But the rules of war have always considered command-and-control centers to be a legitimate target of war, even though there’s only one commander-in-chief.

The “good guys” kill civilians all the time — far too often in fact — who are incidentally present at ‘legitimate’ targets of war, such as Hiroshima, Berlin, Dresden, Baghdad, you name it. The PM, the DND are valid targets of war and the people who work with them during a period of war are expected to be aware of that risk. Today we judge it to be rather small of course.

Again, I am not trying to justify or approve of these guys wanting to attack Parliament. I’m mainly concerned that the definition of terrorism is being broadened and cheapened when I think it should be limited to deliberate attacks on innocents. The idea is that it’s supposed to be more heinous than traditional acts of war, that it’s a line that civil societies don’t cross over. Our nations, in wars, have routinely had agents (including natives who decided to work for us) who would act behind enemy lines to engage in geurilla attacks on military targets such as trains, factories, bases and commanders.

I’ll be writing elsewhere on what I think engenders terrorism, but here I just want to say that if we define terrorism to mean anything that modern, unequal enemies do, it’s become a useless term, and one that will be used against us.