If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck…it may not be a duck

There is a tendency for people to want to overuse the terrorist label when describing criminal acts. Case in point is the recent bombing of a doctor in Arkansas. The good doctor was leaving his home when a bomb exploded, severely injuring him. The local police chief was quick to call the event a terrorist attack. While horrible, it is almost certainly not an act of terrorism.

Here's the definition of terrorism I learned many moons ago:

"Terrorism is an organized strategy for bringing about political, social, economic, or religious change, characterized by the use or threat of violence to coerce or otherwise influence an enemy. It is usually carried out by non-state or clandestine agents lacking in political power and material resources and is difficult to retaliate against. By striking sporadically and without warning, terrorists deliberately seek to create a climate of fear, which gives their attacks an impact disproportionate to the resources invested in them. Terrorism is ultimately a form of communication targeted at multiple audiences."

I keep shaking it, but my magic 8-ball tells me the chances are slim that this doctor in Arkansas was targeted by terrorists. More likely, he is the victim of some horrendous criminal act.

This only warrants attention because throwing around the terrorist label does nothing but help terrorists. The whole point of terrorist acts are to- wait for it- spread terror. They seek to instill fear in the population. Terrorists are naturally weaker than their enemies; if they were stronger, they could employ conventional military tactics and not have to resort to small-scale, sporadic attacks. The effects of fear are much more powerful than any single attack could be. Flying is a safer form of travel than driving; however, following 9/11, huge numbers of citizens elected to drive where they previously would have flown. This resulted in an extra number of deaths on the nation's roadways many times more than that of the 9/11 attacks. Fear of additional terrorist attacks provided an excuse to invade Iraq; an excursion which served as a huge recruitment boost to a number of terrorist groups.

Labeling criminal acts as terrorist only makes people needlessly afraid of terrorist attacks. So please, all you Barney Fife's out there, resist the temptation to label crime as terrorism. We don't need to do the terrorist's work for them. All the security measures in the world don't matter if we elect to hand terrorists free wins.