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The blog post starts from the premise that Max Abrahm's 2008 paper is correct. The paper states: The strategic model—the dominant paradigm in terrorism studie
by liber8 14y ago
The blog post starts from the premise that Max Abrahm's 2008 paper is correct. The paper states:
The strategic model—the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies—posits that terrorists are political utility maximizers. According to this view, individuals resort to terrorism when the expected political gains minus the expected costs outweigh the net expected benefits of alternative forms of protest.
So sure, terrorism is pretty ineffective you really believe that it's about affecting meaningful political reform. And, maybe he can find examples of that in the past. But that doesn't seem to jibe with today's reality vis a vis islamic jihadists. Does this kid really believe Al-queda is full of totally rational political activists, not just brainwashed losers who have an excuse to inflict pain on people?
Frankly, Alfred's quote from The Dark Knight is a much better theory of what motivates these guys than Abrahms' "rational political actor" theory.
- ucee054 14y agoAnd you really believe that Al Qaeda are some sort of comic book savages? Presumably if we were in the 1960s you'd have believed the same about the Viet Cong. Here's a more credible opinion: http://zenhuber.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/preview-bin-laden-dead-and-loving-it.html http://zenhuber.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/preview-bin-laden-dea...
- gwern 14y ago> Does this kid really believe Al-queda is full of totally rational political activists, not just brainwashed losers who have an excuse to inflict pain on people? I don't believe they are either. Terrorists are not all psychopaths or sadists; not even more than a few of them, no more than US soldiers shooting Japanese prisoners or prying gold teeth out of skulls were psychopaths or sadists. Sorry, but life is not as simple as movie quotes might have you believe. They're stories, fiction, and people invoking them for real-world discussions when there is plenty of actual data to discuss is one of the most disturbing aspects of fiction for me. Some people seem to think they are real.