"Terrorism is terrorism, no matter what the motive," said FBI Director Robert Mueller upon announcing a 65-count indictment against eleven environmental activists who were accused of ecoterrorism a week ago. These environmentalists are allegedly part of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, groups the FBI has dubbed the most dangerous domestic terrorist organizations in the United States.

The Bush administration's sweeping use of the term terrorism is a prime case of selective morality that may help in the prosecution of radical environmentalists but that actually undermines the laudable goal of preventing and curtailing terrorism.

Are the members of the ELF and ALF terrorists? They certainly don't fit the U.S. State Department's definition of terrorism-"premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience"-since their attacks do not target "noncombatants." In fact, the ELF attacks do not target humans, and to date not a single person has been injured or killed.

The actions of these groups conform more snugly to the strikingly expansive definition of "domestic terrorism" found in Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act. This conspicuously vague part of the Act defines "domestic terrorism" as "activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are in violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" that "appear to be intended" (1) "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population," (2) "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion," or (3) "to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping" that occur in the territorial United States.

Yet, this classification applies to virtually all domestic dissidents, whose actions are by definition designed "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion" and sometimes the state's response to protests-even peaceful ones-can create situations that may be construed as "acts dangerous to human life." Also, acts of civil disobedience are by their nature "in violation of the criminal laws of the United States." In effect, the inherent vagueness of this new federal crime-"domestic terrorism"-affords the government an opportunity to lump groups carrying out nonviolent civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi together with real terrorists connected to al-Qaeda.

At the end of the day, as devastating as the ELF and ALF are, their activities would more accurately be characterized as "extreme vandalism" or "massive property destruction." Crimes, yes, but terrorism? No.

Recently the CIA orchestrated an attack with a drone aircraft in Pakistan that ostensibly killed a handful of international terrorists, but also killed eighteen civilians, including women and children. This violent action more closely conforms to the State Department's definition of terrorism, except for the fact that the attack was sponsored by the CIA rather than "subnational groups or clandestine agents."

Would FBI Director Mueller reply to this potential example of state terrorism by saying "Terrorism is terrorism, no matter what the motive"? Somehow I doubt it. More likely, he would agree with U.S. officials who defended the airstrike, asserting it was the correct course of action based on the intelligence available at the time. As Senator John McCain noted on CBS, "The United States' priorities are to get rid of al-Qaeda and this was an effort to do so.We have to go where these people are, and we have to take them out."

Such aggressive single-mindedness rings hollow in the rest of the world, where the Pew Research Center's Global Attitude Project recently found the U.S. is "broadly disliked in most countries surveyed," receiving its most negative assessments from countries like Pakistan where a mere 23% of the population views the United States favorably.

We need to prevent the term terrorism from becoming a vapid rhetorical device with no actual meaning. Terrorism is real, it is serious, and we need to treat it as such at the level of language. If the United States truly wants to combat terrorism, it should start by dispensing with selective morality and by offering a cogent, coherent definition of terrorism. Then it should align its principles and its on-the-ground actions. Only then will real strides be made in the war on terrorism.

Jules Boykoff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. He is the author of the just-released book The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch USAmerican Social Movements (Routledge, 2006). He can be reached at boykoff@pacificu.edu.

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