When is a crime terrorism?

NBC 17 - Schools - UNC Chancellor: Not School's Role To Call Attack Terrorism :

"[Mohammed] Taheri-azar told police that he intended to kill people to avenge the treatment of Muslims around the world." This is the man who seriously injured nine people with a car at UNC-CH.

The story goes on to quote UNC Chancellor James Moeser as saying, "As we have investigated this, we've come more and more to the conclusion that this was one individual acting alone in a criminal act."

With all due respect to the chancellor, it is not the numer of persons involved that makes an act terrorism, but the motivation.

They say Sirhan Bishara Sirhan acted alone in assassinating US Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on the night he won the Democrat presidential primary in June 1968. But his motive was supposed to be that he felt Kennedy was pro-Israel. That is a political motive of the sort that we commonly call terrorism.

The Beltway sniper team of Muhammed and Malvo do not seem to have had direct contact with others in launching and carrying out their multiple murders and assaults, but Islam was clearly a part of John Muhammed's motivation.

And what about the lone gunman who shot up the El Al ticket counter at LAX?

I'm not saying that all crimes by Muslims are terrorist acts. If a man who happens to be a Muslim walks into his place of employment and shoots his supervisor because he didn't get a promotion he thought he deserved or goes next door and plugs the neighbor he thinks is fooling around with his wife, those are private and personal tragedies. But when one like Taheri-azar rents a car so he can mow down nine strangers in a public place and he says its a protest about the treatment of Muslims - that sure sounds like terrorism to me.

One of the problems in dealing with the GWOT is precisely its diffuse nature. Terrorist leaders, radical politicians and many clerics - literally thousands of men around the world - are constantly urging others to act as terrorists. It is not so important what they hit and when as that they hit something and, in the aggregate, fairly often. So, while something like 9/11 or the East African embassy attacks require a high degree of organization, expertise and money and the attacks on the commuters in London and Madrid a little less so, the cause also benefits from those who recruit themselves by ones and twos. This is why killing UBL won't solve the problem and may not even have much impact.