What a strange country we live in. It may be the only place where a suicidal pilot with political grievances, who specifically targeted federal offices and civilians, can slam an airplane into a building—like al-Qaeda did in NYC—and still not be labeled a terrorist. Now, to be fair, Joseph Andrew Stack doesn’t have some sort of exotic-sounding name and isn’t Arabic or African, so he must not satisfy the current political criteria, but if you go by the book, there’s no doubt about it, lone wolf or not.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the definitions floating around:
First up, the FBI version, since they’re the ones investigation this act of domestic terrorism:
Then there’s the Department of Defense’s take:
Or we could use the definition as defined in the law:
So to recap. Joseph Stack carried out a premeditated, politically motivated suicidal attack, using an airplane, against both the U.S. government and its civilians, to scare them and protest specific policies of said government, that he outlined in a manifesto posted online and ultimately intended to destroy the entire building. Am I missing something here?
