htest acknowledgment that might call recent bombing campaigns into question. However, the problem is also conceptual. German wartime bombing of London has few defenders, but it is so different from "terrorism" as we commonly use the word as to make a definition that includes it an impractical one -- it does nothing to clarify what we are talking about. From ancient times, states have used mass violence to spread terror among enemies, or their own subjects. To define that violence as terrorism is to spread the net so wide as to make it useless for distinguishing terrorism in the sense it is used by contemporary politicians and the media. Later in this essay we shall consider terrorism in the broader historical context of the use of political violence to spread fear. By arbitrary but necessary definition, however, such violence is not terrorism unless it meets narrower criteria.
At the same time, the definition offered above excludes actions th
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