Okay, "good" may have been the wrong word, but we are supposed to be sympathetic to their cause. I'm just saying that in a post-9/11 world, the word "terrorist" wouldn't have been used to describe one of our heroes. Resistance? Freedom fighter? Sure, those could be used, but I don't think we live in a world anymore where those words could be synonymous with terrorist.
Which is just silly and propagandistic. Terrorism is simply a military tactic, not an ideology. Freedom fighters do use terrorism if it's the only method available to them, and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise. DS9 got it right. War may be a necessary evil at times, but that doesn't make it any less evil on
either side. Kira was honest enough to admit that she'd done awful things for a necessary goal, rather than trying to sanitize it with propagandistic labels like "freedom-fighting." Yes, she fought for freedom, but she did so using the military tactic of terrorism. Because that word refers to a means to an end, not an end in itself.
I personally would have headed towards the Gamma Quadrant because at least at that time, some of the area was explored...
That's overlooking just how immense the galaxy is. "Some of the area" was an inconsequentially tiny volume around the wormhole, not enough to make any meaningful difference to the majority of their journey.
I think the best reason for heading toward the Federation was the prospect of communication. The closer they got, the better the odds that they could establish some form of communication with Starfleet, at which point Starfleet could've begun working on ways to get them home faster, send ships to rendezvous with them, or at least let them speak to their loved ones again. Going toward the Bajoran Wormhole would've kept them at a nearly constant distance from the Federation and put the Central Bulge of the galaxy between them and it, which would've probably ruled out any prospect of establishing communication with home or arranging for Federation ships to meet them partway.
Not to mention that the Ocampa system was out on the fringes of the galactic disk. The deeper the ship moved into the disk, the more densely populated it would be, and thus the better their chances of finding aliens who could help them or cosmic phenomena that could provide shortcuts. Heading toward the Gamma Quadrant, more or less cutting a chord across the disk, would have kept them mostly in the sparser outskirts of the disk, without those advantages. True, it would've taken decades for this to become a factor, but their whole journey was about thinking long-term.
So I'd say that the path they took was definitely a better option than going for the Bajoran Wormhole. The slightly shorter journey would not have been enough compensation for the drawbacks of that course.
