Maveric said,
Slamming civilian commercial jets into civilian office buildings killing thousands and destroying a national icon is terrorism no matter how you parse it! I for one was depressed for a month after I saw the towers fall on live television even though I live on the opposite coast and do not directly know a single person killed that day. That's terrorism.
The attack on the Pentagon is only half terrorism by some interpretations due to the fact that the Pentagon itself is a military target.
Even if I agree with you, it's still nothing more than your point of view (POV) and mine. Even if 50% or 80% or 95% of Americans (or Westerners in general) maintain this POV, it's still a "point of view".
There is no universally agree-upon definition of terrorism, no formula into which we can "plug in" some values to distinguish what as "really" terrorism and what isn't.
Even formulas which mention "innocent people" fail, because of a hot dispute over who is "innocent". Are anonymous Israeli civilians riding a bus or sitting in a café "innocent", from the perspective of the group which sends a 'human bomb' on a 'mission' to blow them up? You and I may think so, but I gather that the Arab nationalist groups which the US labels "terrorist" regard these civilians as somehow complicit in the "crimes" of their regime.
Anyway, the solution is to back away from anything that smacks of official Wikipedia endorsement, when there is a hot controversy. Just figure out as accurately as we can, which groups of people (like "Americans" or "Westerners") espouse a particular POV, and say that they espouse it.
The great thing about Wikipedia is that it does NOT have any particular slant on current events or history. We can get into all the in's and out's of public opinion. A conservative news outlet or radio commentator or historian can get away with cherishing a bias. He can easily twist things to support his POV; easiest way is to quote a lot of people who agree with you and omit mention of (or say nasty discrediting things about) anyone who disagrees. Liberals can (and do) join in the fun, too!
Unlike the Bush Administration or the New York Times, this revolutionary, ground-breaking, historically unique scholarly project -- Wikipedia -- has no axe to grind, no point of view to defend. So we can delve into the issues and report accurately about all the major and minor variations of thought on any subject, no matter how controversial.
This is so wonderful, that maybe some of us are still reeling from the shock of such freedom and haven't figured out how to handle it. I'm still trying to get a grip on it, myself.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed