Yesterday's San Bernardino attack started a debate about whether it's terrorism or not, which officials to their credit said there's not enough information yet. I'm somewhat confused why people have problems with this because I think "terrorism" has a pretty clear definition: Violence used to achieve a political goal. It doesn't matter the means. It doesn't matter how many people die. It depends entirely on intent. If you bomb an institution because it's Jewish, then that's terrorism. If you bomb an institution because you were recently fired from there, then that's simply murder. At this early point in time, we don't know whether Syed Farook was a crazy person who stockpiled ammunition and exploded after an argument with his coworkers, or whether he had ties to ISIS and was egged on to shoot a soft target in the West. Either is viable, but one is terrorism and the other is not.

Likewise last week's attack on Planned Parenthood is terrorism. Robert Dear had no personal issues with any of the people inside but instead the institution, and he wanted to stop abortions because of his pro-life stance.

Or conversely the Germanwings crash earlier this year, although it killed 150 people, is not terrorism. Andreas Lubitz was not making some sort of political statement; he just had mental issues that he took out on everyone on board.

This isn't very difficult to understand. Why I always have to open a paper after something horrific and see an article, "Is so-and-so attack terrorism?" Once we find out the motives, there's no fucking question! We know!