No One Knows what a Terrorist Is

Do you? Can you find a definition that everyone agrees on? If not, then how is it possible to fight terrorism or identify who is a terrorist? Is Hasan a terrorist or a criminal? What's the difference?

Dr. Jeffrey Record wrote a book on the subject, "Bounding the Global War on Terrorism"

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States, the U.S. Government declared a global war on terrorism (GWOT). The nature and parameters of that war, however, remain frustratingly unclear. The administration has postulated a multiplicity of enemies, including rogue states; weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators; terrorist organizations of global, regional, and national scope; and terrorism itself. It also seems to have conflated them into a monolithic threat, and in so doing has subordinated strategic clarity to the moral clarity it strives for in foreign policy and may have set the United States on a course of open-ended and gratuitous confl ict with states and nonstate entities that pose no serious threat to the United States.

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/summary.cfm?q=207

Juliet Lapidos on Slate says:

It's semantic. There's no precise, internationally accepted definition of terrorism or who qualifies as a terrorist. One 1988 study identified 109 definitions for terrorism, and it's a safe bet there are now many more. The U.S. Code contains several classifications of varying scope. Perhaps the most wide-ranging is the one the government uses to exclude possible immigrants, wherein a terrorist is anyone who uses an "explosive, firearm, or other weapon or dangerous device (other than for mere personal monetary gain), with intent to endanger … the safety or one or more individuals or to cause substantial damage to property." That is, anyone who's committed an armed crime for a reason other than money. In a criminal context, the definitions are narrower. To garner a domestic-terrorism charge, the assailant must intend "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping." As for international terrorism, the actions must furthermore either occur outside the United States or "transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished."

http://www.slate.com/id/2235361/