Can't we just all agree

Obama doesn't like to use the term Terrorist, although his supporter seem to be fine with it when they can link it (no facts required). To the right.  Everyone seems to like the term perhaps more than they should.

So My definition of terrorism agrees with Krauthammers:

A politically motivated attack on civilian targets.

Now keep in mind, when your talking about a theocracy, religion is politics.  This is where things get messy.   So if the religious motivation is to spread, force agreement with, or cause fear of a religious ideology, it's political.  When you start screwing with people who are not of your faith, it's political.  Screw with people of your own faith - it might be politics or it might be doctrinal. 

There's one point here where Krauthammer and I part ways.

And here the president faces a challenge. Will Obama level with the American people and use the word? His administration obsessively adopts language that extirpates any possible connection between Islam and terrorism. It insists on calling jihadists “violent extremists” without ever telling us what they’re extreme about. It even classified the Fort Hood shooting, in which the killer screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he murdered 13 people, as “workplace violence.”
In a speech just last month in Jerusalem, the president referred to the rising tide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists as the rise of “non-secular parties.”
Non-secular? Isn’t that a euphemism for “religious,” i.e., Islamist?
Yet Obama couldn’t say the word. This is no linguistic triviality. He wouldn’t be tripping over himself to avoid any reference to Islam if it was insignificant.

(emphasis - mine)

Since Fort Hood was a military target, and the attacker a military person, I would classify that as an act of war and Major Nidal Hasan as a traitor.   The inability to point to the globe and say - it was them - is irrelevant. The rest of it? Yep, I agree.

So was Boston a terror attack.  Sadly I think I jumped too soon in an earlier post.  I added Serbian err Chechen + Islam + possible jihaddist + civilian attack and came up with - YES.  It's really a reserved Probably. Maybe all those people being able to run that distance aggravated a feeling of inferiority (probably not).  

I'm not sure why some folks seem to think jumping to Terrorist is useful.  Maybe it's because we know what to do with a terrorist, but a mentally ill person is harder. I do agree with Krauthammer about Benghazi - there was no doubt when that story broke what was really happening so, yes absolutely.


Do I care if Obama used the word Terrorist or Terrorism? No because he really had no way of knowing, and at the time of writing this, I still don't think it's 100% clear (just highly probable) so as much I really dislike the guy, I'm not going to fault him on that point.