[Reader-list] Is the singular Rhetoric of Terror flawed?

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear Kshmendra, Dear Rakesh,

Thank you for your posts.

We seem to be moving in the range of ad hominem arguments and I have no
desire to be dragged into that.

So for the sake of reinstatement of my views kindly allow me to present my
thoughts again.

1. Events related to loss of human life, property, and livelihood are
happening in our country.
2. These events are framed and articulated by our media.
3. Media frames some of these events as 'Terror' and 'Terrorism' others are
not given this tag.

when I say -Terror- I refer to the following interpretation-

c.1375 "great fear," from O.Fr. terreur (14c.), from L. terrorem (nom.
terror) "great fear, dread," from terrere "fill with fear, frighten," from
PIE base *tre- "shake" (see
terrible<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrible>).
Meaning "quality of causing dread" is attested from 1528; terror
bombingfirst recorded 1941, with ref. to German air attack on
Rotterdam. Sense of
"a person fancied as a source of terror" (often with deliberate
exaggeration, as of a naughty child) is recorded from 1883. The Reign of
Terror in Fr. history (March 1793-July 1794) so called in Eng. from 1801.
O.E. words for "terror" included broga and egesa.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=terror&searchmode=none

and  by Terrorism my interpretation is informed by the reading below-
terrorism <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terrorism> [image: Look
up terrorism at
Dictionary.com]<http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorism>1795,
in specific sense of "government intimidation during the Reign of Terror in
France" (1793-July 1794), from Fr. terrorisme (1798), from L. terror (see
terror <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=terror>).

"If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a
time of revolution is virtue and terror -- virtue, without which terror
would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent."
[Robespierre, speech in Fr. National Convention, 1794]

General sense of "systematic use of terror as a policy" is first recorded in
Eng. 1798. Terrorize "coerce or deter by terror" first recorded 1823.
Terrorist in the modern sense dates to 1947, especially in reference to
Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine -- earlier it was used of
extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French
Revolution (1795) -- from Fr. terroriste. The tendency of one party's
terrorist to be another's guerilla or freedom fighter was noted in ref. to
the British action in Cyprus (1956) and the war in Rhodesia (1973). The word
terrorist has been applied, at least retroactively, to the Maquis resistance
in occupied France in World War II (e.g. in the "Spectator," Oct. 20, 1979).
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=terror&searchmode=none

4. I was curious that why does one type of event is constructed as
-Terrorism- or -Terror- while the other not?

Warm regards

Taha