Although in the post-9/11 use of the term "terrorism", any act of political dissent seems to fit the bill ....

As an observation of how people tend to speak today, that's correct. But that's exactly the kind of loose use of language I was complaining of.

However, I admit that an argument could be made that the Twin-Tower and Pentagon attacks had both terroristic and operational/strategic objectives. It seems to me, though, that the terroristic or propagandistic aspect was more central to the motivation. It seems clear to me that, in the event, the end effect on the United States of those attacks was much greater on the terroristic front than the operational/strategic.

Dave Oesterreich