Terrorism isn't about terror

[CQB]

There is a commonly-believed strategic model of terrorism which we could describe as follows: terrorists are people who are ideologically motivated to pursue specific unvarying political goals; to do so, they join together in long-lasting organizations and after the failure of ordinary political tactics, rationally decide to efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks on (usually) civilian targets to get as much attention as possible and publicity for their movement, and inspire fear & terror in the civilian population, which will pressure its leaders to solve the problem one way or another, providing support for the terrorists’ favored laws and/or their negotiations with involved governments, which then often succeed in gaining many of the original goals, and the organization dissolves.

Unfortunately, this model, is in almost every respect, empirically false. Let’s look in some more detail at findings which cast doubt on the strategic model.

http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism is not about Terror

 

[Centermass]

As I and many others have always said. "Islam is not a religion, it's a doctrine and always will be" regardless of how many peaceful muslims there are out there...until the last martyr loving fucker is snuffed.

 

[CQB]

Reading the article one way to hobble the organisations of choice is to whack 'em. Being benevolent guys it seems they spend quite a bit of moolah compensating their heroes families, which drains the coffers and prevents them from spending it on bullets, bombs & camels.

 

[Marauder06]

There is a commonly-believed strategic model of terrorism which we could describe as follows: terrorists are people who are ideologically motivated to pursue specific unvarying political goals; to do so, they join together in long-lasting organizations and after the failure of ordinary political tactics, rationally decide to efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks on (usually) civilian targets to get as much attention as possible and publicity for their movement, and inspire fear & terror in the civilian population, which will pressure its leaders to solve the problem one way or another, providing support for the terrorists’ favored laws and/or their negotiations with involved governments, which then often succeed in gaining many of the original goals, and the organization dissolves.

Unfortunately, this model, is in almost every respect, empirically false. Let’s look in some more detail at findings which cast doubt on the strategic model.

http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism is not about Terror

I read part of that article. What I found to be "empirically false" is the author's gross oversimplification of the study of terrorism. I can think of no organization or serious terrorism academic who claims that terrorists pursue "unvarying political goals," that their organizations are invariably long-lasting, or that they "efficiently & competently engage in violent attacks. Nor is there a lot of scholarly work that describes terrorism as being particularly effective in "gaining many of the original goals" of the organization.

I got as far as the first "puzzle" about "terrorist organizations do not achieve their stated political goals by attacking civilians." Of course they do; that's why they do it. The author tries to address this by rationalizing away the successes of the IRA, PLO, Hezbollah and Hamas, but utterly fails. He also doesn't mention the political success of AQ or the Pakistan and Afghanistan Taliban in using murder to extort political concessions from state governments. Getting something that fundamental that wrong right off the bat made me stop reading.

 

[Crusader74]

As I and many others have always said. "Islam is not a religion, it's a doctrine and always will be" regardless of how many peaceful muslims there are out there...until the last martyr loving fucker is snuffed.

Islam is a religion based on the teachings of Muhammad .. It's interpretation is viewed rather differently by the masses..