Recent Attacks in Vietnam and Pennsylvania Were Not “Terrorism”

           There have been more incidents recently that have been called “terrorism” that did not meet the definition of terrorism as the violent targeting of innocent civilians in order to intimidate the populace to acquiesce the demands of the terrorists.  I have posted regularly about such occurrences. 

In Vietnam last week, an armed group was arrested for a bombing, as part of a plot to attack the airport.  The goal of the group was to liberate Vietnam from its Communist tyrants.  The dictatorship mislabeled the insurrection as “terrorism.”  In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania last weekend, there was an Islamist attack on Pennsylvania State Police officers, which authorities referred to as an “act of terror.”  It was an act of violent jihad that may have been inspired by terrorists, but was not itself an act of terrorism.  Both attacks targeted government, not innocent civilians and, therefore, could not generate mass terror among the populace sufficient to intimidate it into demanding the government acquiesce to the demands of the attackers. 

I have made a series of posts on the mislabeling of incidents as “terrorism” because the dilution of the word terrorism makes terrorism seem less evil than it is.  Other incidents may be evil, but not as evil as terrorism.  But another concern is that despotic regimes like Vietnam, Syria, Turkey, Russia and others expand the meaning of terrorism in order to put down not only any armed rebellions, but also to quash any dissent, as any supporters of liberation are labeled as supporters of “terrorists” and their free expression is criminalized.  Similarly, the dilution of terrorism helps terrorists and far-left liberals and isolationists who agree with the terrorists’ point to invalidate counterterrorism efforts by making a false equivalence between terrorism, which is a war crime, and legitimate self-defense.