Terrorism, the label

The baby-gassing leader of Syria refer to his opponents as "terrorists" and it makes me wonder - is there a definition?  

Evidently there are hundreds.  And there is a big political issue baked in - can a state be a terrorist?  Can a state be the sponsor?  The answer is hell yes, with plenty of examples, like Lockerbie.  Or is a terrorist someone who is domestic, and only violates the law of the state?  Timothy McVeigh - was he a terrorist or just a criminal?

I'd say he's a terrorist, for two reasons.  The first has to do with the true origin of the term - it seems to come from the Terror, La Terreur, in the French Revolution, when the idea was to use terror to win at revolution and to rule.   Said Robespierre:

"We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.

"If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs."

McVeigh thought this, that his action was somehow civic.  So did Bin Laden.  So, I suppose, do the Syrian revolutionaries.

But to me the second and equally necessary test is whether there is the deliberate slaughter of innocents. 9/11 yes, Oklahoma City yes, and now, Damascus - yes.   So it's Bashar Al-Assad, who's the terrorist. If the shoe fits, Mr. Baby-Gasser, wear it.