What is Terrorism?

[Greenridgeman]

Terrorism can also have domestic implications, some political and some social as in Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski, (the former political and the latter social, for lack of a better description), but both were terrorists who used "weapons of mass destruction" to convey their messages. The similarity between the two is the concept that inflicting terror, injury and death is justified when you are trying to effect behavior modification on a large scale.

Yes, terrorists seek some change in others they feel they cannot gain by other means, spree killers are just losers with no cause, they just want to go out with a bang.

You cannot prepare for nor react to them the same way.

[Chris]

You have to distinguish between the types to fight them.

You are not going to catch spree killers looking for trained terrorists and vice versa.

It could be nothing more than one kind is fighting internal demons, the other, fighting internal demons they have projected on to others.


Terror is like pornography, I cannot precisely define it but I know it when I see it.

And Lanza, Holmes and Loughner were crazed spree killers, Bill Ayers, Weathermen, et al, Ku Klux Klan, SLA etc were terrorists.

It is useful to make a distinction.

Terror is like pornography, I cannot precisely define it but I know it when I see it.

It is useful to make a distinction.

If you cannot define it you cannot distinguish it. Definition categorizes and distinguishes.

[Peter1469]

terrorism is not an "act of war".

an act of war by whom?

a tactic is not a belief system...

and you cannot wage war against an ideology or we'd still be fighting fascists

True, terrorism is a tactic. Terrorists are waging war when they commit acts of terror. The Global War Against Terror (stupid name) is not a war against terrorism; it is a war against terrorists. Specifically, transnational militant Islam.

[Peter1469]

i think that part of their "beef" is really their own problem. and the reason for the problem is the distortion and $#@!ization of islam among the shi'a, in particular.

Is it really a $#@!ization of Islam? Or do the majority of Muslims just water Islam down?

[Peter1469]

To many people Obamacare inspires fear and creates insecurity...is that a terrorist act? Gangs in big cities serve no purpose other than to inspire fear in their claimed neighborhood...are they a terrorist group? Did the new town shooting not create fear in elementary schools across the country....does that not make it terrorism?

Its all just Labels. A death caused by a murder and a death caused by "terrorism" result in the same end result for the person killed. You can't be more dead because of the motivation of the killer was different. It's easy to blame something as generic as terrorism because it gives us a boogeyman to focus on. More people have died from regular murders in this country than terrorism will ever reach, yet it receives a tiny fraction of the focus. How is the eight year old boys murder in Boston more worthy of the country's focus than 20+ five year olds? Arent they equal in horribleness?

Words mean things. When we use these terms loosely, it allows the government to use statutes with enhanced sentencing against American citizens when that was never Congresses intent.

[jillian]

True, terrorism is a tactic. Terrorists are waging war when they commit acts of terror. The Global War Against Terror (stupid name) is not a war against terrorism; it is a war against terrorists. Specifically, transnational militant Islam.

how do you fight a war against an ideology like "militant islam"?

we didn't fight a war against fascists. we fought a war against germany. seeing this as a "war" seems a designed to fail.

[Dr. Who]

Yes, terrorists seek some change in others they feel they cannot gain by other means, spree killers are just losers with no cause, they just want to go out with a bang.

You cannot prepare for nor react to them the same way.

Some so called spree killers do it because they are seeking change. Take Marc Lepine, the protagonist in the Massacre at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal some years back. He felt that feminism was an issue, particularly in the engineering school he was attending. "According to survivors who spoke later to police or reporters, he told them that he was there on behalf of males. "I'm fighting feminism." Women had been taking employment and opportunities away from men, he said, and feminists needed to be taught their place." He massacred 14 women and injured 14 others and in the end took his own life. His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note included a list of nineteen Quebec women whom Lepine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/n...ine/index.html

[Peter1469]

how do you fight a war against an ideology like "militant islam"?

we didn't fight a war against fascists. we fought a war against germany. seeing this as a "war" seems a designed to fail.

You don't fight a war against any ideology. As far as transnational militant Islam goes, you fight the Islamists (i.e. people, not their thoughts). Even Obama appears to understand this.

I get your point about Germany, WWII. But we are seeing something new on the international stage. It is called non-state actors. And for decades we either ignored them or treated them as common criminals, and then 9-11 blew up in our faces. As I have said many times before, Americans tend to have a complete inability to separate war from crime. That is why the 9-11 attacks were successful.

[Dr. Who]

Ted Kaczynski had a political purpose. He had a manifesto.

Well if you want to call it political - he was anti-industrialization and saw it as the cause of humanity's woes.

[Peter1469]

I would label Ted as a domestic terrorist. He clearly had a political agenda.