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Maybe after careful reflection we should come to the conclusion that there is no value in defining terrorism. And maybe inquiry will also show that indeed there is no more substance to the term beyond claims regarding privilege of power, or derisive means of alienating those unlike white America; which is to say, maybe there is no worthwhile substance to the term at all. But I think we should be careful before we come to either of these conclusions. No doubt, the use of the term is serving ugly, slanted political purposes. It takes only the quick association with a few other evocative terms, such as evil and freedom, to make it sound to some plausible to tell the world, in Orwellian fashion, "If you are not with us, you are against us."

It looks as if terrorism, originally a term of the French Revolution, is here to stay, whether we are prepared to wrestle with it or not. Ignoring it, concluding that it does not matter how we define it, will only make it easier for the term to be appropriated by those who seek to use it just as some have described--as a means of delegitimizing the use of force by any others, and as a means of racial division. Hence, I am in agreement with Eqbal Ahmad when, in "Terrorism: Theirs and Ours," he writes, "What is terrorism? Our first job should be to define the damn thing, name it, give it a description of some kind . . . " a description that he advises should not have perspicuous bias built into it, but that attempts to describe it in objectively assessable terms. Ahmad appeals to the Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. I'll offer a more detailed account than the one he cites approvingly--though the one I offer will come very close to his: "The use of terrorizing methods in governing or resisting a government."

Let me get to it. I'll seek an operating definition of 'terrorism,' a definition that targets central cases. An operating definition is intended to serve theory. It is designed to manage our intuitions and arrive at a better understanding. Hence, operating definitions do not deny that there are outlier cases that are not captured but should be. They are designed to permit further amendments or adjustments. They are initial tools of inquiry that can later be dumped if something better comes along.

Here now are several features of terrorism as the term is applied to exemplar cases of it. Many, I think, are not properly emphasized. First, a person, a psychopath for instance, can terrorize a community without being committed to a policy of terrorism. In fact, a lion can terrorize a community, and a lion is not a person at all. Terrorism, as opposed to mere terrorist activity, I take it, involves a design to influence a community, either by seeking to alter its views or practices, or in retaliation of a community's views or practices. In the latter case, most likely, it is an expression of revenge or retribution. The influence terrorism intends can be of a political, economic, social, religious, or some other sort of nature. Hell, I guess there could be aesthetic terrorism.

Furthermore, "recognized" states are potential agents of terrorism. Nothing in the meaning of the term should exclude any state, the United States included, from the charge that some of its policies are or were forms of terrorism. I take it that the core notion of terrorism concerns influence by means of terror, and I can see no conceptual reason why states could not in principle be in this business. Some have suggested that the carpet bombing of Dresden, or dropping a second nuclear bomb on the Japanese, are actions arising from the motive of terrorism. Perhaps they were; perhaps they were not. But if they were not, it is not merely because the actions were the results of a state.