Defining terrorism

I'm not going to get into which media outlets are deceiving themselves by avoiding the word "terrorist", but Daniel Okrent--the public editor for the New York Times [free registration required]--takes on the topic, and I think he is on to something. If all outlets would adopt the following as policy, I think we could get past this petty point.

My own definition is simple: an act of political violence committed against purely civilian targets is terrorism; attacks on military targets are not. The deadly October 2000 assault on the American destroyer Cole or the devastating suicide bomb that killed 18 American soldiers and 4 Iraqis in Mosul last December may have been heinous, but these were acts of war, not terrorism. Beheading construction workers in Iraq and bombing a market in Jerusalem are terrorism pure and simple.

Well said.