If you take the cynical position that politicians permit events like this to happen, by ignoring warnings or even collaborating with FBI informants, in order to

If you take the cynical position that politicians permit events like this to happen, by ignoring warnings or even collaborating with FBI informants, in order to then affect the changes they desire, then it is clearly terrorism. However, even if you take an optimistic view that in these events: that every actor is doing his honest due-diligence to prevent attacks... it is still terrorism if you are knowingly using the fear created by these events to affect your change. A good read on this idea: http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/ZizekTragedie.pdf http://www.sok.bz/web/media/video/ZizekTragedie.pdf