Poll: Can governments be guilty of "terrorism?"

[Chris Alger]

By this I don't mean support for terrorism, I mean actually committing it.

I define "terrorism" as deliberately targeting civilians or their property with lethal force for political purposes, specifically to terrify them so much they'll change their behavior and perhaps the policies or attitudes of their government.

The mass media and the US government tend to limit their discussion of "terrorism" to the non-state variety, so that governments with military forces cannot, by definition, be guilty of "terrorism." Title 22 of the U.S. Code, for example, defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience."

Do people agree that this make sense? (This has nothing to do, BTW, with the Haifa bombing or Israel's retalliatory raids).