And yet the same Federal government called the attack against USS Cole "terrorism" and its perpetrators "terrorists", and implemented a range of "anti-terrorism" measures in the Navy after that. And it was a military target, and all the victims were military.

So really, terrorism is what people say is terrorism.

It's really quite bizarre how official history sources unironically talk about a 'terrorist boat' inflicting a surprise attack on a 'destroyer'.

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing

I’m not too familiar with the story but the lead sentence is “On October 12, 2000, two suicide pilots of a small bomb-laden boat pulled alongside of the USS Cole at midship, offered friendly gestures to several crew members, and detonated their explosives.”.

Could this possibly fall under Article 37 c of the Geneva convention (“The feigning of civilian, non-combatant status”)? In that case, calling it terrorism wouldn’t be too bizarre in my opinion. I’m assuming the attackers didn’t wear any uniforms or insignia.

It's hard to say. Military deception is a bit of a grey area by definition. Faking as medics or burial staff is generally regarded as an absolute no-go, but deceptive use of uniforms and so on is sometimes excused. There is a fairly extensive history of this in naval operations, where practicality dictates a whole ship has to be disguised if a deception is to be effective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-ship

But that would mean any attacks made by or involving spies are terrorism.

Yes, that would generally be defined as state-sponsored terrorism.

I think the more relevant part in that particular case is "subnational groups". The USS Cole attack was obviously not an act of war by Yemen against the US, so it needed to be investigated as a terrorist attack instead.

> The extensive FBI investigation ultimately determined that members of the al Qaeda terrorist network planned and carried out the bombing.

[...]

> By the end of 2000, Yemeni authorities had arrested several suspects, including Jamal Muhammad Ahmad Al-Badawi and Fahad Muhammad Ahmad Al-Quso

(Source: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing)

You don't generally call in the FBI to "investigate" a military attack, or "arrest suspects".

If the nation of Yemen had immediately claimed responsibly for the exact same attack and declared war, it wouldn't have been considered terrorism, and rightfully so.

So from what I gather, we are observing either by accident or design a lack of a properly neutral term to designate non-state actors acting against a state's military. Because there is no shortage of material US support for such actors in recent history (I pointed out in another comment the Kurdish resistance in Syria), yet Anglophone media rarely consider US a state sponsor of terrorists.

Yeah, language can be a bit fuzzy around the edges. But when your objective is to overthrow your own government (or win independence for yourself, like the Kurds are), and you're not intentionally targeting civilians, I'd say that's more "rebels" than "terrorists".

If the USS Cole bombers were rebels trying to gain their independence from Yemen (which I don't think is even their stated objective?) and not terrorists they would have been prioritizing Yemeni military targets, not those of uninvolved foreign nations.

The soldiers on the Cole were "non-combatant targets" , so the definition is consistent.

Since they were in the US navy, they should count as members of the armed forces of a country, no? Isn’t that enough? How were they non-combatant?