Regardless of the term. Asymmetric warfare, guerilla warfare, terrorism, etc. the goal is to attack the enemies ability to fight. Part of the ability to fight is the desire to fight. Terrorism can reduce the desire.
Does it? I think it works in some cases.
I think you’re right (the 2004 Madrid train bombings come to mind), I just don’t think it has worked particularly well on the Americans / Brits / French.
ETA: and I hasten to add that just because I think it has “worked” at times does not mean I’d call it “justified”. I think genocide works too, but it’s a f***ing horrible thing to do, and not “justified” in any moral / ethical sense.
The point is that he has no goals other than to strike back at the people that are killing his relatives and friends. This is what makes the terrorists in the West so hard to deal with. They won’t stop until they see the issues that so anger them in the Middle East being addressed. ISIS has goals of course and can be dealt with more easily but people like our young Muslim operate independently. How do you deal with that?
So “see the issues that so anger them in the Middle East [be] addressed” isn’t a goal? If so, what are those issues? Presumably one would be that America quit bombing Syria / Iraq / Libya / Yemen / Somalia. Blowing up concerts and shooting up night clubs hasn’t worked to achieve that goal yet, but keep on trying, young Muslims. :rolleyes:
Anyways, you said he is going to “operate independently”, but in the OP you said “Perhaps our young Muslim friend will have tried to travel to the areas concerned to aid his brothers in their life-or-death struggle.” If we’re assuming that latter statement is still true, Trumps “travel ban” seems like a good place to start.
If that’s not the case, then yes, they become tough to stop. You usually have to shoot them, and that usually only happens after they’ve hurt a bunch of people already.
Right now in Syria, the Assad regime and its allies have killed far more civilians than any other faction. ISIL is number two in terms of civilian casualty numbers. Assuming for the sake of argument that all of the perpetrators of the recent terror attacks in the U.S./Europe are ISIL-aligned/inspired, why are they fixating on the West to strike back at regarding the deaths of relatives and friends?
Refusing to stop terror attacks until the issues that anger them are addressed is too vague a goal, since having an issue addressed could mean anything from a congressional/parliamentary debate to a government agency white paper on a subject. If they are carrying out attacks in order to achieve a definable political objective or action, what is it?
Apparently [ISIL issued a call this past weekend](The group, which also claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack two weeks ago, has called on its followers to carry out increased terror attacks around the world during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.) for its followers to carry out attacks during Ramadan, with one think tanker theorizing that the latest European attacks are ISIL’s way of showing that it is still a force to be reckoned with despite the steady loss of territory in Syria and Iraq. But this theory begs the question - who would they be trying to convince of their strength? The people who still live in ISIL-controlled areas? Those people are already under ISIL’s thumb and threatened with or subject to beatings, mutilations, torture, and brutal executions. The West? If no terror attack by now has caused a coalition member to withdraw their relatively small military commitment to the anti-ISIL effort, why would this most recent attack do so? Or the 5-10 after that?
I quite agree, it is too vague a goal. But that’s exactly the vague sort of goal that motivates domestic Muslim terrorism. They have no plan, no grand scheme, they are just pissed off. The West is bad, Islam is good, death to the infidel. You can’t persuade them that terrorism doesn’t work, they don’t care. If they hurt the West then in their eyes they have succeeded, mission accomplished. How do you deal with that? You can’t.
It does not beg the question.
The answer tot he question is that it is to impress would be jihadis. There are a certain amount of people who want to fight for an Islamic group. These are the people ISIL is trying to impress with their strength. These attacks are like recruitment videos for these type of people.
M-11 motivated enough people to vote for Mr. Kumbayah to put him in power (before the bombings, the odds were on “Zapatero loses, Rajoy gets his 4 years, then Rubalcaba wins for PSOE”), but the actual individual opinions on what degree of involvement should Spain have in international military actions haven’t changed at all that I can see; the horror of the population after the attack and the fact that many people’s first reaction (not just Rajoy’s despite legend to the contrary) was to attribute the butchery to ETA was one of the last nails in ETA’s own coffin (and remember, of all the dozen terrorist groups we’d had in the previous 40 years, they were the most effective ones by far; most are little more than footnote jokes); and Rajoy has gotten much more than the 4 years anybody were expecting him to get back then. And it gives xenophobes a handy excuse (not that they really need one).
It worked inasmuch as Mr. Kumbayah got troops out of one location, but not in any other respects.
As for the little imbecile posited in the OP, apparently he has never heard of NPOs. He can volunteer at any number of organizations, from his local mosque to outreach ones; he can donate money and time. There are many ways to be helpful to a cause without needing to commit suicide in a way that screws up other people’s lives.
That’s an intermediate step towards a larger goal - what is the larger goal? If more people are inspired by attacks to commit more attacks, what is the political goal that the larger attacks in that foreign country are meant to accomplish? Outside of mere homicidal rage, a politically and religiously motivated group does not seek to kill large numbers of people just because. The goal might be complete extermination, as with ISIL and the Yazidis in northern Iraq, or it might be complete religious conversion of an enemy population, but there is still a larger goal.’
The recent message ISIL put out is that it supporters and sympathizers should commit more attacks during Ramadan, not to come to Syria/Iraq and join the fight there. So, there is clearly a larger goal that is being sought by having its supporters carry out more terror attacks.
Mixing these terms up is detrimental to the conversation. The OP asked about terrorism, not guerilla warfare. I think we understand that to mean the sort of thin that happened in London this past week, not Navy SEALS lurking in the woods picking off an enemy supply convoy in a time of war.
But, just so we’re clear: the 9/11 hijackers who crashed a plane into the Pentagon, and the 9/11 hijackers who crashed a plane into the Twin Towers: are we to count both of those as terrorism, or just one? (I don’t know whether the fourth plane was heading for the Capitol or the White House; would that make a difference?)