Definition of a Terrorist

This is rather incoherent but...

I know Bush and other leaders of nation states get labeled as terrorists, and not only by the people they themselves label as terrorists. In my opinion it doesn't seem that unreasonable to me - often the only distinguishing feature between actions of "classic" terrorists like bin Laden or Hezbollah, and the nation state leaders is a matter of how well armed the people are, and whether they are a leader of a recognized nation state.

Well just now I read Howard Zinn's article "War-Mongering America Terrorizes the World" which seems to refine the problem of "What is a terrorist". Basically Zinn concludes if your actions inevitably lead to civilian deaths then you are ipso facto, a terrorist. I'm going to add that your actions must be intended to further some cause or other, presumably of some political nature - unless we want to allow for corporate terrorists (people who inevitably cause deaths due to known deficiencies their product in pursuit of profit).

I think Zinn's definition isn't quite there though, because basically almost any military action even in this day and age of "smart bombs" will inevitably lead to civilian deaths. So basically Zinn labels anyone participating in war, even between nation states, as a terrorist which doesn't seem very useful to me. I suppose you could ask the question "well did the action specifically target civilians?" but that also seems to have the flaw of "what is a civilian?".

In Iraq the US conveniently labels anyone who opposes the American occupation as "insurgents" so they become, in Bush's eyes, legitimate non-civilian targets and hence targeting them wouldn't be a terrorist act. In other peoples eyes they are still just civilians who oppose the military overthrow of their country. As another example in occupied France the allied forces would call the people who opposed German occupation "resistance fighters" or perhaps now "freedom fighters". We would certainly cringe at the thought of them being targeted and executed by the Germans. Yet really the Germans were just eradicating World War II "insurgents" something the US now legitimizes. This even seems to be happening at home, you don't even need to raise a weapon to be labeled as a terrorist, or a terrorist organization and lose all your civilian rights without recourse. Other people might just think you are legitimate dissenting civilians.

I wonder if 9/11 had only targeted non-civilian targets - like US Army bases would that have made Osama any less of a terrorist? Would he have instead been waging war against the US instead of terrorizing us? Would it have made the Bush rampage in Afghanistan and eventually Iraq any less inevitable?

Really I don't have a good definition of terrorist, but I do a) feel like the term is often applied for convenience to label anyone that is subjectively bad, b) our nation (and others) do knowingly engage in actions that inevitably cause civilian deaths, either directly or indirectly, and as such has lead to the "terrorizing" of people not directly and presently raising arms against us. As Zinn points out, this is at least immoral, if not as good as being a "terrorist" itself.