Sorry but filming and distributing executions, brutal, inhumane butchering, IS terrorism.
Repetition is not an argument.
Oh, and public executions? Not terrorism. If that was the case, then the US was a terrorist nation until 1936.
And since when are acts of war and terrorism mutually exclusive? 9-11 was both an act of war and it was terrorism.
Incorrect. 9/11 was a straight-up terrorist attack.
It was not conducted on a field of battle by professional soldiers. The attackers were not wearing uniforms. They were terrorists.
We refer to Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization because, wait for it... from the start, they routinely engaged in small-cell asymmetrical attacks, designed to generate more fear than harm, more attention than damage, and to destabilize their opponents. AQ never planned to seize and hold territory, or impose political control over specific populations.
Any specific entity can engage in acts of war, and acts of terror. The line between the two are occasionally fuzzy (as is so often the case with any category). However, ultimately the two are fundamentally different. The goal of war is conquest; the goal of terrorism is fear. War is fought by organized military forces, which ultimately want to establish stabilization through control; terrorism is an asymmetric attack by small cells that seek to destabilize.
The French Prime Minister just declared the terrorist attacks last Friday an act of war.
By that standard, the "War on Drugs" is a
literal war, and drug dealers constitute a sovereign nation that wants to seize and hold territory; the "War on Poverty" was a military exercise, designed to conquer poor citizens and drag them into prosperity; and the Culture Wars recruit soldiers and gives them uniforms.
Politicians may say they are declaring "war" on a terrorist organization for a variety of reasons, ranging from legal to political to metaphorical. That doesn't magically turn a terrorist into a soldier.
These people use terror as their primary weapon in their war against us. They aren't "lashing out". This is what they do.
ISIL is not Al Qaeda. They are not fighting a war "against us." Their targets are Muslims.
They are attempting to seize territory in the Middle East, in order to build their own nation, a new caliphate. They spend the vast majority of their time killing other Muslims. For years, they established political control over numerous cities, tried to deliver services, and become an actual government.
They're primarily interested in the West for PR purposes, and because they know the US and its allies will defend Israel, and attack ISIL. If the US was leaving the Middle East alone, they would not bother with the US -- much in the way that Boko Haram is not targeting the US.