.
Of course, noncombatants are humans whereas the elements of infrastructure are not. But destroy enough of that infrastructure and you seriously harm and eventually bring about the death of the majority of noncombatants. And that amounts, albeit indirectly, to a targeting of noncombatants. The attackers know, after all, what the likely consequences of their actions will be.
But if we re-think the natural but facile combatant-noncombatant distinction along the foregoing lines, where will that lead us? Not to a total collapse of the distinction, but to its blurring, a blurring so messy as to make impossible any assured judgments in these matters.
One thing is clear. The current pope, Leo the XIVth, is a simple-minded fellow as he demonstrates here.
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Communism and Islamism have in common their expansionism and totalitarianism. They are as little content to stay within their geographical boundaries as they are to allow a private life for those under their control. A sane political ideology stands for the rights of segregation and self-determination.
Another thing these disastrous ideologies share is contempt for truth.