But the rules of war have always considered command-and-control centers to be a legitimate target of war, even though there's only one commander-in-chief.

The "good guys" kill civilians all the time -- far too often in fact -- who are incidentally present at 'legitimate' targets of war, such as Hiroshima, Berlin, Dresden, Baghdad, you name it. The PM, the DND are valid targets of war and the people who work with them during a period of war are expected to be aware of that risk. Today we judge it to be rather small of course.

Again, I am not trying to justify or approve of these guys wanting to attack Parliament. I'm mainly concerned that the definition of terrorism is being broadened and cheapened when I think it should be limited to deliberate attacks on innocents. The idea is that it's supposed to be more heinous than traditional acts of war, that it's a line that civil societies don't cross over. Our nations, in wars, have routinely had agents (including natives who decided to work for us) who would act behind enemy lines to engage in geurilla attacks on military targets such as trains, factories, bases and commanders.

I'll be writing elsewhere on what I think engenders terrorism, but here I just want to say that if we define terrorism to mean anything that modern, unequal enemies do, it's become a useless term, and one that will be used against us.

The whole point of the word "terrorist", I believe, is to categorize a particularly heinous kind of violent partisanship. So I don't think defining it based on whether you are in touch with your General makes sense as a line, why is it more heinous?

That's important because we seem to want to have a stronger reaction to terrorism, in the law, and in our own physical responses to it.

To me, what's always been so nasty about it is that innocents are targetted, rather than the direct military or governmental enemy. They target the innocents to sew terror and influence the government (particularly when the government is strongly influenced by the people as in a democracy.)

"Legitimate" states kill innocents all the time, sadly, but at least they are, or claim to be, going after the military targets.

I've always felt the word terrorism was to refer to crossing that line. When your targets become innocents, indeed when they deliberately become innocents because of how much more shocking and terrifying that is.

Now in wartime, geurilla forces, saboteurs, spies, assassins and even local traitors and others have routinely worked behind enemy lines, out of uniform to perform operations against targets. Doing these things has not classified you as a terrorist. (They all tend to be punishable by death, and don't qualify to be a prisoner of war though.)

What I ask is, if these guys are terrorists for trying to blow up our government HQ, why aren't we in the west terrorists when we blow up other government HQs? That's why I say these men, if the allegations are true, are traitors or planned murderers, rather than terrorists.

Did a number of terrorist acts, bombings, etc. There's an argument that the killing of Laporte is an act of insurrection rather than terrorism, though kidnapping (as I will clarify above) can be a terrorist act and as such even deputy Premier Laporte could count as terrorist.

(Though there does seem to be some irony to that set of definitions, that we would treat kidnapping as worse than assassination. I suspect it's because you're never going to get what you want for your cause by kidnapping, and the subsequent murder if you don't get it is so unlike military action. Also because the military norm if you capture/kidnap a high-value leader is to take them back to your territory as a P.O.W. and treat them as such, in fact that's all you are allowed to do with captured enemy.)

Of course there is also valid debate about whether assassination is a valid tool of war. It's certainly a classic tool of insurrection, however, probably moreso than just about anything.