No it does not. There's a clear difference. Just because many terrorists evolve to become governments does not make them less of a terrorist at the start.
You can be one thing, then change to another thing. It doesn't rewrite history.
A terrorist intentionally targets civilians, and non-terrorist does not. That's it.
A non-terrorist might kill civilians, but not intentionally.
> A terrorist intentionally targets civilians, and non-terrorist does not. That's it.
When a leader targets their own people, we don't call them terrorists. My point is that the distinction comes down to whether the state is recognized as legitimate or not, and it's really just arbitrary.
States invent a legal framework that they can use to differentiate their civilian casualties from the civilian casualties of other groups they refuse to acknowledge.
That is what I mean by the state monopoly on violence. You can't legally beat your neighbor. A cop can. You can't shoot protestors, a national guardsmen may be able to.
The state devises a legal framework to justify its violence. Operating within this framework is designated as "peacekeeping action" or "law enforcement". Operating outside of it becomes "violence". Even though the actions are the exact same. It's all just kind of arbitrary is my point.
The USA spent trillions of dollars with this mindset and now has to recognize them as a legitimate government.
My point is you can either be realistic and save yourself a lot of headache, or you can be idealistic and waste a lot of time and money because of your own hubris.
I think the real distinction is that terrorists are non-state actors who use violence (bad). States are legally allowed to use violence (necessary).
But the common parlance of terrorist usually means "US designated terrorist" which really means "group we refuse to bargain with".
The Taliban were a terrorist group, now they are a government. The Iraqi army was a legitimate army, then many became ISIS, a terrorist group.