When you accept that Terrorism is limited to actions taken against an existing established ruling government, you buy into a right wing, conservative paradigm that ignores when the state itself is the terrorist, or when the state uses terrorism as a tool to destabilize other regimes that may be opposed to the terror spororing state.

Examples: The terrorism you are talking about is the war of the weak against the strong. This is an option that will always be available until it is difused by allowing a voice to the weak in the given society and possible address of grievense.

State terrorism is pretty well defined as the Latin American model in which right wing military groups controll government, suppress the popular vote and participation, and use force to suppress or "disappear" anyone opposing them. Honduras and Guatemala are good examples along with Argentina, Chile, Uraguay, etc.

Surrogate terrorism is when one nation hires and supplies an insurgent group to destabilize the government they oppose without personally getting involved.. Examples abound. Two easy ones would be the US sponsorship and supply of the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden against the Soviets in Afghanistan and the supply and equippage of Jonas Savimbe in the UNITA conflict in Angola. This was a fun one with Cuban mercenaries protecting a Gulf Oil refinery against US sponsored insurgents.

My concern here is an over-simplification of terrorism to serve a political agenda at the expense of legitimate discourse.

Publius