Terrorists really anger me!!

[donathos]

Vlad believes that the Boston Tea Party is the same kind of act as suicide bombing a marketplace?

It's laughable on its face. But, if we concede his point and say that they're both "terrorism," then "terrorism" ceases to be a meaningful category. We'll then need some *more helpful* way of distinguishing between those who fly planes into buildings in order to terrify a civilian populace and those who dump tea into a harbor as a protest over taxation, an act from which--according to Wikipedia--Gandhi took some inspiration.

To speak to one thing in a recent post: "Would it have been any less striking if Al Queda had just destroyed the 2 towers without killing anyone? I doubt it since everyone would have still placed it down as an act of terrorism."

But the thing is, not only would Al Qaeda not care whether anyone got killed... it is part of their very plan to *ensure* that people got killed. And not just people, but innocents, as a way of maximizing the terror caused, hence "terrorism."

The Boston Tea Party, in contrast, was not meant to strike terror into the hearts of the ordinary British civilian. It's a different beast.

Words ought to be helpful. By trying to stretch "terrorism" to mean a whole bunch of unrelated things, we rob it of its usefulness.