Yes … we can all shake hands and agree that violence targeted at killing or even intimidating civilian populations is terrorism.

At least until we start talking about “Shock and Awe”.

We could construct a box … Y axis = Governmental Involvement … X axis = threat to civilians. The high governmental involvement/low threat box is easy – most certainly not terrorism, but traditional warfare. The low governmental involvement/high civilian threat box is easy – terrorism.

Those other boxes get tougher, though. We have groups working as state agents with levels of autonomy. We have groups melding in with civilian populations, requiring threats to civilians to drive them out. We have the legit military concept of “breaking the opponent’s back” by destroying their industrial base. Where one places a lot of these actions in the grid depends a lot on one’s own preconceptions.

How is it that conservatives, who have traditionally been suspicious of government power, suddenly seem willing to giver carte blanche to governments to do nearly anything they want? No need for courts, no need for evidence, trials, oversight- nope, the government should be trusted with whatever power they choose.

I wonder what the comments would be if a “suspected right-wing anti-abortion terrorist” were to be preventatively detained, without habeas corpus, without charges or trial.

This is true, if for no reason that there is always the possibility that an overbearing state will declare actions to be “terrorism”, or “supportive of terrorism”, that from the outside would be viewed as “exercise of personal liberties” or “opposition to tyranny”.

In the US, I’ve often run across those who believe that a very broad interpretation of 2nd Amendment rights is necessary to give citizens protection against our government. Thus, for example, allowing not only your shotgun or deer rifle or the revolver which Hasan carried and did not use last week, but also the rapidly-fired rapidly-reloaded semiautomatic weapon with extended clip and armor piercing capabilities that he did his killing with. Does anyone question what label our government would use to describe the first person who turns these weapons on an FBI or ATF or treasury worker who steps on his property?

Thus, we end up playing “good terrorism” versus “bad terrorism” depending on our broader geopolitical ends. If an Iranian dissident were to blow himself up in the headquarters of the Iranian Secret Police in retaliation for them imprisoning his sister, we would applaud it. If an Iraqi dissident were to do the same right now in Iraq, we’d call them a terrorist.