What is Terrorism?

Terrorism is commiting acts in order to invoke terror among a target population to influence their future actions.

If I do X to make you, and your family, and your neighborhood, do Y because you are terrified of what I’ve done, that is terrorism.

If I do X to strike out in a hateful fashion against you, that’s a hate crime. That’s not terrorism.

Thus this discussion of the charges against Maj. Hassan related to the Ft Hood killings.

Assuming (which, from a jurisprudential standpoint we cannot do) that Maj. Hassan is guilty, is he a terrorist?

Well, despite the mantra from Beck and O’Reilly and (gack) North, you are only a terrorist if you are commiting acts in order to terrify and intimidate through terror others to make them change what they are doing. If your intent is simply to (horrifically) strike out against those who you find hateful, then your action is not terrorism.

Yes, I realize that the current ad hoc definition of terrorism is “an individual killing a bunch of people really horribly in pursuit of some political cause,” but that’s not really a sound or rational legal definition.

Hassan is charged with pre-meditated murder. I.e., that he killed people intentionally and with a plan ahead of time to do so. Unless it can be demonstrated that he did so not only to strike out against people he thought, madly, were Bad Guys, but in order to cow the US military and policy makers and populace into acting in a different fashion than how they have been, then he is not (with all due respect to Bill O’Reilly) a terrorist.

Commiting a horrific crime is not terrorism. Acting out an ideology (political or religious) is not terrorism. Hate crime is not terrorism. Killing a bunch of people is not terrorism. No matter what political points might be gained by calling it terrorism. A case of “going postal” — even if you claim to be doing so for some purpose — is not terrorism.

Calling people “terrorists” for doing something we think is awful does not make them terrorists. That doesn’t mean they didn’t do something awful, or that they should not be punished for what they did.

But loosely calling something terrorism has, unfortunately, become an ideological club to punish, not just the criminal in a case, but those for whom the criminal claims to be acting. Calling Hassan’s actions “terrorism” assumes that he was acting in order to change American societal attitudes toward Muslims and/or American governmental policies toward the Muslim world. That seems to be attributing far more coherency to his actions than seems warranted, and definitely tars his cause unjustly, and making Muslims, both worldwide and domestically co-conspirators in this case.

Which, of course, seems to be the goal of too many people eager to call this “terrorism.”