Thoughts on the Terrorist Attack in Austin

I consider the actions of Joe Stack on Thursday in Austin, Texas to be an act of terrorism.

I consider it a terrorist attack because Stack chose to navigate a plane into a building to inflict carnage and take as many innocent lives as possible much in the same way the 9/11 hijackers did. The fact he used a plane as his choice of weapon is quite telling.

This attack was planned well beforehand. Stack set his home ablaze. He worked on his "manifesto" months in advance. Although Stack did not espouse an ideology of Islamic fundamentalism he justified his attack due to a multitude of resentments he had against individuals, ideologies and institutions - chief amongst them the IRS. The IRS is certainly not the most popular public institution but the people who had the misfortune of being inside that building did not deserve their fate.

Joe Stack might very well have had the deck stacked against him in life and he is certainly not alone in this respect. But his actions today did nothing to solve his problems nor did they redress the grievances of anyone else. All he did was to compound the pain and suffering.