6 ms·

The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. To any motivated anti-society organization o

• jdavis703 5y ago
  This actually isn’t the goal of terrorism. I’ve studied terrorism and the definition is essentially non-state actors using violence for political means. Now we can go in to various conspiracies from “Bush planned 9.11 as a false flag” to “Bush ignored intelligence reports so he could launch the war on terror,” but those are mostly just unproven conspiracies unrelated to what al-Qaeda wanted.
  • maybelsyrup 5y ago
    > non-state actors States can, have, and do engage in terrorism.
    • platz 5y ago
      Not if the definition of terrorism I use is one of the 11 definitions that preclude that possibility.
      • Dudeman112 5y ago
        Yes, some definitions are crappy. Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses violence against people to achieve political goals"? Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a technicality.
        • Sebb767 5y ago
          > Do we have a word for "imperialist government uses violence against people to achieve political goals"? Yes, we call this "war". > Because "it's not terrorism because it's a state" is always gonna stink of trying to dodge the topic on a technicality. No, it's not. Nobody is trying to dogde the bad aspects of the word, it's just that terrorism specifically is, by definition, not from a state.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • jdavis703 5y ago
          This is either war or war crimes depending on what exactly happened. There seems to be a trend of calling every terrifying event “terrorism.” People sometimes colloquially refer to even non-political mass shootings as terrorism. I believe it’s important to separate different types of mass violence. For example a gang-related mass shooting might be de-escalated by a mediator engaging the belligerents, whereas a war crime should be sent to international criminal court and a terrorist should be dealt with in a manner to minimize the earned media attention.
          • Dudeman112 5y ago
            >This is either war or war crimes depending on what exactly happened. Huh. Do we call operation condor a war crime? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
      • KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
        What is the appropriate word to use for Iran blowing up a Jewish cultural center in Argentina? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing Note that the word "terror" appears 34 times in that Wikipedia article.
    • AniseAbyss 5y ago
      It has been conveniently memory holed by Western media but Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had deep ties with Al Qaeda. How many Americans even know Bin Laden was hiding out in Pakistan for years after 11/9?
  • baybal2 5y ago
    Saudi Arabia's decades long record of cultivating extremist outfits, and "influence operations" is, thought, not a conspiracy theory, but a fact. When I first seen 9/11 on TV as an 11 year old, I instantly thought that Ryadh will be turned into a crater within a few hours. I dropped my jaw out of suprise, when I heard US going to declare war on Iraq — Saudis' biggest enemy. It made zero sense. I kept on watching the satellite TV at my neighbour's house, and was hoping that it was my knowledge of English failing me. It didn't.
    • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >I dropped my jaw out of suprise, when I heard US going to declare war on Iraq — Saudis' biggest enemy. You're being more than a little disingenuous ignoring the fact that we invaded Afghanistan specifically to go after the extremist group that was responsible for 9/11 about 2yr prior to invading Iraq, which was done for different reasons and "harboring terrorists" took a back seat to WMDs on that list of reasons.
      • cycomanic 5y ago
        That doesn't change his main point. Saudi Arabia was one of the primary financiers of the taliban and Al Qaida, but instead of going after the Saudis some of the only non military flights to be allowed to fly just after 9/11 were private jets that flew Saudi Royal family members out of the country.
      • rswail 5y ago
        The attack in Afghanistan was initially to attack Al Quada directly. It turned into a war against the Taliban when they refused to give him up. That went on for a year or so, but the drum beat of war against Iraq started on 9/12. There is a memo from Rumsfeld around then. [1] The fact that all the terrorists were Saudi, that Bin Laden was Saudi, that Iraq was an enemy of the Saud regime, that Iraq was a "buffer" between the rest of the Middle East and Iran, all of that was ignored. The war in Iraq was the US worst foreign affairs decision in the last 50 years. All of the "WMD" and then "bringing democracy" was retconning the original desire to finish the first Iraq war, which had nothing to do with 9/11. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-9-11/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/plans-for-iraq-attack-began-on-...
  • finnh 5y ago
    One of those is a conspiracy theory. The other isn't. WMD?
    • jdavis703 5y ago
      I was talking in the context of 9/11, not all the yellowcake stuff. IIRC the 9/11 commission report shows some evidence that intelligence was aware of a possible attack, but the administration didn’t act. Some people took this to mean the intel was deliberately ignored, which is the part that seems conspiratorial.
      • finnh 5y ago
        Ah, that wasn't clear from your comment. Thanks.
  • mindslight 5y ago
    Rather than convenient conspiracy strawmen, how about "The military industrial surveillance complex was a main beneficiary of 9.11, and is symbiotic with the groups it purports to defend us against."
  • ksm1717 5y ago
    “Conspiracy theory” has such intense negative connotation that “conspiracy” alone is corrupted
  • sjg007 5y ago
    These non-state actors are usually funded by a state though. So it is a type of proxy war.
• peakaboo 5y ago
  This is exactly what it's about. Humans constantly trading away more and more of their freedoms until we live inside a prison.
  • goatlover 5y ago
    But how does that advance the cause of terrorist organizations?
• lexapro 5y ago
  >The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. There are many possible motives for terrorism but I highly doubt this is one of them, even though people love to repeat it for some reason.
• mLuby 5y ago
  To quibble: terrorism is using dramatic violence to achieve political ends. It just so happens that the victimized society often wants to increase security. The US had at least 3 major responses to 9/11: 1) seek revenge (invade Afghanistan, kill Bin Laden), 2) armor up (Dept. of Homeland Security), and 3) unify under nationalism (flags everywhere). It's pretty easy to imagine a timeline where some or none of those happened.
  • lexapro 5y ago
    In the case of 9/11 the most likely motive was retaliation. If you could ask the terrorists, they would tell you that America terrorized them first (I'm not saying that's accurate).
    • thereddaikon 5y ago
      We actually know their motivations because Bin Laden didn't hide his agenda. He wrote a fair bit on the topic. He wanted to force a change in US foreign policy to stop supporting Israel specifically and to leave the middle east in general. He saw himself as an Islamic anti-imperialist. It was actually pretty straight forward. step 1: have big terrorist attack on American civilians step 2: American civilians ask "why me?", his words not mine btw. step 3: civilians find out what US gov has been doing in the middle east and call for change. In hindsight its an incredibly naïve plan. And I think it ironically shows a lack of knowing your enemy on his part. Americans don't take well to being attacked or intimidated. If you want them to leave you alone the worst thing you can do is provoke them to action.
    • bakuninsbart 5y ago
      There's nothing hypothetical about it. I'm actually baffled at the fact that people here infer random motivations when Usama bin Laden gave interviews as far back as the early 90s and held multiple speeches after 9/11. The stated goal of the attacks was to show Americans that their continuous war and support for secular dictators in the Muslim world would come with high cost, and to force the American government to retreat from the Middle East. This of course backfired spectacularly. Revenge is certainly a primary motivation, too, but I really don't think there is much room on the interpretation for the initial motivation because Al Qaeda was always very open and clear about it.
• duxup 5y ago
  >The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. I don't think that makes sense. If say terrorist actions resulted in the opposite, say a nation providing less security / fewer restrictions: We would then logic it out and say the goal of terrorism is to restrict fewer freedoms and thus allow the terrorists more freedom to do whatever it is they wanted.... including more terrorism. But that's obviously also not the point of terrorism. Terrorists are pushing their own political agenda via violence, that's it, the result isn't necessarily some intent / scheme. If they don't get what they ultimately want, I don't think they give a damn about security or etc.
• thereddaikon 5y ago
  "Terrorism" in the broad sense of the act does not have a goal. Because it is a means to an end, not an end itself. Terrorists do what they do for many reasons. Some are political, some are due to sectarianism. Sometimes its because they are crazy and have irrational motivations. Rarely is it the goal of the terrorist to force a society into tyranny. Timothy McVeigh was seeking revenge. Bin Laden was trying to force the US to change its foreign policy. ISIS was trying to conquer the middle east. Aum Shinrikyo were a doomsday cult. So on and so on.
  • lexapro 5y ago
    It can be an end to itself and it often is: retaliation
    • thereddaikon 5y ago
      No that's still an agenda. Nobody becomes a terrorist just because. There is always a motivation and goal. You say retaliation makes it an end to itself but I give as a counter Timothy McVeigh. He was seeking revenge and sending a message. Terrorism is a tactic used to achieve a specific goal.
      • lexapro 5y ago
        But then no human behavior is and end to itself. All behavior can be described as a "tactic used to achieve a specific goal".
        • thereddaikon 5y ago
          No that's an oversimplification. I can ride a bike because I want to ride a bike. But terrorism by definition describes a type of tactic used to reach a stated goal. It is not simply killing people. That's called murder. And murder can be an end to itself. There have certainly been murderers who had a compulsion to just kill. Terrorism is killing a lot of innocent civilians in order to incite terror in a population to bend to your demands. They have an agenda and feel they are justified.
• goto11 5y ago
  > The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. No it isn't. Not any more than it is the goal of burglars to get people to invest in home security. The goal of terrorism is to use attacks on civilians to achieve political goals, like getting Northern Ireland out of the UK or get the US out of the Middle East. Why would terrorists care how much the enemy restricts their own freedom? Just because something hurt your enemy does not mean it helps you get closer to your goal.
  • thecrash 5y ago
    > Just because something hurt your enemy does not mean it helps you get closer to your goal. I think that's a good general observation, but a key assumption of terrorism is that hurting your enemy /will/ pressure them to do what you want. Terrorism is all about out unconventional ways of bringing pain to your enemy, rather than just defeating their military in combat. So I think terrorism can definitely be intended to sow fear, paranoia, overreaction, internal division, etc within the enemy civil society. Not as the end goal, but as part of the strategy of inflicting paint to pressure them to capitulate.
• snowwrestler 5y ago
  Osama bin Laden did not care about our freedoms, he wanted the U.S. out of the Middle East and believed based on Somalia that dramatically attacking us would lead to that result. This is well documented. We have to be careful to not assign whatever motivation or outcome we don’t like as “the goal of terrorism.” You can justify anything that way, and people do. “If you do the thing I don’t like, the terrorists win” can cut both ways. Terrorists have specific goals they are trying to achieve with violence, usually ideological or political or both. Bin Laden thought his ideology would have room to grow if he could scare the U.S. into leaving. He was wrong about that. The fact that we still have to take shoes off at the airport (annoying as it is) does not mean he won.