What makes up an attack?

I was just dialing across my Verizon cable channels, when I came across the Destination America network, which was featuring a program called, "Unsealed: America's Conspiracy..." (according to the liner on the bottom of the screen. Verizon's subtitle for that current episode was, "U.S. military may be under attack by alien aggressors." I have a question: If the U.S. military was under attack by pacifist aliens, would they actually be under attack?