Thanks for the post. I've been approaching some of these issues, but more from how traditional counterintelligence has to adjust to counterterrorism. It is also interesting to contrast current Islamic terrorists' motivations with those of different motivation.

While I believe that there were strong differences between the kamikaze and Islamic terrorists, at least of the first groups, they did tend to be well-educated, and not recruits. Their strongest motivation appeared to be that they assumed they would die in the war anyway, so they might as well sell their lives as dearly as possible. It's a different sort of fatalism than submission to a deity, as one might project from an animist (Shinto) believer.

An additional factor was the warrior tradition of bushido, which had several negative consequences for Japan in WWII. Ignoring suicide warriors for a moment, their submarines were not strategically significant, as, far from picking civilian targets, felt warships, the bigger the better, were proper targets for warriors. It is interesting to hypothesize if the Japanese defense plans against the invasion of Southern Japan, OPERATION CORONET, would have worked -- they directed their huge numbers of suicide warriors against troop transports and landing craft, "less worthy" but still military targets. An interesting refinement is that they gave each such soldier the equivalent of a naval commissioning pennant, so he symbolically became a warship.

Another, perhaps special case, is with the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). My hypothesis is that their command regards suicide bombers much differently than Islamic extremists. AFAIK, LTTE do not target public places and try to give the impression terror is everywhere. Instead, if one regards a terrorist as a special weapon, LTTE regards their suicide bombers as snipers, intended to take out specific high-value people. If they operated in the US, they would be the nightmare of the Secret Service protection details, not generic counterterrorism. Their targets are decidedly nonrandom.

I like the reference to voting. You might find interesting a Wikipedia article section of mine, Counterintelligence: Counter-HUMINT. It may be necessary to scroll down to the "Counter-HUMINT" section. This deals with the quite different motivation of someone who decides to spy once trusted with sensitive information, and someone who becomes a terrorist.

It's formatted as a table, or I'd post it here. In my article there on "Clandestine HUMINT Operational Techniques", you'll find some things I found interesting, on the apparent difference between "conventional" and what appears to be al-Qaeda (and related groups) cell systems. Your ideas on timing may very well tie in with what I've described as operational cell activation.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

What makes a terrorist?

terrorism: The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

First, who are terrorists?
Foreign fighters, resisting US aggression, captured in Iraq?
Hezbollah, an organization formed to counter Israli aggression and western colonialism?
Palestinian suicide bombers, resisting an Israeli takeover of their lands and homes?

Go back to the definition of terrorism.
Perhaps your studies should concentrate a little closer to home. Does unlawful use of force ring a bell? How about threats of violence for political purposes? Shock and awe?

Freedom fighters and terrorists are two views of the same people, depending on one's viewpoint. The French resistance freedom fighter were terrorists to the Nazis, and so it goes today in Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere.

So I'm not really enthusiastic about your book given its apparent (based on what you've written above) false assumptions.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

cool, good post. I'm looking forward to more.

The idea that poverty breeds terrorism may still be around in some quarters, but it has been definitively debunked for a long time.  I'm surprised there is still a need to make this point.

But then there's this:

Religious affiliation in the origin country does not predict involvement in terrorism.

Huh?  Now maybe we've got different definitions or meanings at work here, but this seems awfully like trying to dance around the rather obvious observation that most of the terrorists in the world today are Muslim.  Of course it goes without saying (but I'll say it anyway) that being Muslim does not make one a terrorist.  But I would think it would be somewhat of a predictor of terrorism.  That is to say, Muslims are more likely to be terrorists or be sympathetic to terrorists than followers of just about any other religion.  If there's a good argument why we should NOT think this, other than the fact that it makes us uncomfortable and that it goes against the modern liberal notion that all religions and cultures are of equal value, then I'd certainly love to hear it.

I am also struck by the absence of any discussion about the attitudes of the surrounding population, especially people with similar grievances.  It is well known, for example, that a majority of the Palestinian population has expressed support for suicide bombing.  I have not seen recent polling on this, so I don't know if it is still true, but it certainly WAS true a few years back.  Surely being immersed in a culture that glorifies martyrdom might make one more likely to think it's OK.

The final comment has to do with the notion that terrorism is a rational act.  If you take the example of the Palestinians, this leads to all sorts of interesting conclusions.  The contention of most "right-thinking" people in the West is that it is the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands (defined as those lands conquered by Israel in 1967) that is the prime grievance.  Palestinian terrorism is a response to that specific grievance.  Remove the grievance and the terrorism will stop.  Sounds logical, but it is totally at odds with the notion that terrorism is a rational act to redress grievances.  Terrorism, after all, has always increased at times when a political settlement appeared to gain momentum.  This was true in the mid-1990's, when the Oslo peace process was at its height.  If the Palestinian terrorists were only in pursuit of the limited goal of removing the occupation of the post-1967 lands, then when the political momentum was at its height, the rational course would have been to dial back the terorrism.  Instead it increased.  Similarly, the evacuation of the Gaza Strip in 2005 should have reduced rocket attacks on Israel as Israel in fact gave the Palestinians what they said they wanted - an end to the occupation.  Instead it increased them.

If you believe terrorists are rational, the only conclusion has to be that their goal is not to remove the occupation.  It is to remove all of Israel.  Seen in this light, perhaps it is rational.  Perhaps terrorism will, over many years, cause many Israelis to say, "Who needs this?" and emigrate.  Perhaps it will sap the morale of the army.  Perhaps it will cause Jews and others outside Israel to stop supporting it.

There may be many reasons to negotiate with the Palestinians and possibly make concessions to the Palestinians.  But nobody should be under any illusions that concessions will stop terrorism.

I have question -

What are we going to rename the Webster's Dictionary when we're finished with it?

Yes, I'm still very skeptical about our fast and loose use, definition and scholarly treaties regarding terrorism. But perhaps there's some truth here. Perhaps poverty alone is not a root cause of terrorism. Maybe it also needs an arrogant, ignorant, self-serving foreign power stirring things up with it's dollars, despots and guns. That seems reasonable to me.

How do you propose to eliminate the poverty?

Is it even possible to construct an educated society if you refuse to educate the women?

There are probably as many causes for terrorism as there are terrorists. It's like crime - there is no one cause for crime and every criminal is motivated by his own needs.

One common factor in terrorism (if you define terrorism as the act of committing abhorrent crimes against innocent civilians) is a humiliating, personal affront to their dignity and a rejection of them by those more powerful than they are. In other words, it's always personal.

Whether it's Timothy McVeigh, Adolf Hitler Stalin or Lenin, all of them suffered from a personal rejection by the establishment early in their adulthood or late teens. Because they suffered, they want to inflict as much suffering on others as they possibly can.

Generally people who are inclined to inflict this kind of suffering on others see themselves as more intelligent, more sophisticated thinkers than other people and when they are rejected by the establishment or society the default position of people like them is to think that it must be a conspiracy, a cabal, a plot against them personally and their only recourse is the "grand retribution."

How many suicide bombers stood in line at checkpoints and were personally humiliated and embarrassed by those manning the checkpoints? I would have no doubt that just about all of them endured that humiliation at least once, and probably more than a few times. It would take the rare person not to seethe with resentment and embarrassment and anger in those circumstances, it would be impossible not to - the difference though, is how people internalize and process that experience. Unfortunately, because that experience is so personal and so dependent on so many other variables, it is impossible to say who is prone to terrorism and who is not.

Just as a small experiment the next time you're standing in line at the airport (or just about anywhere) look around and pick out those who you know are about ready to explode - here we all are, American citizens, going about our business, attending to our affairs, and who is inconvenienced by the strip searches, and the shoe removal, and the underwire bras, and the watch left on a wrist, or cologne left in a carry on bag? It is us, of course, and while the vast majority of us take it in stride and keep our resentment to ourselves, there are always one or two people who are fed up, can't take it anymore, are humiliated, missed their flights or the hundreds of other fuses that are lit at the most inoportune times and explode with the blowback falling on everyone in the vicinity. That gives you a small glimpse into the world of terrorism.

Good post, and I will want to read the book. However, I think you look at the statistics on poverty and terrorism and draw a conclusion that is incorrect. You say

Poverty and lack of education play very little role. Indeed, education may have a counterintuitive effect because highly educated people are more likely to become involved politically and to hold strong opinions.

Those who suffer the worst poverty are the least likely to have any belief that there is anything that can be done about it, and even less belief that any action they personally take can effect the grievances. They might join a mob and riot, since that does not require planning and personal responsibility for success, but they are unlikely to decide on their own to undertake the long-term planning and actions necessary to become a terrorist - or to do anything else to change society generally.

Being a terrorist requires a belief that the individual terrorist's personal actions can make real changes in the human situation. Uneducated people under conditions of extreme poverty are unlikely to hold this belief. Then to become a terroris requires enough knowledge to prepare and train for some form of significant action, an individual action that can be construed as possibly being effective in changing general society. The individual terrorist must also have a feeling that daily survival does not required the commitment of every waking hour of the day.

It takes education to be aware of a broad society beyond just immediate family and friends. So my speculation is that those suffering the greatest poverty and with the least education are unlikely to either understand that an individual can change society and plan for such a change, believe that they could be such an individual, or have the time and energy to spare above the requirements of pure survival to personally implement any such plan.

It has also been my personal experience that the people living the most uncertain lives rarely have the time and energy to care about society beyond immediate family and friends.

That would leave those who recognize the injustices that those around them suffer and have both the education to think they could change things and the available time and resources to plan to personally attempt to make the changes. The most the poorest and most oppressed are likely to aspire to is knocking over a liquor store, robbing a tourist or something that requires very little advance planning.

I guess I am arguing that a terrorist is a professional in a profession that requires specialized tool, as well as extensive training and planning. The only violence the poorest and least educated people are likely to practice is criminal stoop laborer. Education is required for long-term planning and preparation, as well as the wealth or income that allows the individual to accumulate the tools of the trade. Education is also necessary to motivate a person to make the sacrifice of being a terrorist.

I agree. I, too, have always had problems with that damn lumpenproletariat.

Your friend,

V. I. "Vlady" Lenin

this seems awfully like trying to dance around the rather obvious observation that most of the terrorists in the world today are Muslim.  ...But I would think it would be somewhat of a predictor of terrorism.

Since Muslim terrorists are actually an extremely small subset of Muslims, it seems that it would be a terrible predictor of terrorism.

Three points:
1) Birth order. I have read that revolutionaries tend to be second (or later) children. If "terrorism" names some sort of interpersonal violence by non-State actors, then perhaps people who become terrorists seek status through rebellion against the established order. Their grievance is that the world does not give them the recognition that they feel is their due. This explains (in part) the connection between education and terrorism: schools often create a sense of entitlement in students which increases with educational attainmenmt ("twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift").
2) Technology. Technology empowers everyone. Two thousand years ago, someone who set himself the goal of killing 3000 people would have to be a King of a middle-sized country or a General in the army of a large country. Today, anyone with a MS in microbiology or organic chemistry could probably pull this off. We are coming upon a world where "anyone can klll everyone".
3) Not all terrorists are suicidal, but suicidal terrorists are hard to stop. The promise of an afterlife lowers the downside risk of capture an/or death. Islam is not the only religion which promises some sort of afterlife. The Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam are Hindu.

I think that is in part the point I was rather sarcastically getting at - definitions. And depending on how one defines terrorist/terrorism might have a rather dramatic impact on all those numbers mightn't it? And to be perfectly honest I'd sooner put my head through my flat screen here than buy stock in any definition to any word that comes out of this country of mine. We simply lie too damn much. It really is all we seem capable of doing now. BTW, I was raised that "not telling the truth" is telling a lie. So hiding or avoiding the truth is the same and breaking it.

My particular problem with "terrorism" as it applies too the word is that, well, it's a word that is too often applied. If there were to become the "new" definition of terrorism that included the word or stated that the execution of the act included suicide then I'm all for it. I'm all for anything that will help to narrow this all too flexible word. It's been my observation that for discussion and sales purposes, suicide bombers are used to paint the most grisly of pictures and cloud the most sympathetic of minds with horror. It brushes aside or in other words ignores the larger story to highlight the most gruesome parts. It's about impact not fact. And when everyone is properly scared and adequately distracted, the terrorism umbrella opens up to encompass a vast number of other things. In some cases completely unrelated or entirely different things. It's a very handy word when you have a hand in how it's used.

But then again maybe that's the problem. Maybe the problem is words. We get into discussions about words (and numbers) and forget about people. Which in the end is the real cause and victim of terrorism. People.

Countries that suppressed civil liberties, such as the right to assemble and freedom of the press, were more likely to be source countries of international terrorists.

Boy, the Dems could have used you at the last debate...

[edit: A reference, if not obvious, to Richardson's suggestion that human rights are more important than national security, and the "we must protect our country" bravado from Dodd and Clinton that followed. In general, all the candidates really missed an opportunity on this question.] 

No, I see that as an act of war.

add. text:

Sherman's march to the sea was a definite act of terrorism in the context of war, but it is still terrorism.

The Boxer rebellion.

One way to look at terrorism is an act against noncombattants whose immediate goal is not military but political.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

The French resistance freedom fighter were terrorists to the Nazis, and so it goes today in Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere.

But then you have chimpanzee groupings terrorizing other chimpanzee groupings...so terrorism isn't uniquely human, is it?

This is not terrorism.

Why wouldn't it be?

From what I know Lenin and his family didn't suffer from personal rejection by the establishment early in their adulthood or late teens and his was not a terrorist. Let's don't call all bad people terrorists.

Because I said so. :-)
Because we need definition that doesn't include all "bad" people.

What about Arab acts of terrorism prior to the existence of the State of Israel in 1921 and again in 1939? Bot crushed by the British, the latter setting the stage for the relatively easy victory of the Israelis in 1948.

Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 Virginia, Shay's Rebellion in 1786-1787 Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791 Western Pennsylvania were all conducted by powerless people and all supressed by the British and American governments. Might they be considered acts of terror?

It seems that the powerless who gain hope of success both for their political positions and that their dignity will be recognized only to have those hopes dashed may resort to violence.

In this day and age there seems no region more out of step with the rest of the world than the Muslim Middle East. Well educated, well travelled Muslims can insulate themselves, to some degree from the indignities of the modern world but with radio, TV, the Internet it is hard for them to avoid the assult on their beliefs and their whole way of life. Combine that with the promise that the use of violence, in this they share traits with the fascists, Nazis and Communists of the 1920s, will not only bring success but glory maybe a powerful incentive to submerge the self into a collective cause for which one will commit mass murder and suicide.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Sorry kid, that doesn't cut it for me -

In my opinion, the problem is the narrowness of the definition, which is why it is so difficult to identify "causes" or at least factors/variables in the creation of terrorists and terrorism.

The man that wrote "the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize" wasn't a terrorist? The Cheka was not an instrument of state terror?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

BtD: when you hear about terrorism these days, it is a pretty good bet that the terrorists are Muslim

Do you believe everything you hear?
Do you believe that Palestinian suicide bombers are terrorists but Israeli Beirut-bombers aren't terrorists? because that's what you hear.
Apparently you do believe only what you hear.

Are bandits or street gangs covered under Article 51 of the UN charter?

Maybe they were just carrying walking sticks because of injured feet, fear of snakes, and the potential use of the stick as a tool to catch termites for supper.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Terrorists!

So were the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo morally equivalent to the Nazi rocketing of London or not?

Is the sole criteria the fact that non-combatants are killed or is the purpose of the bombing also relevant?

Does it matter whether it is offense or defense?

In the Middle East how do you tell which is which?

As to the 'daily humiliation and harrassment of checkpoints' if you bite the hand that feeds you, you are in no position to complain if the hand starts wearing gloves.

As long as the Palestinians harbor (and in many cases, celebrate) individuals who commit atrocities against Israelis -- Jewish and Muslim civilions alike they cannot expect to cross freely into Israel nor to be welcome in their neighbors' factories nor to complain about walls.

Thanks for the recommendation, I've been looking for something new to read.

Davai, acts of terrorism and acts of war aren't mutually exclusive.

Yes, I believe that dropping the atomic bomb on two cities in Japan was an act of terrorism - the goal was to so terrorize the civilian population so that they would accept the loss of that war as inevitable.

'being a terrorist is a pretty good predictor of who is Muslim'

That would explain those famous Irish Muslims , the IRA, Those Spanish Muslim , the Basque, Those Muslim terrorists in Columbia, fighting for cocaine and God, lets see there are the Shining Path in Peru, the Tamil Tigers in Sri lanka.............

OOps I almost forgot, the most famous Muslim terrorist around these parts, Timothy Mcviegh, USA

Jack

Not true, USSR gave Arabs all kinds of weapons
and still there were Arab terrorists.
But I have to agree if Pakistan or Iran share nuclear weapons with Bin Laden, Bin Laden would stop using shoes to blow planes.

Is this a true birth order effect or does it possibly reflect more terrorist from larger families?

What about the role of fathe absence?

If a man has several wives do his children suffer de facto father absence?

Thirty years ago it's possible that most of the terrorists were Christians. In Great Britain because of Northern Ireleand.

Same was true a century ago and two centuries ago. And on back to the battle of the Boyne. Read Thomas Flanagan's the Year of The French and The Tenants of Time.

There may be lessons from that 4 century long
period of recurrent terrorism. Uncomfortable ones. Or from our treatment of Native Americans.
Or from the 2000 year long Jewish diaspora.

Or from Zionism in the 40s.

I can remember Ben Hecht saying his 'heart leapt up' every time a british soldier was killed in Palestine.

It's possible to completely sympathize with those 1946 Zionists ...and also with the friends and families of the Brits who were dying even after the UK had barely survived playing the main role in defeating Hitler-when it could easily have obtained a favorable peace in May of 40.

The second most lethal act of terrorism on US soil was the 1995 Oklahoma bombing. The terrorist was a white, Christian guy.

...the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers

This is an extraordinary thread.

But sad (altho inevitable) that it get's sucked into yet another exchange of predictable views about Palestine. Of course it's impossible for those committed to either side not to see that those on both sides are capable of horrible acts which they see as either self defense or justified revenge.

Almost worth having a ground rule that those who comment can't use the P word.

Sounds good but not true.
After Sharon won Second Intifada, and setting the fence, and maintaining the checkpoints, the terrorism died down.

I agree, it's impossible for those committed to either side of US / Bin Laden conflict to see that those on both sides are capable of horrible acts which they see as either self defense or justified revenge.

You don't give helicopters to people, you give them to goverments.
Arab/Palestinian terrorists got money, training
and other support from USSR.

Al Qaeda got money, training, weapons and other support from the US. What is your point?

...the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers

Deaths? Professor Krueger never mentioned deaths, especially as a metric. Well, if we are to be concerned with numbers of deaths then perhaps the US Air Force should at least receive honorable mention. But really, few care. Do Americans care about a million or so dead Iraqis? Nah.

Here's Victor Davis Hanson, who recently received the National Humanities Medal from President Bush:

"And what some day will be the public reaction to all this? Something like, “I’m glad it was done (the removal of Saddam and the reconstruction), but I would never do it again”—something like the groggy patient after major surgery."

The National Humanities Medal. Sick.

THey didn't. What's your point?

(cscs): "That's more what makes terrorism work, rather than what makes a terrorist."

Except that people respond to incentives, and enhanced technology enhances the chance of success (defined as making a big splash).

All good questions. I don't know.

Oh brother, was this a predictable response.

So because non-Muslims terrorists have existed and continue to exist, that means....what exactly?

The point is not that there are no non-Muslim terrorists.  The point is that the majority of terrorism in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims, by a wide margin.  There have been incidents in just about every part of the Arab world, in addition to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, not to mention the West.  The idea that the Muslim world has become infected with radicalism in recent years is not even a controversial notion within that world itself.

I think part of the problem with this discussion is the notion that terrorism can be reduced to a single phenomenon.  Surely the FARC guerilla in Colombia who mows down some peasants is motivated by different things than the Hamas terrorist who blows up an Israeli bus.  Both might be terrorism, but that label isn't particularly helpful.  That is why it is very important to understand the religious dimension of the terrorism phenomenon as it exists today.  Political reconciliation might stop terrorism if that terrorism is motivated primarily by a political grievance.  This seems to be the case with Northern Ireland, although it is probably too soon to tell.  But Muslim terrorism also seems motivated by notions of holy war.  It's hard to see how that's solvable purely through political compromise.

I agree very much regarding the distinction between humans and other animals. Whatever the distinction is, it's not particularly obvious. I will also agree in how fascinating it is.

My current best bet is that it is wrapped up with the Homo Sapien capability to manipulate symbols.

A book called "The Emotional Brain" by Joseph LeDoux states that the mind operates on two levels, the one related to language and consciousness, and the one related to emotions. Decisions are made at both levels, but when the two levels conflict, the emotional level usually overcomes the conscious one. That's not too surprising since all mammals use the emotions to make decisions, while human beings have only been using symbolic language for about 100,000 years (plus about 50,000 or minus maybe 20,000 or so.) Whatever the time period, it is very short, so that our conscious minds are a real experiment in progress. That makes it sort of like installing a new computer system. you run both in parallel with the old one as primary until the new systems has proven satisfactory.

LeDoux also says that the memories laid down by the emotions are done in a format different from those laid down by the conscious brain, so that is why we are not directly conscious of our emotions, merely of the physiological responses our body had to the emotions. Apparently sensory input is split at a very low level in the brain, with emotions going to the emotional level and conscious memories to the conscious level. This can be demonstrated when senses are provided only to one hemisphere in the brain in a split-brain person. Such a person will have conscious control of only the side of the body the sense data was sent to, but will have emotional control of both sides of the body. So the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of the brain apparently communicates only conscious thoughts. The emotional data is not similarly split between the hemispheres.

This gets really fascinating when you realize that narrative memories consist of images, emotional memories and conscious memories.

Just speculation on my part, but the narrative process works at the memory level (memory patterns are apparently laid down in narrative format, which is why a single smell can recover a full memory.) Part of normal child development is for children to start telling themselves and others stories a couple of years after they begin speaking in sentences. The complexity of the narratives they tell grow greater as they grow older.

Then there is from my studies in organization theory the recognition that people who recognize that they belong to an organization (that recognition is one of the characteristics that define an organization rather than a mob) have shared (to a greater or lesser extent) narratives of what the organization is and what it is expected to do.

I think it reasonable to speculate that this is also the mental exercise we go through whenever we join any organization outside the family. Narratives are what hold organizations together, up to and including ethnic nationalities.

Narratives were also the first from of complex inter-tribal communication. That's why traveling bards were so important and so honored.

Anyway, I suspect that the one thing that really distinguishes humans over even the other Chimpanzees is the inherited motivation to learn a language together with the also inherited narrative ability which together permit interpersonal symbolic communication in the form of stories.

That gave us human culture.

Additionally, I don't think anyone believes that Muslims were responsible for the 2001 Anthrax attack which killed 5 people.

Why aren't the USA, Great Britain, France, Canada, Germany, and to a leser extent Israel, "terrorists"?

Because they have an Army, an Air Force, a Navy, and Marines, along with their tanks, war planes, artillery, carriers, submarines, etc.

Yes, while they breed another generation of suicide bombers.

Well, many animals have species recognition or consciousness, my point was that ours supposedly is the only species with consciousness of mortality. We have an awareness that we will die at some future point. Now whether that is true or not, I don't know - at this time it appears to be so, but I wouldn't say it is true with complete certainty.

One differential that I have been considering for quite some time, is our protection and nurturing of the sick and weak and old among us, probably because the transference of knowledge is the most important to our survival of our species. I don't believe we survived because of competition, I believe we survived in spite of competition because our natural "tendency" is towards interdependence and co-operation.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, I am saying that I am reconsidering competition as a survival mechanism.

It's a good question why aren't Israel, Canada and to a leser extent USA "terrorists"?

Another good question is why don't you rape a women on street? Maybe because you have a wife?
Why don't you steel a car? Maybe because you have a car?

It means that religion isn't an indicator of who is or who is not prone to terrorism.

In the 60s and 70s most terrorists were Irish catholic, were they motivated by catholicism? It could well be that terrorism nurtures strong religious beliefs, instead of vice versa.

There is still some small question as to whether humans really ARE born hardwired for language...

Brad, I don't think you're engaged in any meaningful discussion, but you are rather close to bigotry.

The point is that the majority of terrorism in the world today is perpetrated by Muslims, by a wide margin.

I don't know if this is true or if it is merely a perception based on our media's focus right now. Do we know anything about terrorists in Africa? I sure as hell don't.

What's important in Krueger's post is that he's basing his conclusions on empirical evidence. We need more of that in our discussions of terrorism so that we avoid falling back into our assumptions.

Furthermore, when you say that most of the terrorists in the world are Muslims, you're not engaging with what Krueger wrote. He wrote

Religious affiliation in the origin country does not predict involvement in terrorism.

I don't see this statement as about the propensity of one religion to terrorism. After all, India is a majority Hindu country and produces both Muslim and Hindu terrorists. So, this statement by Krueger deserves some criticism. Is he trying to correlate the religious majority or official religion of a country with that of individual terrorists? Or is he saying that the individual terrorists religious affiliation in their country of origin is not important? I don't know and I don't think that your interpretation really engages with what Krueger has written.

As a male that often tires of the competition I'd be grateful for anyone discounting the value of success. And skill at cooperating is a very useful attribute, even for competitors. Both individual success and cooperation have been selected for over time.

But it's not so much that we survived because of competition, it is that the winning competitors are represented in the descendants. We cooperated to overcome external challenges like predators and to find food. We also cooperated to defend against others, or to attack other groups.

But within each group, who gets to mate? Or who is chosen? Men at the top of the power/fame/money ladder have a wider choice, and women gravitate towards power and fame. It's a result, not a goal. If people with those attributes end more with more descendans, that set of characteristics will persist, whether genetic or cultural.

Why would most Americans choose fame over money in polls? Because money is only useful as an indicator of success, and if you have the indication already, you can skip the work.

I point this out not to praise it but to exonerate the culture and the male for his atavistic attitudes. It's imprinted pretty deep genetically, but I don't hold up the individual as the vessel for God's works, as do certain conservatives and libertarians. None of us is worth anything absent society. There has never been a species with a population of one, and nothing has meaning without everyone else. We're in this together, and no one gets out alive. So let's redeem our past with what we do in the present and future.

They can be suicide bombers because it isn't religion that motivates them. It is humiliation and degradation of the spirit that motivates them.

You seem unable to concede the fact that the Palestinian cause is political, not religious, religion has nothing to do with it. They are not motivated by religion, they are not motivated by poverty, they are not motivated by lack of education but they all have one thing in common; a personal, humiliating affront to their dignity and while we'll never know the cause, we can know the correlation. Before the Oslo Accords there were no suicide bombers, after there were more than 56.

There hasn't been any high tech in the use of weapons by terrorists, unless you count old cars and trucks that are wired with bombs. Others, like Hezbollah, pretty much use conventional weapons.

Where technology is used, and used well, is in the communications between the terrorist cells and outwardly for recruiting purposes.

The big splashes are made because the terrorists have timed the news cycles so well, as the Professor said.

...the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers

ow do you know? What's your assertion is based on?

I'll bet the Brits wrote some history books about those colonial terrorists, like: What Makes a Colonial Terrorist--Religion? Poverty? Bad weed?

Duplicate.

My impression is that the LTTE are far more nationalist than they are religious.

Fully understanding that they weren't terrorists by most definitions, since they were soldiers fighting other soldiers, it's still worthwhile to look at Japanese suicide fighters (kamikaze was one specific kind). Nationalism, but with the animist State Shinto twist was one factor. Another factor is that they believed they had no hope of surviving the war, so at least a substantial number chose to make their death meaningful. Others, especially late in the war, were pressured or even ordered.

I haven't seen any good analysis of the Nazi Leonidas Staffel, so can't judge their motivations. OTOH, it wasn't that uncommon for the more indoctrinated SS to commit suicide rather than surrender.

Should the discussion include "peaceful" protest suicides, such as the self-immolating monks in South Vietnam or the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Amended version of old radical slogan:

When you kill one person it is murder, when you kill several it is terorism, when you kill thousands it is foreign policy, when you kill millions it is world war three and when you kill billions it is global warming.

It probably wouldn't be terrorism if I killed several, but it likely would be terrorism if the same deed were performed by someone of the Islamic persuasion--and that's the basic problem with Krueger's book (based on what he's written).

I'm not suggesting it.

You know, if you mean Palestinian then you should say so and not the general and inacurate Arab.

There is a difference

Jack

Does it make it wrong?
What about God? Was he a terrorist:

The tenth and final plague of Egypt was the death of all Egyptian first born males — no one escaped, from the lowest servant to Pharaoh's own first-born son, including first-born of livestock. This was the hardest and cruelest blow upon Egypt and the plague that finally convinced Pharaoh to submit, and let the Israelites go.

Not quite.  They say that many suicide bombers WEREN'T religious for most of their lives.  But for many, they became religious in the period before they decided to blow themselves up.  When you say, "They do seem to get caught up in groups that behave like cults or gangs." you are talking about religious groups.  Or to be more precise, groups that manipulate religion to further a political end. 

Is this the pattern 100% of the time?  Of course not.  But we are analyzing the phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombing.  To say that Islam plays no role in these people's thinking is just absurd.

How do you explain the pre-1967 efforts to destroy Israel? It is the Palestinians themselves not the Israelis who are breeding the terrorists. They are protecting their citizens from being murdered. There is no real evidence and much to the contrary that Hamas will not find a settlement acceptable, but a step in an effort to destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The other problem with this argument is Bin Laden, the various offshoots of the Islamic Brotherhood of Egypt, the terrorists from Algeria and Yeman. Daniel A. Greenbaum

You might want to read Paul Berman's "Power and the Idealists: Or the Passion of Joschka Fischer, And Its Aftermath" It deals with the various European terrorists of the late 1960s, and 1970 as well as their relationship with the Palestinian cause, training in Arab camps as well as the evolution of the thinking of both Fischer the former Foreign Minister of Germany and Bernard Kouchner the current Foreign Minister of France. Both were radicals in the 1970s.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Today it is popular to express concern about terrorism. It is accepted "wisdom" that we are engaged in a world wide struggle against "terrorists". And, it serves the current administration for us to believe that we are a nation at war, and lacking an enemy to be "at war" with, we have adopted the "terrorists" as that enemy.

Not so oddly, these current fetishes about "terrorism" are also providing fodder for books. Krueger apparently is seeking to benefit from our obsession with "terrorists" with his book analyzing what causes a "terrorist" to be born. Unfortunately, unless he includes a chapter about Henry Kissinger, and one about George Bush, plus one about Ronald Reagan, his book will be nothing more or less than pandering to those who want to blame Islam for everything bad in the world today.

Hoppy in Sacramento

That the United States has committed acts which OBL and others in the Moslem world see as wrongs I will buy. But when the two embassies in Africa were bombed the avoidable killing of the passing Africans moves this from simple retaliation into terrorism in my opinion.

If I were to try defining terrorism it would be something like 'violent action undertaken to prove a political point with the aim of, or indifference to, the harming of persons not directly linked to the problem.' I would differentiate this from the use of excessive force in order to gain a military objective with indifference to the harming of persons not directly linked to the problem. That is wrong in a different way and has different motivations and cures.

First of all the notion that terrorism is a spontatious activity like a reflex, is wrong.
As I pointed out earlier, PLO was organized and financed by USSR even so USSR had all kind f weapons, most of Hamas terrorism/freedom fighting activities is financed today by Iran. It does mean that there are people who are doing this for pure ideologic reason, like Muslim doctors in Britan, but I'm not sure if they are majority.
Another subset of terrorism/freedom fighters are suicide fighters. I think they are today almost exclusivly muslims. If I'm correct, does it say anything about muslim religion?

I have tried to write that humans are hardwired "to learn language" not that they are born hardwired for language.

There is little doubt that babies are born prepared to learn language. I can't find it right now, but one DNA study indicates that there is a process that causes the brain to be easily rewired for language until about age 10 or 11. After that, learning a language is more difficult. The report I saw said they are reasonably certain they have identified the trigger for that change.

Another study did PET scans of the brains of children from age birth until they were speaking. They were able to watch as the portion of the brain involved in hearing, then when babbling started, the connections between the hearing section and the speaking section started lighting up. Then the connections were shown to intensify as speech developed.

All of this stuff happens on a standard schedule. The phases clearly follow one another at an age when the child is too young to be doing it by accident.

As far as I have seen, no one has a reasonable explanation for the sequential development on a phased schedule other than it being hardwired to occur that way. Besides - I've raised two children and I can tell you that they decide when it is time to learn things like crawling, walking and speech. Parents just feed them, watch and respond to what they demand for the most part.

[By the way, if you have a toddler who is just learning to speak - roughly age two, ask them to go into the other room and see if you are there. They will do it because they don't realize that you can't be in two places at once. Then, one day a switch turns on and they get it. I still remember the day I asked my daughter to go check and for the first time she looked up at me and said "Aww, Daddy." All normal children do that at about the same age, although I don't know if they all get the same look of exasperation on their faces that my daughter did.]

Interesting. But I think that for focus to occur, there has to be a "will" that directs things to happen.

Meditations of various types are designed specifically to train the "will." The thing is, the human being makes a lot of decisions all the time, and are conscious of only a few of them. Many are just pre-programmed reactive decisions in situations that appear familiar or even thermostat type decisions the click when something changes, but long-term planning definitely requires something like a "will." Otherwise, consciousness has no function.

While I recognize the great TPMcafe tendency to have everything rotate around I-P or Muslim extremism, the title of the book and thread is not "What Makes a Muslim Terrorist". The title of the book is "What Makes a Terrorist". From editorial reviews, and to some extent the original posting, nothing suggests that "we are analyzing the phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombing."

The book, for example, deals with Sri Lanka, among other examples of terrorism -- it also doesn't assume suicide terrorism. It is worth noting that the form of suicide bombing in Sri Lanka, by the (Hindu) LTTE, is quite different than the I-P pattern and what appears to be an al-Qaeda signature. LTTE suicide bombings are almost invariably associated with assassination of high officials, although the location is usually such that there are abundant casualties among ordinary citizens.

Terrorism does not equate to suicide bombings. The second worst terrorist incident in the US, 9/11 as a day treated as #1, was hardly by a Muslim or even a non-American.

May I respectfully suggest that there is value looking at the overall pattern of terrorism, and not restrict it to Islamic terrorism alone? There are some patterns that appear to repeat in non-Muslim terrorism as well as Muslim terrorism, and better psychological understanding both improves intelligence warning and the lesser possibility of reducing some of the motivation.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Another subset of terrorism/freedom fighters are suicide fighters. I think they are today almost exclusivly muslims. If I'm correct, does it say anything about muslim religion?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

According to William H. Calvin, one of the higher intellectual functions unique to humans is playing games with arbitrary rules.

Think about it. There has to be cooperation to establish the rules, then there is competition within the agreed upon framework of the pre-established rules. That's both cooperation and competition in the same process.

Another thing that seems apparent is that the human is evolving even more rapidly than before speech. The evolution is demonstrated in symbols and culture more than physically. Nicholas Wade's excellent book "Before the Dawn" traces a lot of what has recently been shown through DNA studies about the migrations and development of Man.

According to Wade (a NY Times science writer) as few as 150 human beings left Africa across the horn of Africa into what is today Yemen, and that group spread across today's India, Southeast Asia and all the way into Australia. Others went north in to Europe or into Asia. Geneticists say that there was only one emigration from Africa.

The original emigrants were almost certainly Black-skinned and all were fully capable of symbolic speech. Sometime in the last 50,000 years, the two routes north - Europe and Asia, caused the evolution of lighter skin (probably to improve Vitamin D creation from sunlight) and the Asians also developed the epicanthral fold in the eyelid. By about 30,000 years ago, the Neanderthals had been wiped out. Geneticists have found no evidence of interbreeding between Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal.

Apparently the expanding humans were too aggressive to live in groups until they evolved into a less aggressive form and began living in groups - small towns, about 15,000 years ago. Agriculture appears to have developed beginning about 12,000 years ago. Yeah, that's the reverse of how people have thought it happened until the geneticists got involved.

One real interesting thing is that there are two drivers for evolution. One is the terrain, the other is society. Both have caused homo sapiens to evolve and frequently social selectors are more important than physical or survival selectors.

Have I said that I strongly recommend the book?

I don't think that humans can know where they are going until they have an understanding of how we got to where we are now. This book gives some real insights.

The trouble I see with the Christian view is that once the stories that carried the meaning of the tribal religion were written down, they ceased to be flexible the way a story, told by a story-teller who also responds to his audience, is. Yet if there is anything that the human being has evolved to do it is respond - quickly - to new situations and environments. A religion that is locked into tight interpretations of a written canon cannot respond rapidly. Until the late 19th century those who read the Bible recognized that much of the tales it tells are metaphorical, because words by themselves cannot provide an accurate guide to the mysteries of religion. But when the Presbyterians began applying textual criticism to the Bible to find out who really wrote it, the fundamentalists panicked and retreated into the ideas of Biblical Inerrancy.

With Biblical Inerrancy you have to learn the 'school solutions' by memory, then regurgitate them upon command. That's not religion. That's a meme replicating itself.

It seems to me that if Man is made in God's image, then the proper study of God is to fully understand Man. And among other things, Man is, as you say, a social creature.

Reading "Before the Dawn" is a good start in understanding Man.

Thank you Howard for confirming my point that TODAY suicide fighters are ALMOST exclusivly muslims. Sohow even when you agree with me you have to pretend that you disagree with me.

"You know, Walt, we've been a little worried about you since you put your cape down over all that mud. (LAUGHTER) You're all right though, Walt, huh? You see, what bugs me, Walt, is who's going to want to put burning leaves in his mouth? (LAUGHTER) You don't call 'em burning leaves. You call them a cigarette. Walt, I've got to level with you. I don't care what you call 'em, they're still burning leaves and I don't think people are going to buy 'em."

duplicate deleted.

and George W. Bush?

The problem is in the politicisation of the term "terror".  It has far too often become our enemy orthe enemy of our friend, while other entities, using the same methods are called 'freedom fighters', when they are the enemies of our enemy.

Instead it would be far better to define and criminalise specific actions, and not try to group them together under one big circus tent.  In America, a environmental activist can be defined a terrorist for torching an empty RV.  He should be defined as an arsonist, and tried as such.

The willingness to risk being killed -- as in war, the willingness to kill -- as in murder or war and the willingness to kill yourself -- as in intended suicide or the undertaking of a suicidal task with virtually no prospect of survival may all rest on different motivations.

That is why the term 'suicide bomber' has always been troubling -- more than suicide is involved -- muder, often mass murder is involved. To say 'murder suicide bomber' is clumsy and ungrammatical but more accurate.

To avoid stigmatizing the vast majority of Moslems who find the attacks on civilians as appalling as Christians would if a small Christian sect started committing these kinds of acts, the way in which OBL has adapted parts of Moslem theology for his purposes is also being treated as suspect. It is as though we were reacting to the threat of characterizing the Roman Catholic Church solely in terms of the Inquisition by attempting to ignore the role of Catholic theology in the inception and conduct of the Inquistion.

Simply because OBL and his cohorts claim and come out of Moslem traditions the role of that theology in the thoughts of this set of terrorists is relevant. The larger underlying principles of when suicide or suicide murder may be adopted as a tactic in a dispute are probably not discoverable if we refuse to examine the particulars.
Blanket accusations against an entire religion are also not helpful.

Terror-ism requires a political agenda.  The shooters of Columbine and VT were sociopathic criminals.  I submit that one could still be a sociopathic criminal while being a terror-ist (ie, the young James-Younger gang serving with Quantrill on the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War), but some violent sociopathic criminals simply do not require the exploitation of an -ism to indulge their impulse to create terror in society.

Ellen,

That humiliation stems from their recognition that their societies are failures. And economic poverty is the evidence of that failure. Take away the poverty and you take away the humiliation.

How would this idea apply to KKK terrorism in the 20th century USA, where those in the deepest poverty were the victims of the terror by the powerful?

First of all, we don't know if the shooters were sociopathic criminals. We know very little about them.

Secondly, a terrorist can have any kind of personality disorder or pathology and still be a terrorist - just as a terrorist can be a functional, rational human being - that's the point - we don't know what causes it.

Thirdly, no, some human beings don't need a political agenda to spread terror throughout a society - that's why I believe the definition of terrorism is too narrow and why it is so difficult to identify them and protect society from them. There should be a trigger, a factor that they all have in common, which while it cannot predict who will be or is a terrorist can help us understand it.

I rather try to avoid kids younger than nine myself... more power to you for being a parent without a doubt the most thankless job on earth though apparently a rewarding one after they turn 18.

Anyhow, I bring up that one tribe Benha? Baha? That seem to not have the concept of language as we have it... jury is still out on them.

Yes, it does and he is. I just read an article in Harper's that questioned whether a belief in something that has created more havoc, more suffering, more pain, more evil in this world on innocent humans, than the worst human being is worshipped as all "good".

What does it say about those people who admire and love a god that promises to inflict infinite, eternal suffering on his "enemies" or "disbelievers"?

I'm going to ignore your snide comments about the difficulty in understanding and the claim that I distorted your words.

In a 2003 Israeli study of 15 would be bombers, 60% had no prior experience with religious/terrorist organizations. 20% attempted missions alone, and turned to organizations as facilitators.

In a 2004 study by Marc Sageman, he found that only 8% of would be bombers/bombers were there because of recruitment by religious/terrorist organizations, the remaining came to it through kinship or friendship bonds.

Both studies found that terrorist/religious organizations acted as facilitators, not indoctrinators.

Lastly, religion in some cases was used to rationalize and justify the suicide bombings, and often three or four organizations would try to exploit or "claim the bombing" as their own as a form of advertizing their availability as facilitators. Now this isn't my opinion, it is the result of study after study with the same results - religious fanaticism does not "cause" suicide bombing.

I got my logic backwards.

Well now there's a shock.

Brad continues to embarrass himself.

BevD,

First of all, we don't know if the shooters were sociopathic criminals. We know very little about them.

I'm willing to go out on that limb.  To engage in the level of preparation and training required to blow away tens and scores of people one does not even know, for whatever self-absorbed reason that compells one to do so, seems safely within the recognized definitions of sociopathology.  There will be no agreeing to disagree on this point.

Meanwhile, I have already stated your second and third points in only slightly different terms.

Well pardon me. I don't make psychiatric diagnoses of deceased people because I am not qualified to do so. A psychiatric pathology report is an art, not a science and just because someone exhibits sociopathic behavior it doesn't mean he is a sociopath. We all engage in sociopathic behavior at one time or another, but that doesn't mean we are all sociopaths. I might also point out that sociopaths are quite capable and sometimes even talented in imitating and sublimating "normal" behavior which makes it extremely difficult to diagnose and also, contrary to popular opinion, a very rare diagnosis. They don't know what causes seemingly normal people with personality disorders to engage in extremes. Is it chemical, electrical, nurture, nature, is it mirror neuron misfiring or theory of mind miswiring, physical immaturity of the brain, a medical/physiological disorder, a lack of neuron reuptake inhibitors? How can we diagnose people we don't know, haven't interviewed, haven't treated, haven't autopsied and as I said, we know very little about? You can venture out onto any limb you wish, but that doesn't mean I have to follow or encourage you to do so. You're correct on one point - I won't agree to disagree with a point on which I know you're wrong.

If we knew what caused it, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

When dealing with religious factors, there is a chicken-and-egg problem, certainly among quite a number of radical Islamists. Specifically in the Middle East, but to a lesser extent in Nigeria, Indonesia, and other former colonies, there is apt to be anticolonialist or nationalist feeling, the two usually but not always being the same. In a significant number of cases, I suggest it then may be an Islamist appeal that focuses the earlier feeling of frustration. I am deliberately saying Islamist, not Muslim, because Islamism encompasses a belief system where it is impossible to separate religion from politics. Certainly, some of the younger madrassa recruits never make the distinction, but I cannot rule it out for a significant number of cases.

It's always useful to find counterexamples. While the LTTE membership is predominantly Hindu, their Tamil identification is much more important than religion in selecting tactics. LTTE has quite a few aspects that are different from most Islamic movements, yet it still is one of the deadliest and most focused groups. Simply because it is focused, Americans aren't too aware of it because Tamil nationalism, or the suppression thereof, is not especially related to the US, or even pro- vs. anti-Western culture. If one likes Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations (I'm not enthused with it), he would cast this as a Hindu vs. Muslim clash, which is misleading.

Let me go back into history, and bring up an example that I think will lead into the LTTE case. While suicidal attacks, as well as symbolic suicide, go far back in Japanese history, there was a conscious military decision to organize the kamikaze. Essentially, the kamikaze was seen as a weapons system that had a chance to hit US carriers, when both Japanese training and technology made conventional attacks highly unlikely to succeed.

LTTE attacks are almost always assassinations, with some against military targets. If their leadership is making a military decision that a suicide bomber is the "poor man's cruise missile", targeting an official for assassination, and incurring large numbers of civilian casualties because the assassin can approach the target only in public, is the intent the removal of key figures, the terror of the killing of bystanders, or both?

Now, consider the factional terrorism in Iraq. Are Shi'a killing Sunni, and vice versa, over the virtues of the Hidden Imam versus the Rightly Guided Caliphs, or, much as in Northern Ireland, the religious differences became more tribal than theological? With the latter, is it really Catholicism vs. Protestantism, or the tribe of the Sacred Memory of Wolfe Tone versus the tribe of the Battle of the Boyne?

Don't mistake tribalism for religion. Sometimes they coexist, sometimes there is a true religious core, and sometimes the tribalism gets oversimplified to religion.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

1. The total number of lynchings is not known. The number 4730 refers to total number of all lynchings in the United States in its recorded history. Beck/Tolnay

2. "Though historically significant, statistically it was a rare event." Stovel

In 1901 there were 135 lynchings, 26 white, 107 black, 121 in the South, 14 in the North. In 1901 there were 8.8 million African Americans living in the U.S., 90% of them lived in the south. I can give you a break down on the "reasons" or alleged crimes of those lynched, but I don't think that is necessary.

So while it was statistically a rare event, it was an all too common occurrence - mob justice is never justice.

From the Wikipedia article "Lynching in America"

The lynching of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest was long overlooked in American history. This was likely due to the overwhelming issues in the South and the fact that Tuskegee Institute, which kept the most complete records, noted the victims as simply black or white. Mexican, Chinese, and Native American lynching victims were recorded as white.[9] Researchers estimate 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 and 1928. Mexicans were lynched at a rate of 27.4 per 100,000 of population between 1880 and 1930. This statistic was second only to that of the [b]African American community, which endured an average of 37.1 per 100,000 of population during that period. Between 1848 and 1879,[/b] Mexicans were lynched at an unprecedented rate of 473 per 100,000 of population.

More than 85 percent of the estimated 5,000 lynchings in the post-Civil War period occurred in the Southern states. 1892 was a peak year when 161 African Americans were lynched.

...historian Leon F. Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,742 African Americans were murdered that way...

As of 1959, which was the last time that their annual Lynch Report was published, a total of 4,733 persons had died as a result of lynching since 1882. To quote the report,

"Except for 1955, when three lynchings were reported in Mississippi, none has been recorded at Tuskegee since 1951. In 1945, 1947, and 1951, only one case per year was reported. The most recent case reported by the institute as a lynching was that of Emmett Till, 14, a Negro who was beaten, shot to death, and thrown into a river at Greenwood, Mississippi on August 28, 1955... For a period of 65 years ending in 1947, at least one lynching was reported each year. The most for any year was 231 in 1892. From 1882 to 1901, lynchings averaged more than 150 a year. Since 1924, lynchings have been in a marked decline, never more than 30 cases, which occurred in 1926...."[30]

Note that the count reads from 1882 onwards, and does not include the presumably much bloodier period following 1865.

The site gives a graph table which estimates well over 2000 additional deaths by lynching between 1865 and 1882.

One weakness of the study is that they have employed a definition of lynching which results in fatality. This excludes any incident of group/victim violence that did not result in known or documented fatalities, either because the fatality was not reported, or the victim survived, or it was intended to result in injury and terror.

As to the statistical significance, lynching fatalities would certainly exceed the numbers of blacks holding elected congressional office through this period.

As to a breakdown of the 'reasons' for lynching, there's no need. Groups of subhuman assholes and cowards decided to collectively violate the law and commit a murder as a means to punish and terrify.

In any case, Quantrill burned Lawrence to the ground, and we beat the crap out of KU over the weekend. M I Z Z O U!

Hezbollah did kidnap soldiers, but Israel's response was war. So no, Hez didn't start the war unless you use terms so loosely that we have to back up decades to find the beginning, or assert kidnappings are accepted as defining the start of war. As you may have read, Nasrallah was surprised at the Israeli response.

Hez is a Lebanon-centric entity, always has been. They have never threatened Lebanon as such, but have sought to defend it according to them. Not all are sympathetic to Hez in Lebanon, of course. But then, thats true for all parties involved down to the Druz. The civil war(s) was about more than Hez after all.

And, further, the Israeli response was indiscriminate in a desperate and ultimately failed attempt to significantly weaken Hez's ability to operate. Warplanes struck the Capitol, Beirut, hardly considered a 'Shiite area'.

Its not brave or cowardly to meld into the population. It's called 4th generation warfare. I'm sure pilots heard the same type line about 'bravely' floating above the fray when their turn came.

Personally, whether I believe what I read depends on many factors, the near least of which is the form in which it is presented. You?

How 'bout dem terrorists?

We do know that the shooter in the VT case had been diagnosed as suffering from mental illness. (Schizophrenia, I believe.)

There is no one agreed-upon definition of terrorism, but there seems to be a general consensus that that it is a political act. See http://www.answers.com/terrorism&r=67

The VT shooting was definitely not terrorism. I don't think the Columbine shooting was, either. The motive there appears to have been simply personal revenge. That's not terrorism.

However, if a group of environmental activists organized in order to plan and carry out arsons to further a political agenda, wouldn't it be helpful to law enforcement to understand all that to better investigate, prosecute, and prevent those crimes, rather than treating each case as entirely unrelated to all of the others?

I should have read further down into the thread before writing my own answer. GMTA! ;-)

That was armed rebellion (and arguably self-defense -- they were trying to prevent the British from confiscating stores of powder and weapons); it is not the same thing as terrorism.