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Why terrorism doesn’t work (2002) [pdf]

23 points by pif 10y ago

cup 10y ago
This assumes that these groups believe their actions will lead to a direct outcome. What if these groups are acting in order to force their adversary to change via dealing with less violent but equally reactionary forces. For instance would the Irish people have their independence from the UK if there was no IRA? If there was no violence why would the UK give them something they;re not willing to take, especially when states typically only respond to violence.
- mamadrood 10y ago
  The independance war's IRA has nothing to do with the terrorist IRA, the second one accomplished virtually nothing.
- notahacker 10y ago
  > For instance would the Irish people have their independence from the UK if there was no IRA? Depends which movement called the IRA we're talking about and (more generally) what's meant by "terrorism". There's a degree of a difference between the tactical approach of IRA that won the independence of the Irish Free State in the early twentieth century through classic guerrilla warfare tactics aimed at weakening British security forces and making Ireland ungovernable and and some of the more stereotypical terrorist activities carried out by the Provisional IRA in the late twentieth century involving the high profile bombing of city centres with the (wholly unsuccessful) aim of weakening the British public's resolve to continue to support the Union in Northern Ireland.
  - nailer 10y ago
    Didn't the provisional IRA force the government's hand in the Good Friday Agreement? There's a fairly good chance the Catholic portion of Northern Ireland, which generally favors independence, will overtake the Protestant population which generally favors union with Great Britain. The GFA allows a popular vote on the matter. So by securing a vote, NI will likely go back to Ireland in a generation or two. There were also immediate wins, particularly dismantling the RUC which performed attacks against civilians and colluded with unionist terror groups. (disclaimer: I believe attacking civilians is awful and god isn't real)
    - notahacker 10y ago
      The basic principle of self-determination by popular vote was supported by the UK Government and opposed by the paramilitaries and hardline politicians (both the IRA and hardline loyalists) throughout the 1980s. They could have had something similar to the Good Friday Agreement much earlier had they been willing to pursue that type of settlement by political means earlier.
      - nailer 10y ago
        You're right: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/9/newsid_2516000/2516477.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/9/new...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  Which IRA? Because there was the old IRA in the run-up to the formation of Ireland, then there was the anti-treaty IRA from '20s to early '70s that didn't recognise Ireland or Northern Ireland either. Or the Official IRA, mainly marxist, from the '70s? Or the Provisionals who were the IRA of the peace process.
- 7Z7 10y ago
  I came to make a similar comment, but more focussed on the diversity of Northern Ireland's current political landscape, as a direct result of the Troubles.
- a1011 10y ago
  Another possible goal of terrorists could be to bring about an atmosphere or force a narrative. For example, by attacking a country, it might make it easier to recruit when the inevitable cultural backlash results in increased hate-crimes and racism toward the minority. I imagine that this wasn't one of the goals of the IRA, but it looks to be a major motivator for ISIS, which is trying to recruit from the vast majority of peaceful Muslims in the world with a narrative of West-vs-Islam. If even a very small number of Muslims are radicalised because their mosque was burned down or their mother assaulted, for example, that's still a win for the terrorists. Due to the asymmetric nature of terrorism, which after all is the whole motivation behind using terrorism in the first place, I think it's useful to apply some of the same thinking we do when considering the payout for spam email - if one in 100,000 buys the product / falls for the scam, it's a success.
- throwsincenotpc 10y ago
  > This assumes that these groups believe their actions will lead to a direct outcome. Daesh believes the ends of times are coming and the final battle against "evil" is near so they are just doing Allah's bidding, they believe nothing has changed since the 8th century and they are fighting "the armies of Rome". Do you really think it is rational thinking ? do you really think their can be some kind of political solution in that case ? Daesh is forcing no change upon the enemy, they want to exterminate them like Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews.
cup 10y ago
Supplementary comment: Also ironic that this article is posted today, on the historic day when the balfour declaration was executed and probably put in motion one of the greatest catastrophes in modern time. No single colonial imposition can be seen to have such a direct link to so many modern terrorist activities.
Joeboy 10y ago
If we're talking about the success or failure of terrorism in the Middle East, it's maybe worth considering that while it's not worked out for the Palestinians, it worked out OK for Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks Edit: Or if you prefer you can throw away any data that doesn't back up the hypothesis and you can believe whatever you want.
- finid 10y ago
  Yep, it worked out really well for Israel, because all of the Irgun gangs became statesmen or respected military leaders.
  - Joeboy 10y ago
    The same happened, so some extent, to Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams, Yasser Arafat and probably many others.
    - finid 10y ago
      You put Nelson Mandela in that group! While you're at it, why not add Mahatma Gandhi
      - Joeboy 10y ago
        Because Gandhi was a pacifist and Mandela advocated armed struggle, and led an organisation that bombed civilians. Mandela's reputation as a man of peace is based on the fact he pivoted from a violent strategy to a political one, not on his being a pacifist. Edit: The fact that you and others are outraged by the idea Mandela was a terrorist sort of proves the point. The path to respect, statesmanship, Nobel Peace Prizes and sainthood often starts with violence.
      - notahacker 10y ago
        Nelson Mandela cofounded and chaired the ANC's paramilitary wing. He might have proved to be a superb statesman and the ANC might have had no practical alternative to violent action, but he definitely belongs more in that company than Gandhi's. If anything it's Adams, who has always denied direct involvement with the IRA even if those claims aren't widely believed, that might have cause for complaint at not being considered merely a politician.
imagist 10y ago
You can't fail unless you have a goal, and this article doesn't describe the goals terrorism fails at, or whether those are actually the goals of terrorists.
laluluala 10y ago
Terrorism doesn't work? ETA in Spain only disbanded when the government stopped banning political parties linked to ETA. IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence. FARC in Colombia pushed the government to allow a vote on a truce, a truce so bad the people voted against it.
- Desustorm 10y ago
  One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter...
- maze-le 10y ago
  > ETA in Spain only disbanded when the government stopped banning political parties linked to ETA. The Basque country is not independent. This was the goal of ETA in the first place, and it was not accomplished. After the success of the parlamentary catalan independence movement, the violent ways of the ETA had just no justification anymore. > IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence. The 1920s IRA was a complete different organisation than the 1970ies provisional IRA. You can hardly call them terrorist by todays standards. > FARC in Colombia pushed the government to allow a vote on a truce, a truce so bad the people voted against it. The FARC did not accomplish to install a communist regime in Columbia, so their goal was also not accomplished.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  > IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence That is a vast, vast oversimplification of the journey to Ireland's independence, which is actually only a small part of the history of the various IRA's.
ejlo 10y ago
He seems to have completely missed the reason for 9/11, which is not strange since it was not until the 2004 speech (http://worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm http://worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm) that bin Laden explained the reason for the attacks, namely "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy". In this light it must be regarded as a great success, not a failure, especially since the self bleeding politics continued without much opposition long after 2004.
- namdnay 10y ago
  It seems likely that this was a post hoc justification by Bin Laden.
- tristanj 10y ago
  No, he only started saying that after the US occupied Iraq. Before the invasion his justification against America had strong religious basis. It's especially clear from his earlier writings. http://www.mideastweb.org/osamabinladen1.htm http://www.mideastweb.org/osamabinladen1.htm
  - ejlo 10y ago
    It would have been quite stupid, though, to reveal the plan too early.
    - tristanj 10y ago
      The thesis "Bin Laden destroyed the 9/11 towers to bankrupt America" makes very little sense when you dig into it. It would mean Bin Laden planned to: - destroy the twin towers so - the U.S. would justify an invasion of Iraq and - actually invade Iraq - and occupy Iraq for a prolonged period of time (and not quickly pull out) - so America would devote resources here - thus bankrupting itself Steps 2 and 3 (and possible 4) are huge leaps of faith. It's absurd to believe he planned all that out. It clearly fails Occam's Razor. Plus, it doesn't fit with the historical context of what he said and wrote at the time.
      - 10y ago
crdoconnor 10y ago
"The most workable definition of terrorism that has been published is 'the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims'" So, the US bombing of TV stations in Yugoslavia or Al Jazeera in Baghdad would definitely qualify.
- endisukaj 10y ago
  You can argue that TV stations are no longer civilian targets if the information they are broadcasting is being used by the military.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    Weddings and schools are definitely civilian targets.
    - namdnay 10y ago
      I think the parent was referring to Yugoslavia
- namdnay 10y ago
  As far as Yugoslavia is concerned, it was NATO, not the US directly. The ECHR judged that the bombing was justified, going so far as to imprison the head of the TV station for deliberately exposing civilian employees.
- finid 10y ago
  When we (US) or our allies do it, it's not terrorism. That's a word we reserve for the other guys, the ones we don't like.
nailer 10y ago
> the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims Yes. So tired of this word being used to describe attacks on soldiers. It might be bad (depending on what side you're on), but it's certainly not terrorism.
- bjourne 10y ago
  Modern warfare makes the distinction tricky. Suppose you have a person sitting in a computer center in California controlling drones dropping bombs in Afghanistan. Is he a civilian or soldier? If not, does he become one when he goes home from his shift for the day? What about all the computer programmers writing drone software making his job possible?
  - BBlarat 10y ago
    Writing drone software = workers in a munitions factory? Valid military targets, at least to me. Same with the drone operator, which afaik is usually in the military, with military training.
  - pferde 10y ago
    Is a gun manufacturer or designer a soldier? He makes rifleman's job possible.
  - nailer 10y ago
    > Suppose you have a person sitting in a computer center in California controlling drones dropping bombs in Afghanistan. Is he a civilian or soldier? They are a soldier, attacking an enemy. I genuinely don't understand how being further away makes that unclear. Or any different from a soldier calling in an airstrike being further away than a soldier with a rifle being further away than a soldier with a sword. > If not, does he become one when he goes home from his shift for the day? They are an off duty soldier. > What about all the computer programmers writing drone software making his job possible? They are weapons manufacturers.
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  "...by non-state actors." Otherwise, it's a war crime. I can't understand why so few make that distinction.
DominikR 10y ago
Well I disagree, it did work amazingly well for almost a thousand years when Muslim pirates and raiders constantly attacked ships and cities in the Mediterranean sea which effectively suppressed most sea based trade and economic development in Europe for a very long time. There were even cases where English and Irish cities were plundered and all inhabitants forcefully taken as slaves. People from this culture always used these kind of guerrilla tactics to slowly bring their enemies down. As far as I see it still works today just as well as it did back in the old days.
- madshiva 10y ago
  There was not only Muslim pirates, there was a lot of people from different too. Should we continue to blame Vikings? fore these action? Or can we just live the present? I agree that figthing terrorism only increase more violance. We need to find a way to teach only present and not past, for stopping the wheel of deadlock.
  - DominikR 10y ago
    What does this even mean? Should we just roll over and let them kill us whenever they feel like we hurt their feelings in some way? Anytime someone disrespects their religious teachings in a public way many of them feel the urge to slaughter dozens of people just to show how upset they are about us. And it just never stops, there's just too many radical people in these countries. As I see it the only way to stop this is to show them militarily who's boss until they learn the lesson to back off and mind their own business. The mere fact that they can't resist killing people when they hear some Westener say something bad about them shows that they really just want to submit us to follow their ways. If that wasn't the case they'd just stop listening like any normal person would do.
throwsincenotpc 10y ago
It absolutely did work in the case of 9/11. It forced Muslims to take sides, that's why Muslims follow their religion in a stricter fashion today,especially in the west, in time of war there can be no moderation and Muslims feel they are at war against non Muslims,whether they admit it or not. And it had an effect of humiliating USA in front of the whole world, but one has to be a non US citizen to understand that fact. Suddenly USA stopped being that all powerful nation, suddenly US looked like it could be beaten. It sent a strong message to all the people and groups that despise USA around the world. Bin Laden absolutely won this battle, he lost however his battle against the Saudis as he thought 9/11 would provoke a revolution in his own country. That never happened.
- dforrestwilson1 10y ago
  Your logic is flawed here. It is not daily fear of AQ that has Muslims wearing their religiously proscribed clothes.... it is honoring their religion. Specifically, the strain of hard-line Islam which Saudi Arabia has been pushing. That's the underlying theme which encouraged both the rise of AQ and more conservative Islamic attire.
  - throwsincenotpc 10y ago
    > It is not daily fear of AQ that has Muslims wearing their religiously proscribed clothes.... it is honoring their religion. You misunderstood my message which was quite clear. There is a strong us VS them mentality among Muslims in the west today which wasn't the case 20 years ago. It doesn't have anything to do with KSA pushing for Salafi, it has everything to do with 9/11.
skrebbel 10y ago
Modern-day terrorism is a recruitment scheme. Any attack has the effect of increasing hostilities between groups. Imagine being a teenager with an identity crisis who happens to be part of a minority that the less intelligent half of your home country hates and despises. What group are you most likely to join? And what caused said hate and despise to grow? Right, terrorism. More generally put: Virtually any organization has as its own survival as a high priority goal. Organizations on the extreme ends of ideology, any ideology anywhere, will benefit from increased hostilities in a population. It pushes more people to the fringes. Terrorism is a time-honoured way to increase hostilities. The moderates lose, the the extreme ends on all sides win (whether you're Trump or ISIS). Look at recent history and see how well it worked. American bombs on funerals, ISIS bombs on French crowds, it's all terrorism and it works wonders to keep the perpetrators powerful. When Anders Breivik killed an island full of people, then-prime minister of Norway responded to like this: "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation" This is the correct response to terrorism and we need a lot more of it. Once you see terrorism for what it is, a recruiting scheme, then it is obvious that "powerful language", "bias to action" and all that shit that politicians usually do, is very counter-effective.
- throwsincenotpc 10y ago
  > This is the correct response to terrorism Breivik was an isolated incident, deadly but isolated non less. There is no correct response to terrorism. All terrorists are different. The IRA isn't the FARC or this or that palestinian groups or Al Qaida or Daesh. Sometimes there is a political solution, sometimes there isn't. There is no political solution with Daesh, these people want to exterminate their enemies, the only solution is to exterminate them before they do.
  - reacweb 10y ago
    Probably, but we should exterminate them in the most human and democratic manner.
- whoops1122 10y ago
  I m not sure why you bring Trump into this, he has nothing to do with Terrorist organization, unless you are trying to say that American Govt is a form of terrorist groups, but in that case, Bush and Obama has been the head of that group for the past 16 years.
klagermkii 10y ago
> The international community may not pay much attention to a conflict unless there is media focus on the issue, and the news media are unlikely to pay attention unless there is violence and havoc. [...] The problem of the entertainment-centered media strategies is thus rooted not in ethical flaws of individual editors, but in the fundamental economic structure of the media industry. It is therefore necessary to establish alternative non-profit news organizations to focus on dangerous conflicts and to offset the imbalance caused by the unequal access of the two parts to international news media and to remedy the problem that biased reporting is more profitable than balanced reporting. I think too much is pinned on the door of the media when reporting on stories when: (a) they are very far away and of little interest to people (b) have very difficult solutions and enough nuances to make peoples eyes glaze over (c) there is alternative coverage of other news that is more interesting I take something like climate change which has had plenty of media attention, but until the first city sinks underwater there isn't going to be enough impetus for people to take the truly difficult actions. That moves it into the national spotlight and makes it a priority, similar to how terrorism on US soil changes "standard problems in the Middle East" into an important US issue. > Another reason why the use of terrorism turns out to be counterproductive is that it weakens the ideological standing of the weak part. The ideological condemnation of terrorism for harming innocents is hard to argue against. The use of terrorism thus ruins the only truly efficient weapon that the weak part has: ideological warfare. The resistance/terrorist/freedom fighter organisation's reputation is pretty worthless to begin with. Even if they're saints, no one is going to know about them or care. On the other hand, the powerful country/organization/political has an incredibly important reputation. It is absolutely worth it for the terrorist organisation to let their own reputation sink into the mud, if in doing so they can draw a response from the target that will tarnish its own reputation. It's like the relationship between politican and heckler; the heckler can say all kinds of things and people barely care, but if the politican really lets loose and responds in kind that can damage their image.

23 points by pif 10y ago

cup 10y ago

This assumes that these groups believe their actions will lead to a direct outcome. What if these groups are acting in order to force their adversary to change via dealing with less violent but equally reactionary forces. For instance would the Irish people have their independence from the UK if there was no IRA? If there was no violence why would the UK give them something they;re not willing to take, especially when states typically only respond to violence.

mamadrood 10y ago
The independance war's IRA has nothing to do with the terrorist IRA, the second one accomplished virtually nothing.
notahacker 10y ago
> For instance would the Irish people have their independence from the UK if there was no IRA? Depends which movement called the IRA we're talking about and (more generally) what's meant by "terrorism". There's a degree of a difference between the tactical approach of IRA that won the independence of the Irish Free State in the early twentieth century through classic guerrilla warfare tactics aimed at weakening British security forces and making Ireland ungovernable and and some of the more stereotypical terrorist activities carried out by the Provisional IRA in the late twentieth century involving the high profile bombing of city centres with the (wholly unsuccessful) aim of weakening the British public's resolve to continue to support the Union in Northern Ireland.
- nailer 10y ago
  Didn't the provisional IRA force the government's hand in the Good Friday Agreement? There's a fairly good chance the Catholic portion of Northern Ireland, which generally favors independence, will overtake the Protestant population which generally favors union with Great Britain. The GFA allows a popular vote on the matter. So by securing a vote, NI will likely go back to Ireland in a generation or two. There were also immediate wins, particularly dismantling the RUC which performed attacks against civilians and colluded with unionist terror groups. (disclaimer: I believe attacking civilians is awful and god isn't real)
  - notahacker 10y ago
    The basic principle of self-determination by popular vote was supported by the UK Government and opposed by the paramilitaries and hardline politicians (both the IRA and hardline loyalists) throughout the 1980s. They could have had something similar to the Good Friday Agreement much earlier had they been willing to pursue that type of settlement by political means earlier.
    - nailer 10y ago
      You're right: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/9/newsid_2516000/2516477.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/9/new...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
anexprogrammer 10y ago
Which IRA? Because there was the old IRA in the run-up to the formation of Ireland, then there was the anti-treaty IRA from '20s to early '70s that didn't recognise Ireland or Northern Ireland either. Or the Official IRA, mainly marxist, from the '70s? Or the Provisionals who were the IRA of the peace process.
7Z7 10y ago
I came to make a similar comment, but more focussed on the diversity of Northern Ireland's current political landscape, as a direct result of the Troubles.
a1011 10y ago
Another possible goal of terrorists could be to bring about an atmosphere or force a narrative. For example, by attacking a country, it might make it easier to recruit when the inevitable cultural backlash results in increased hate-crimes and racism toward the minority. I imagine that this wasn't one of the goals of the IRA, but it looks to be a major motivator for ISIS, which is trying to recruit from the vast majority of peaceful Muslims in the world with a narrative of West-vs-Islam. If even a very small number of Muslims are radicalised because their mosque was burned down or their mother assaulted, for example, that's still a win for the terrorists. Due to the asymmetric nature of terrorism, which after all is the whole motivation behind using terrorism in the first place, I think it's useful to apply some of the same thinking we do when considering the payout for spam email - if one in 100,000 buys the product / falls for the scam, it's a success.
throwsincenotpc 10y ago
> This assumes that these groups believe their actions will lead to a direct outcome. Daesh believes the ends of times are coming and the final battle against "evil" is near so they are just doing Allah's bidding, they believe nothing has changed since the 8th century and they are fighting "the armies of Rome". Do you really think it is rational thinking ? do you really think their can be some kind of political solution in that case ? Daesh is forcing no change upon the enemy, they want to exterminate them like Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews.

cup 10y ago

Supplementary comment: Also ironic that this article is posted today, on the historic day when the balfour declaration was executed and probably put in motion one of the greatest catastrophes in modern time. No single colonial imposition can be seen to have such a direct link to so many modern terrorist activities.

Joeboy 10y ago

If we're talking about the success or failure of terrorism in the Middle East, it's maybe worth considering that while it's not worked out for the Palestinians, it worked out OK for Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks Edit: Or if you prefer you can throw away any data that doesn't back up the hypothesis and you can believe whatever you want.

finid 10y ago
Yep, it worked out really well for Israel, because all of the Irgun gangs became statesmen or respected military leaders.
- Joeboy 10y ago
  The same happened, so some extent, to Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams, Yasser Arafat and probably many others.
  - finid 10y ago
    You put Nelson Mandela in that group! While you're at it, why not add Mahatma Gandhi
    - Joeboy 10y ago
      Because Gandhi was a pacifist and Mandela advocated armed struggle, and led an organisation that bombed civilians. Mandela's reputation as a man of peace is based on the fact he pivoted from a violent strategy to a political one, not on his being a pacifist. Edit: The fact that you and others are outraged by the idea Mandela was a terrorist sort of proves the point. The path to respect, statesmanship, Nobel Peace Prizes and sainthood often starts with violence.
    - notahacker 10y ago
      Nelson Mandela cofounded and chaired the ANC's paramilitary wing. He might have proved to be a superb statesman and the ANC might have had no practical alternative to violent action, but he definitely belongs more in that company than Gandhi's. If anything it's Adams, who has always denied direct involvement with the IRA even if those claims aren't widely believed, that might have cause for complaint at not being considered merely a politician.

imagist 10y ago

You can't fail unless you have a goal, and this article doesn't describe the goals terrorism fails at, or whether those are actually the goals of terrorists.

laluluala 10y ago

Terrorism doesn't work? ETA in Spain only disbanded when the government stopped banning political parties linked to ETA. IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence. FARC in Colombia pushed the government to allow a vote on a truce, a truce so bad the people voted against it.

Desustorm 10y ago
One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter...
maze-le 10y ago
> ETA in Spain only disbanded when the government stopped banning political parties linked to ETA. The Basque country is not independent. This was the goal of ETA in the first place, and it was not accomplished. After the success of the parlamentary catalan independence movement, the violent ways of the ETA had just no justification anymore. > IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence. The 1920s IRA was a complete different organisation than the 1970ies provisional IRA. You can hardly call them terrorist by todays standards. > FARC in Colombia pushed the government to allow a vote on a truce, a truce so bad the people voted against it. The FARC did not accomplish to install a communist regime in Columbia, so their goal was also not accomplished.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
> IRA in Ireland managed to give the Irish people their independence That is a vast, vast oversimplification of the journey to Ireland's independence, which is actually only a small part of the history of the various IRA's.

ejlo 10y ago

He seems to have completely missed the reason for 9/11, which is not strange since it was not until the 2004 speech (http://worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm http://worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm) that bin Laden explained the reason for the attacks, namely "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy". In this light it must be regarded as a great success, not a failure, especially since the self bleeding politics continued without much opposition long after 2004.

namdnay 10y ago
It seems likely that this was a post hoc justification by Bin Laden.
tristanj 10y ago
No, he only started saying that after the US occupied Iraq. Before the invasion his justification against America had strong religious basis. It's especially clear from his earlier writings. http://www.mideastweb.org/osamabinladen1.htm http://www.mideastweb.org/osamabinladen1.htm
- ejlo 10y ago
  It would have been quite stupid, though, to reveal the plan too early.
  - tristanj 10y ago
    The thesis "Bin Laden destroyed the 9/11 towers to bankrupt America" makes very little sense when you dig into it. It would mean Bin Laden planned to: - destroy the twin towers so - the U.S. would justify an invasion of Iraq and - actually invade Iraq - and occupy Iraq for a prolonged period of time (and not quickly pull out) - so America would devote resources here - thus bankrupting itself Steps 2 and 3 (and possible 4) are huge leaps of faith. It's absurd to believe he planned all that out. It clearly fails Occam's Razor. Plus, it doesn't fit with the historical context of what he said and wrote at the time.
    - 10y ago

crdoconnor 10y ago

"The most workable definition of terrorism that has been published is 'the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims'" So, the US bombing of TV stations in Yugoslavia or Al Jazeera in Baghdad would definitely qualify.

endisukaj 10y ago
You can argue that TV stations are no longer civilian targets if the information they are broadcasting is being used by the military.
- dilemma 10y ago
  Weddings and schools are definitely civilian targets.
  - namdnay 10y ago
    I think the parent was referring to Yugoslavia
namdnay 10y ago
As far as Yugoslavia is concerned, it was NATO, not the US directly. The ECHR judged that the bombing was justified, going so far as to imprison the head of the TV station for deliberately exposing civilian employees.
finid 10y ago
When we (US) or our allies do it, it's not terrorism. That's a word we reserve for the other guys, the ones we don't like.

nailer 10y ago

> the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain political aims Yes. So tired of this word being used to describe attacks on soldiers. It might be bad (depending on what side you're on), but it's certainly not terrorism.

bjourne 10y ago
Modern warfare makes the distinction tricky. Suppose you have a person sitting in a computer center in California controlling drones dropping bombs in Afghanistan. Is he a civilian or soldier? If not, does he become one when he goes home from his shift for the day? What about all the computer programmers writing drone software making his job possible?
- BBlarat 10y ago
  Writing drone software = workers in a munitions factory? Valid military targets, at least to me. Same with the drone operator, which afaik is usually in the military, with military training.
- pferde 10y ago
  Is a gun manufacturer or designer a soldier? He makes rifleman's job possible.
- nailer 10y ago
  > Suppose you have a person sitting in a computer center in California controlling drones dropping bombs in Afghanistan. Is he a civilian or soldier? They are a soldier, attacking an enemy. I genuinely don't understand how being further away makes that unclear. Or any different from a soldier calling in an airstrike being further away than a soldier with a rifle being further away than a soldier with a sword. > If not, does he become one when he goes home from his shift for the day? They are an off duty soldier. > What about all the computer programmers writing drone software making his job possible? They are weapons manufacturers.
lr4444lr 10y ago
"...by non-state actors." Otherwise, it's a war crime. I can't understand why so few make that distinction.

DominikR 10y ago

Well I disagree, it did work amazingly well for almost a thousand years when Muslim pirates and raiders constantly attacked ships and cities in the Mediterranean sea which effectively suppressed most sea based trade and economic development in Europe for a very long time. There were even cases where English and Irish cities were plundered and all inhabitants forcefully taken as slaves. People from this culture always used these kind of guerrilla tactics to slowly bring their enemies down. As far as I see it still works today just as well as it did back in the old days.

madshiva 10y ago
There was not only Muslim pirates, there was a lot of people from different too. Should we continue to blame Vikings? fore these action? Or can we just live the present? I agree that figthing terrorism only increase more violance. We need to find a way to teach only present and not past, for stopping the wheel of deadlock.
- DominikR 10y ago
  What does this even mean? Should we just roll over and let them kill us whenever they feel like we hurt their feelings in some way? Anytime someone disrespects their religious teachings in a public way many of them feel the urge to slaughter dozens of people just to show how upset they are about us. And it just never stops, there's just too many radical people in these countries. As I see it the only way to stop this is to show them militarily who's boss until they learn the lesson to back off and mind their own business. The mere fact that they can't resist killing people when they hear some Westener say something bad about them shows that they really just want to submit us to follow their ways. If that wasn't the case they'd just stop listening like any normal person would do.

throwsincenotpc 10y ago

It absolutely did work in the case of 9/11. It forced Muslims to take sides, that's why Muslims follow their religion in a stricter fashion today,especially in the west, in time of war there can be no moderation and Muslims feel they are at war against non Muslims,whether they admit it or not. And it had an effect of humiliating USA in front of the whole world, but one has to be a non US citizen to understand that fact. Suddenly USA stopped being that all powerful nation, suddenly US looked like it could be beaten. It sent a strong message to all the people and groups that despise USA around the world. Bin Laden absolutely won this battle, he lost however his battle against the Saudis as he thought 9/11 would provoke a revolution in his own country. That never happened.

dforrestwilson1 10y ago
Your logic is flawed here. It is not daily fear of AQ that has Muslims wearing their religiously proscribed clothes.... it is honoring their religion. Specifically, the strain of hard-line Islam which Saudi Arabia has been pushing. That's the underlying theme which encouraged both the rise of AQ and more conservative Islamic attire.
- throwsincenotpc 10y ago
  > It is not daily fear of AQ that has Muslims wearing their religiously proscribed clothes.... it is honoring their religion. You misunderstood my message which was quite clear. There is a strong us VS them mentality among Muslims in the west today which wasn't the case 20 years ago. It doesn't have anything to do with KSA pushing for Salafi, it has everything to do with 9/11.

skrebbel 10y ago

Modern-day terrorism is a recruitment scheme. Any attack has the effect of increasing hostilities between groups. Imagine being a teenager with an identity crisis who happens to be part of a minority that the less intelligent half of your home country hates and despises. What group are you most likely to join? And what caused said hate and despise to grow? Right, terrorism. More generally put: Virtually any organization has as its own survival as a high priority goal. Organizations on the extreme ends of ideology, any ideology anywhere, will benefit from increased hostilities in a population. It pushes more people to the fringes. Terrorism is a time-honoured way to increase hostilities. The moderates lose, the the extreme ends on all sides win (whether you're Trump or ISIS). Look at recent history and see how well it worked. American bombs on funerals, ISIS bombs on French crowds, it's all terrorism and it works wonders to keep the perpetrators powerful. When Anders Breivik killed an island full of people, then-prime minister of Norway responded to like this: "The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation" This is the correct response to terrorism and we need a lot more of it. Once you see terrorism for what it is, a recruiting scheme, then it is obvious that "powerful language", "bias to action" and all that shit that politicians usually do, is very counter-effective.

throwsincenotpc 10y ago
> This is the correct response to terrorism Breivik was an isolated incident, deadly but isolated non less. There is no correct response to terrorism. All terrorists are different. The IRA isn't the FARC or this or that palestinian groups or Al Qaida or Daesh. Sometimes there is a political solution, sometimes there isn't. There is no political solution with Daesh, these people want to exterminate their enemies, the only solution is to exterminate them before they do.
- reacweb 10y ago
  Probably, but we should exterminate them in the most human and democratic manner.
whoops1122 10y ago
I m not sure why you bring Trump into this, he has nothing to do with Terrorist organization, unless you are trying to say that American Govt is a form of terrorist groups, but in that case, Bush and Obama has been the head of that group for the past 16 years.

klagermkii 10y ago

> The international community may not pay much attention to a conflict unless there is media focus on the issue, and the news media are unlikely to pay attention unless there is violence and havoc. [...] The problem of the entertainment-centered media strategies is thus rooted not in ethical flaws of individual editors, but in the fundamental economic structure of the media industry. It is therefore necessary to establish alternative non-profit news organizations to focus on dangerous conflicts and to offset the imbalance caused by the unequal access of the two parts to international news media and to remedy the problem that biased reporting is more profitable than balanced reporting. I think too much is pinned on the door of the media when reporting on stories when: (a) they are very far away and of little interest to people (b) have very difficult solutions and enough nuances to make peoples eyes glaze over (c) there is alternative coverage of other news that is more interesting I take something like climate change which has had plenty of media attention, but until the first city sinks underwater there isn't going to be enough impetus for people to take the truly difficult actions. That moves it into the national spotlight and makes it a priority, similar to how terrorism on US soil changes "standard problems in the Middle East" into an important US issue. > Another reason why the use of terrorism turns out to be counterproductive is that it weakens the ideological standing of the weak part. The ideological condemnation of terrorism for harming innocents is hard to argue against. The use of terrorism thus ruins the only truly efficient weapon that the weak part has: ideological warfare. The resistance/terrorist/freedom fighter organisation's reputation is pretty worthless to begin with. Even if they're saints, no one is going to know about them or care. On the other hand, the powerful country/organization/political has an incredibly important reputation. It is absolutely worth it for the terrorist organisation to let their own reputation sink into the mud, if in doing so they can draw a response from the target that will tarnish its own reputation. It's like the relationship between politican and heckler; the heckler can say all kinds of things and people barely care, but if the politican really lets loose and responds in kind that can damage their image.