> 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...
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.)
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!
Terminology these days is less about meaning and more about political pressure. I'm sure this qualifies under group 2.
In the case of this bombing, then, I think calling the cuprits "terrorists" would be incorrect since they were attempting to take down infrastructure.
We need to deepen our critical thinking a bit and evolve past “bomb = terrorism” naïveté.
Terrorism is unlawfully using violence, especially against civilians, to achieve a political aim.
Important to note that there is not one single definition of "terrorism" that everyone agrees on. For some, "terrorism" is a label assigned to your opposing groups, for others it's about violence for political or religious purposes. If it's from another nation-state, it's usually not labeled terrorism, even if it's against civilians for political/religious purposes. Some groups are labeled "terrorists" even without any recorded history of violence, and so on.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding that what "terrorism" is, is not as black-and-white as you put it.
Then there is the use of the term for rhetorical and political purposes... This is what obviously varies according to the interests of those using the term. Obviously the terrorists are always the 'other guys'.
Note that the definition I gave, which is nothing more than the Oxford dictionary one, includes a crucial word, "unlawful". This is very important to differentiate between warfare and terrorism. A sovereign state uses violence for political aims, this is warfare and it is 'lawful' (it may be unlawful under international law, though). This is why action by nation-states are usually not labelled 'terrorism'.
Just adding a bit more context as your previous comment seemed "sure" in that you're proclaiming "X is Y" while reality is not that black-and-white. Again, I agree with this and your previous comment.
Note, have have worked with people assembling a major dictionary. They are just regualr people with regular foibles.
Basic categorization of terrorism then would be concerned with:
a: tuple (agency, means)
must resolve to be "illegal" within the applicable legal scope. For example, a state dropping bombs on a civilian population (nation-state, war-crime) satisfies the above requirement but doing the same to enemy soldiers (nation-state, warfare) does not. Same with a private group blowing up a bank (ngo, crime).
b: tuple (target, reacting-agency)
Goal is to use terror in the target to induce the reacting-agency in responding in a desired manner. If there is no reacting-agency (and thus no goal) it is not terrorism; it is merely pathological.