Why aren't we calling what Joe Stack allegedly did an act of terrorism?

It's been interesting to watch and listen as reporters, news anchors in radio and television, bloggers, and even Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo stumbled over themselves to avoid using the word terrorism, assuring us that what happened in Austin was a criminal act, not a terrorist act.

Why?

If the pilot were named Nidal Hassan, would we be more than willing to call it terrorism?

Stack writes in his 6-page manifesto that his action was designed to deliver what he called a pound of flesh to the Big Brother IRS.

If he wanted to leave a pound of flesh behind for Big Brother, why not just stay home and burn to death? Why fly the plane into a building, which he certainly knew would be occupied? Because he wanted to perpetrate an act of terrorism. He wanted retaliation against the government and the society he felt wronged him. He wanted to deliver his message. He wanted to terrorize us.

In his suicide note, he says, "Violence is not only the answer; violence is the only answer."

Why we can't bring ourselves to call that terrorism is beyond me.

At first, when you begin reading Stack's 6-page letter, you think he's going to recount some egregious case of the IRS or the United States government somehow exceeding its authority, unfairly driving him beyond the point of despair.

But Stack was not victimized by the IRS. He was a product of his own undoing. He writes that he didn't file a tax form in 1994, which you are required to do under American law. In specific years he either didn't pay or disagreed with what was classified as income. In one case, he didn't report $12,700 in income from his wife, which he claims he knew nothing about.

We're supposed to believe that because the IRS asked him to a) report all the income he and his wife earned, b) file his returns on time, and c) pay his taxes on time, that makes them the bad guy and him the good guy?

You do realize that when someone doesn't pay the $12,700 they owe, you and I pay it. Are you happy about that? Are you willing to alibi it?

Yet some are willing to make excuses for the man. Newly-elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown told Fox News that people are frustrated, almost suggesting he understood Stack's actions. Really?

Stack committed a series of mistakes, inadvertent or deliberate actions, which the IRS, as it is charged to do, ordered him to remedy. Instead he flies a plane into a building. Sen. Brown, are you suggesting that's a reasonable outlet for his frustration, or did you misspeak?

This man attempted to inflict as much damage as he could on those who represented the government he hated. Why is that not terrorism?

"Nothing changes unless there's a body count," wrote Stack. "By not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change."

Wrong. What's insured, and what Stack will never know, is that despite body counts and property damage, nothing changes for you after your dead, and nothing is going to change because of what he did. The IRS will continue to carry out our laws, collect taxes and be vilified for it.

Meanwhile, members of 15 families are adversely, even irretrievably, damaged, while the cost of property damage will be passed on to many more fellow Americans.

I'm at a loss to understand why there is any question about what this was, except that he had a common, anglicized name. If only he'd had a strange sounding Middle Eastern name, maybe we'd have felt a little more comfortable calling him a terrorist. But no, we won't do that if he's just plain old Joe Stack.

To suggest that because the American people are frustrated, the murderous actions by a domestic terrorist named Joseph Stack are somehow either acceptable or understandable is outrageous.

No one's making any excuses for Maj. Nidal Hassan, certainly not up in Fort Hood. Nor should they.

But let's call this what it is. An act of violence perpetrated against America in protest of her government is an act of terrorism. Period.