A gunman yesterday attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, killing four U.S Marines. Before anything was known about the suspect other than his name — Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez — it was instantly and widely declared by the U.S. media to be "terrorism." An FBI official announced at a press briefing: "We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not."

That "terrorism" in U.S. political and media discourse means little beyond "violence by Muslims against the West" is now too self-evident to debate (in this case, just the name of the suspect seemed to suffice to trigger application of the label). I've documented that point at length many times — most recently, a couple of weeks ago when the term was steadfastly not applied to the white shooter who attacked a black church in Charleston despite his clear political and ideological motives — and I don't want to rehash those points here. Instead, I want to focus on a narrow question about this term: Can it apply to violent attacks that target military sites and soldiers of a nation at war, rather than civilians?