Unfortunately, "terrorist" seems to be becoming the latest ugly adjective with which people try to bludgeon their opponents.  When the president of the police union local here in Atlanta recently told a reporter that the city's consistent pattern of mistreating police officers disabled in the line of duty under the guise of "managing" the officer's Worker's Compensation benefits makes him so frustrated and angry that he wants to beat Mayor Shirley Jackson with a baseball bat, Mayor Jackson responded by having him suspended by the Atlanta PD, and filed a criminal complaint against him with the United States Attorney for "making terroristic threats."

It strikes me that if a given incident is not deliberately intended and, more importantly, realistically likely to alter the way a community or nation acts because that community or nation comes to fear the prospect of further similar incidents, it's probably not appropriate to think of it as a "terrorist" incident.  Using the term "terrorism" to describe incidents such as these glorifies the perpetrators in the eyes of others, and grants their actions a form of sanction which I think is wholly inappropriate.  Treating them as ordinary criminals rather than as noble warriors denies them that glory and that sanction, and defeats the political purpose that drives terrorism to begin with.