(2) "Defending" soft targets I posit is just an impossible task unless society becomes so locked down that it is unrecognizable. Lots of Sci-Fi has been written on this topic, eg: 'thought crimes', 'judge dredd'.

Sticking to the theme of point (1).. The French revolution was lead by terrorists. They terrorized the aristocracy (and arguably had no other outlet): "cede power or you'll keep getting your heads chopped off." The aristocracy then ceded power. Whether society is forced to change or voluntarily changes is almost an immaterial difference at that point.

OTOH, consider if someone started blowing up libraries in the US. If the response is to shut down libraries, then the population has been terrorized. Bombings in subways were common at a point, if the subways shut down - the population has been terrorized.

In the 1960s, (US) police used dogs against voter registration organizers. To have been terrorized would have been to stop voting, stop voter registration. That terrorism was not successful.

OTOH, lynchings in the US were a prevalent form of terrorism. IE: "this is what happens when you 'don't know your place'". It worked. I recall there is data showing a large change in regional population dynamics for _decades_ following a lynching.

Timothy McVeigh could have done stuff within the libertarian party, but instead chose a path of violence. Timothy McVeigh failed, he blew up a building and that is all that happened.

The 9/11 hijackers chose a path of violence as well. The 9/11 terrorism OTOH was arguably massively successful - a huge wedge developed between cultures & religions, US society radically changed and the US government was successfully baited and began fighting wars that drained its diplomatic, military and financial power.

So, I think for repressed societies, one persons terrorist is another's freedom fighter. In 'open' societies, the terrorist is trying to change the society in some way, through violent means (a shortcut). Changing the society in that way is achieving the aims of the terrorist.

Strictly speaking, the original, “terrorists” for whose “terrorism” in instituting “the Terror” those terms were all coined as specific terms and later genericized were Robespierre and certain other top leaders of the regime established by the Revolution; that groups overlaps with, but is not coextensive with, leaders of the Revolution; the aristocracy already had their legal power stripped before the whole head chopping thing (which was very much not limited to the aristocracy, the vast majority of the ~15k formal executions and the ~10k who died in custody without trial were commoners, and the ratio is even higher for the ~300k killed outside of judicial process during the Terror.)