Terrorism: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorism
1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.
Terrorism is a psychological war. Terrorists don’t care about how many they kill. It’s not about the numbers it’s about instilling fear. Even if an attempt fails it is still considered a success to the terrorist because it causes fear. The hope is that once the majority of people are in fear they will pressure their government to give into the terrorists. Problem with these terrorists is they really don’t want anything. It really is not political or material. It is ideological. I don’t believe ideologists are going to negotiate unless they feel they are losing but even that depends on their sanity.
So our government must get serious and the people of America must take it seriously and send a message that we will not be frightened.
Extra security measures are fine but we must view them as a way of finding the terrorists not as way of making ourselves safer. Even if they do make us safer we must word them in such a way that it’s not about our safety it’s about catching the terrorists. It’s about sending a psychological message back that we are not afraid.
Personally, I would be fine with not increasing security. I think every time you increase security on the basis of safety, the terrorists win. The war on terrorism will only end when the terrorists believe that we have no fear of them or death. Only then will they see their efforts to kill us are pointless and therefore their cause is useless. Believe it or not most people in general don’t want to die for no reason. Well, except for the truly crazy ones.
1 comment:
"Personally, I would be fine with not increasing security. I think every time you increase security on the basis of safety, the terrorists win."
Exactly! We have come to see terrorism as something like tsunamis, earthquakes or tornadoes, something whose effects we can lessen by security measures. That has made us see it less as a comprehensive threat to our society and as evil in an ethical sense.
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