Timothy McVeigh and Terrorism

As I've continued my graduate school pre-readings, I've come across several mentions of the Oklahoma City Bombing and Timothy McVeigh in the context of domestic terrorism. After 9/11, Oklahoma City was repeatedly invoked for one reason or another, as it was the most recent violent mass casualty event prior to the al Qaeda operation. Yesterday, a question struck me: did the Oklahoma City Bombing meet the technical definition of "terrorism"? The same question could be asked of the ongoing Anders Behring Breivik trial in Norway, or the Beltway Sniper case. All of these incidents were obviously horrific, unjustifiable outrages committed against scores of unarmed and innocent civilians, and by posing the question, my intent is not to detract from that outrage in any way. My question is more a matter of semantics, with limited relevance to discussions of security policy.

Most definitions of terrorism include the concept of influencing political decisions - essentially, violence is used against civilians or other non-combatants in order to cause widespread fear, which then influences the political process in favor of demands made by the terrorist. The influence on politics is a key element of the definition of "terrorism". In the case of the Oklahoma City Bombing, while McVeigh's motives for carrying out the attack were influenced by politics, he doesn't seem to have stated a desired outcome or made any policy demands. I've seen no evidence that McVeigh had any policy demands to accompany the horrific violence he had committed, and he stated that the bombing was an act of revenge for the events of the Waco Standoff several years earlier. The question, then, is whether "terrorism" is the right word to define the Oklahoma City Bombing; or would another, such as "mass murder", be more appropriate? The same could be said of Anders Behring Breivik, who distributed a manifesto shortly before carrying out his attack, but who doesn't appear to have had specific policy demands.

To a great degree, this question identifies a difference without a distinction: the methods we employ to stop al Qaeda from detonating car bombs are the same as the methods we employ to stop another Timothy McVeigh from detonating car bombs. Where the distinction could become important is in the discussion of policy objectives aimed at mitigating threats of terrorism. By associating the likes of al Qaeda, ETA, and the Real IRA with the likes of Timothy McVeigh or Anders Behring Breivik, security strategists and public officials tend to generalize methods for prevention and interdiction. I would make a comparison to heart disease and cancer: both are insidious diseases that can kill you; their causes, treatments, and preventative measures share some commonalities; but if a physician were to treat them as the same disease, said physician would likely do a poorer job of addressing both, whereas identifying key points of similarity and key differences allows for more effective mitigation of both. In the same way, it seems logical that a mass murderer like Timothy McVeigh not be summarily lumped in with a terrorist group like al Qaeda, so that the commonalities can be addressed while simultaneously focusing on the aspects which divide the two in order to more effectively prevent and mitigate attacks by both.