The Historical Roots of Defining Terrorism

After analyzing and comparing the Wikipedia terrorism timeline to the current definition of terrorism as defined by the US State Department I find myself in disagreement with what the US government has defined as terrorism in the past five years. According to the timeline terrorism traditionally has occurred when there is a significant amount of oppression of a certain group of people due to things like their beliefs, heritage, ethnicity, or appearance. There is no shortage of historic examples to illustrate this.

When I look at the U.S.'s War on Terror and definition of terrorism I see some major deviations from the norm. They define terrorism as, "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." (cfrterrorism.org) Even the CIA has its own definition, in close agreement with the State Department's, but possessing their own qualifiers nonetheless. Paul Pillar, former deputy chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center argues that there are four key parts to the CIA's definition of terrorism: Center, argues that there are four key elements of terrorism:

1. It is premeditated-planned in advance, rather than an impulsive act of rage
2. It is political-not criminal, like the violence that groups such as the mafia use to get money, but designed to change the existing political order.
3. It is aimed at civilians-not at military targets or combat-ready troops.
4. It is carried out by sub national groups-not by the army of a country.
(http://cfrterrorism.org/terrorism/introduction.html)