Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Damaging military equipment is absolutely outside any useful definition of terrorism. I hope no one takes this seriously. If you're caught sabotaging equipment on a US military installation in many cases they are authorized to use deadly force and you'll be held accountable under the UCMJ. The absolute best outcome is you're designated a terrorist and live to see a prison cell.
Terrorism used to be defined as attacking civilian targets to aid in political messaging. Attacking military targets is somewhere between an insurgency, partisanism, or an armed conflict. If we let terrorism mean “any act against the state”, then people who burn police cars are the same as people who plant bombs in shopping malls.
Not consistently, and its not a clear definition.
The same groups that attacked civilians in places I have lived in also attacked military targets as part of the same strategy. Terrorism is used to threaten, divert resources from front lines, cause economic damage, etc. Civilian targets are attacked in most wars. Is a car bomb outside a military barracks that different from one in a civilian area? What about a suicide bomb aimed at a sentry on a civilian road? I was about to drive past that one. Are the civilians who were killed collateral damage from an attack on a military target or victims of terrorism?
> people who burn police cars
So people who attack a civilian target. By your own definition they are terrorists if they are doing it for political motives.