5 ms·

Terrorism is about creating terror. It's about magnifying, in your enemy's mind, what is actually a small threat. If you have an entire military, you don't use

Terrorism is about creating terror. It's about magnifying, in your enemy's mind, what is actually a small threat. If you have an entire military, you don't use terrorism; you kill your enemies en masse. If you're a small band of nutjobs, you scrape together the resources for a few small hits. You hope that fear will do the rest of the job of crippling your enemy. The way to defeat terrorism is to not be terrified. To call them on their bluff. "You are a tiny band of nutjobs. You can't kill us all. You can't even kill .00001% of us. You are less of a problem than peanut allergies. If you set off a bomb once in a while, we'll have you hunted down, and the rest of us will continue with life as usual."

hugh3 15y ago
"You are a tiny band of nutjobs. You can't kill us all. You can't even kill .00001% of us." If we're talking about the US population, then 0.0001% is thirty people. They can probably manage that. However, on your broader point, nouveau-Islamist terrorism differs from more traditional varieties (the IRA et cetera) in that its practitioners are markedly less rational. For them, terrorism isn't a tool which they're applying calmly in the hope of achieving a political goal. Most of them seem to just want to kill infidels, because the existence of people who aren't Muslim makes them angry. So I don't think the refuse-to-be-terrorized strategy actually works. They don't particularly care whether you're scared of 'em, as long as you die. (They're not very rational or very nice.)
- waqf 15y ago
  No. This is very likely true of the schmucks who blow themselves up, but those people aren't so much Al-Qaeda as they are victims of Al-Qaeda. Did you ever notice how UBL never participated in any suicide attacks? Not saying he wasn't crazy, of course, but he was crazy like a dictator. Like, say, Hitler, he was shrewd in pursuit of his bizarre ideological objectives. You can't look at him and say Al-Qaeda had no political strategy.

hugh3 15y ago

"You are a tiny band of nutjobs. You can't kill us all. You can't even kill .00001% of us." If we're talking about the US population, then 0.0001% is thirty people. They can probably manage that. However, on your broader point, nouveau-Islamist terrorism differs from more traditional varieties (the IRA et cetera) in that its practitioners are markedly less rational. For them, terrorism isn't a tool which they're applying calmly in the hope of achieving a political goal. Most of them seem to just want to kill infidels, because the existence of people who aren't Muslim makes them angry. So I don't think the refuse-to-be-terrorized strategy actually works. They don't particularly care whether you're scared of 'em, as long as you die. (They're not very rational or very nice.)

waqf 15y ago
No. This is very likely true of the schmucks who blow themselves up, but those people aren't so much Al-Qaeda as they are victims of Al-Qaeda. Did you ever notice how UBL never participated in any suicide attacks? Not saying he wasn't crazy, of course, but he was crazy like a dictator. Like, say, Hitler, he was shrewd in pursuit of his bizarre ideological objectives. You can't look at him and say Al-Qaeda had no political strategy.