of course, john muhammad has been convicted in regards to his sniping rampage along the east coast -- murder, conspiracy, terrorism, and a firearms charge. how he expected not to be, i do not know.
what does bother me, however, is the terrorism count. what's up with that? i would personally classify him more as a serial killer than a terrorist. a more technologically advanced serial killer, sure, but not quite a terrorist. at least, that's how i intuitively feel.
but it looks like this falls under new anti-terrorism provisions, and was ruled to be constitutional.
intent to intimidate the public. this is now 1/2 of the current legal definition of terrorism. the other half being the whole threatening of the government and whatnot. of course, the argument against this is that the intimidate the public clause can be used with pretty much anything. taking hostages, public gun waving, any public disruption. it's just not good verbage.
is that right? is that how terrorism should be defined? i don't have knowledge of any formal, academic, political definition of terrorism. tho, the word does have the root 'terror.' that is likely to mean something.
somebody break out the massive History of Terrorism encyclopedia set, plot some kind of graph concerning motivations and goals of terrorists around the globe, and lemme know.
Posted by clock at November 18, 2003 09:12 AM | TrackBack