I think the point is that drone strikes (targeting angry people with guns and bombs) are meaningfully different than someone blowing themselves up in a a crowded market or mosque (targeting people whose religion is slightly different from his or her own).
You can say they're the same because they're "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims", but there's something of a different quality to those political aims that warrants a distinction.
I regret making a comment that encourages this sort of debate over what terrible things should and shouldn't be labeled a certain way.
Most people's definition of terrorism is "any violent act committed by a Muslim without clear monetary gain," so this definition is actually much more general.
>"the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims"
War, then?
As you said, though, debating definitions is a waste of time.
I disagree with you that "most people" use the definition you claim, but of course neither of us have any data and we both think the debate is silly anyway.
Source? Debating the definitions of words is often silly, but I think it's worth pointing out that 1) the definition of "terrorism" isn't broadly agreed upon, and 2) the definition you're using is more narrow than peoples'. The definition that searching google gives is "the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims", which drone attacks certainly fit into.
More generally, it seems that condemning vague things like "torture" and "terrorism" accomplishes very little, because people will simply use different definitions of the terms to skirt the condemnation. So we have to condemn specific things that are wrong, like waterboarding and drone strikes.