Terrorism a political tactic
Once again, the western world is reeling from an act of terrorism visited on innocent people in London, England. It seems that terrorism is becoming the preeminent form of asymmetric world warfare. Unfortunately, many of us don’t seem to appreciate the root causes of terrorism, and, as a result, our political and mainstream media response is often excessive and fraught with unintended consequences.
Our standard response to terrorism is retributive violence, which frequently doesn’t recognize or acknowledge the terrorists’ motivation. Unless we start to understand and address the underlying problems, solutions are unlikely.
One well-worn cliché is that terrorism’s root cause is poverty. Ergo, if we eliminate the ghettos of the poor, where resentment and terror allegedly breed, we can eradicate all such violence at its source. The underlying assumption is that if all humanity were well-nourished and content, the incentives for terrorism and tyranny would disappear. Alas, despite our most egalitarian efforts, we have suffered tyranny and terrorism for three millennia, mainly perpetrated by disaffected members of the middle and upper classes.
Because terrorism ultimately involves the use or threat of violence with the aim of creating fear, not only to the victims but amongst a wide audience, it is fear which distinguishes terrorism from both conventional and guerrilla warfare.
Terrorism employs propaganda to ensure the attention of the public through engagement of the media. While both conventional military forces and guerrilla forces may practice psychological warfare and terrorism, their goal is military victory. Terrorists on the other hand seek to achieve political or other goals when direct military victory is not possible [asymmetric warfare]. Researcher John Horgan, PhD, Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism, Pennsylvania State University, found that those more open to terrorist recruitment and radicalization tend to:
- Feel angry, alienated or disenfranchised.
- Believe that their current political involvement does not give them the power to effect real change.
- Identify more closely with perceived victims of the social injustice they are fighting than with the society in which they live.
- Feel the need to take action rather than just talking about the problem.
- Believe that engaging in violence against the state is not immoral.
- Have friends or family sympathetic to the cause. - Believe that joining a movement offers social and psychological rewards . Psychologist Clark McCauley, PhD, sees terrorism as the warfare of the weak - the means by which groups which lack material or political power fight against what they see as oppression. He postulates that terrorist actions and government reactions represent a dynamic interplay, with the moves of one group influencing those of the other.
According to terror management theory, people use culture and religion to protect themselves from their fear of cultural annihilation or death, emotions which normally dwell on the fringes of awareness.
Terrorism is a political tactic that is used by activists when they believe no other means will bring about the kind of change they desire. Change is wanted so badly that failure is seen as a worse outcome than the deaths of civilians.
This is often where the interface between terrorism and religion develops. When a political struggle is integrated into the framework of a religious struggle, failing in the political goal (e.g. nationalism) equates with spiritual failure, which, for the highly committed, is worse than their own death or the deaths of innocent civilians.