As for your example with apartment buildings, I’m surprised you are really serious about that. So if terrorists are hiding in your apartment building, it is their fault that they bomb your building while you are in it?

That should get around your objection. What do you think? Any better suggestions?

Well, it’s better, but I still don’t think so – for example torture used in interrogation is not normally called “terrorism”, however despicable it is.

How about “an attempt to induce terror in a civilian population by the use of non-warfare means of violence?” That’s what we usually mean by the word, when we aren’t bending it to novel political uses. The fact that actual terrorists hide in “apartment buildings full of civilians and children” is not the fault of “those who order military strikes”, but rather of the terrorists themselves.

“Terrorism is the deliberate act of hurting or killing innocent people to further an agenda.”

That should get around your objection. What do you think? Any better suggestions?

Um, no; that’s murder. Not all murder is terrorism.

I understand his confusion, though. Surely Jim Wallis didn’t mean to call abortion “terrorism”, so his thoughts are apparently rather muddled when it comes to the subject of murder …