Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a war against terrorism.

In this line Chomsky draws a categorical moral and legal distinction between legitimate military action and the deliberate or reckless killing of noncombatants. By calling such killing “terrorism,” he rejects the idea that the label depends on who commits the violence (state vs. non-state) and insists instead on the nature of the act and its victims. The second clause—“not a war against terrorism”—functions as a critique of rhetorical framing: campaigns presented as counterterrorism can, in his view, reproduce the very practice they claim to oppose when they treat civilian lives as expendable. The statement encapsulates Chomsky’s broader argument that accountability and consistent standards must apply to powerful states as well as insurgent groups.