> It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure
A terrorist attack’s first objective is to cause terror, not to kill people. Thus warning in advance is also effective to instill terror. And separating terrorism from bombing infrastructure is a weird dichotomy...
Imagine for the sake of discussion that the bomber was highly dissatisfied with ATT for whatever reason. He wanted revenge at that company. They over charged him for long distance minutes, or applied a data cap one too many time. In retribution he plans to bomb one of their Central Offices. He has no intention to harm any humans in this scenario. Why do you think it’s wrong to NOT classify this as “terrorism”? Protest actions aren’t necessarily “terrorism”. Instilling fear is simply the furthest from this hypothetical person’s mind. He’s getting revenge on a company the he perceives as having wrong him in some way.
We need to deepen our critical thinking a bit and evolve past “bomb = terrorism” naïveté.
Well, there are gradations. Destroying a telecommunications hub via rapid unscheduled disassembly of a city street sends a different message than painting an Olympics party red. The goal of the Nashville bombing was likely not to instill terror on individuals fearing for their safety.
What about when countries bomb each other's infrastructure during war? That both causes terror in the populace and achieves a strategic objective...
If causing terror were a hallmark of a terrorist attack, wouldn't every attack be a terror attack (even, for example, mass school shootings or shootings like the Las Vegas shooting, etc.)
Causing terror is the hallmark of terrorist attacks, it is what distinguishes it from normal guerrilla warfare.
Certainly there can be a mixture of both tactical and terrorist motives in an attack... 9/11 was seemingly meant to both instill fear and to hobble the U.S. financial system.
But what made it a terrorist attack, as opposed to an act of revolutionary war, is that it was intended to be very public and to frighten the populace.
And yes, mass shootings are considered terrorist attacks for precisely this reason, they’re meant to instill fear.
Consider: murdering a witness to stop them testifying against you. That has a primarily tactical objective. Not terrorism.
Killing someone who owes you a debt, on the other hand, is terrorism because it serves no tactical purpose (you definitely won’t get your money) it is only meant to instill fear in your other debtors.
There is certainly a lot of gray area here, but the that doesn’t render the underlying definitions pointless.
I’d be curious to hear your definition of terrorism though, as it seems to differ from mine!
If you went by what the American media tends to call "terrorist", it's attacks by brown people from countries whose resources are of strategic value, or attacks by anyone with an anticapitalist agenda. (9/11, unabomber).
Terminology these days is less about meaning and more about political pressure. I'm sure this qualifies under group 2.
