Continuing… The meaning of “terrorism” is extremely contentious. Terrorism is a type of political violence. Western researchers say that political violence is of four types: violence between states, state violence against its citizens, violence between individuals, and the violence of citizens against the state. State violence against citizens is of two kinds: violence to compel [...]
Posts Tagged ‘terrorism’
The Strategic Effects of 9/11, Part 4: The Strategy of Laudable Terrorism
Posted: 16th September 2008 by Will McCants in Strategy, terrorismTags: Strategy, terrorism
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Cold vs. Hot Terrorism
Posted: 4th September 2008 by Will McCants in Strategy, tactics, terrorism, UncategorizedTags: decision making, Strategy, terrorism
Hesbah pundit `Abd al-Rahman al-Faqir has been writing a series of essays he collectively calls “Real War vs. Symbolic War.” The point of the essays is to explain the difference between terrorist attacks (symbolic war) and other types of military violence (real war). One of his essays, “Cold Terrorism,” examines the decision-making of groups choosing [...]
Measuring the Terrorist Threat
Posted: 1st June 2008 by Will McCants in terrorism, UncategorizedTags: terrorism
Daniel Benjamin has an excellent piece in Slate on the difficulty of measuring terrorist threats. The common way to measure it is body count: if the number of people killed annually by a terrorist group goes down, then the threat from that group is reduced. This measurement also allows people to say things like, “Only [...]