Via Ben Smith, William Ayers writes The New Yorker to take issue with Nicholas Lemann's definition of terrorism. An excerpt:
Terrorists, he continues, target ordinary citizens, or, when they kill soldiers, their attacks don't take place on the field of battle. That's a convenient tautology: if any conventional government decides to pound a village to dust, it's a field of battle; if a villager kills a soldier in the exact same spot before the invasion commences, that's terrorism. Terrorism, according to Webster's, is “a mode of governing, or of opposing a government, by intimidation.” This definition has the virtue of consistency and fairness; it focusses on the use of coercive violence, whether committed by a religious cult, a political sect, a group of zealots, or the state itself.
I'd say that's exactly right. Although what would you expect from a relative expert on coercive violence?
-- A. Serwer
