We've discussed in class how the term "terrorism" is often misapplied. I found a very interesting article about a recent occurrence in Detroit. You can find the article here.
I am wondering why he was charged with terrorism. As we read in Inside Terrorism, the FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" (Inside Terrorism pg 31). This guy walked into the ER with a hand grenade. How is that terrorism? The article doesn't mention anything about him try to coerce the government, intimidate the civilian population, or anything with a political or social goal. Does he belong to a subnational group?
Certainly he should be locked up, but did he really commit an act of terrorism? I guess it depends on how to prosecution twists the definition of the word, but they'll have a hard time proving that one.
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Chris, thanks for pointing this out. In the future, it's a good idea always to take a sentence and tell me what's in the news story that you find interesting, instead of assuming we'll all click through and read it.
But I like this idea, and I would be happy to see many other posts about uses of the word "terrorism" to describe phenomena different from what we are studying in class. Has anyone else seen one?
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