The Rise of Terrorism

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The Rise of Terrorism

• By Chloe Lyons Julie Wright

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Facts

• From 1981 to 2000, there were a total of 9,179
  international terrorist attacks (excluding
  intra-Palestinian violence), averaging at 459
  attacks a year.
• The number of terrorism attacks was at its
  highest in mid-1980s. The average number of
  annual attacks between 1985 and 1988 numbered
  about 630.
• From 1995 to 2000, Latin America experienced the
  most international terrorist attacks with 729.
  That's an average of 122 attacks per year. The
  year 2000 saw the most attacks in Latin America,
  when 193 were recorded.Western Europe is second
  with 608 attacks, an average of 101 per year. The
  overall number of terrorist attacks there,
  however, has been decreasing from a high of 272
  in 1995 to a low of 30 in 2000.Asia has been
  seeing a rise in terrorist attacks, from 16 in
  1995 to a high of 98 in 2000, for a total of 267
  for the 6-year period.North America has had the
  lowest concentration of international terrorist
  attacks. Only 15 were recorded from 1995 to 2000.
  (www.heritage.org)

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Definitions

• Terrorism is the calculated stimulation of fear
  through threatening or actual use of cruelty,
  destruction, killing, or assaults. What is
  defined publicly as terrorism is often determined
  by political motivations.
• One persons terrorist is anothers hero.
• Terrorists can be individuals, independent
  organizations, or agents of recognized state
  governments.

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Terrorists

• The underlying rationale for most terrorists is
  to improve economic or social conditions that
  they or their sponsors find unacceptable.
• Terrorists turn a blind eye to conventional rules
  of premeditated violence. They consider no one
  off limits as a potential target their victims
  are frequently women and children. Often, victims
  have no link whatsoever with the problem for
  which the terrorists seek change. Sometimes they
  select victims for shock value (e.g., innocent
  children), while others are chosen at random.
• It is also not uncommon for terrorists to
  increase the impact of their acts by striking the
  largest number of victims possible. (Gomme, 2007)

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Terrorists

• Terrorists rationalize the killing of innocents
  on two groups. First, they argue that the
  righteousness of the case justifies the
  destruction of any life and property. Second,
  they maintain that there are no truly innocent
  victims. In the eyes of terrorists, people who
  are otherwise innocent assume guilt for their
  complicity in maintaining the status quo opposed
  by the insurgents. (Gomme, 2007)
• The goal of terrorists is to produce the greatest
  possible shock with a deed or limited scope. To
  meet these objectives, terrorists must hold
  captive, injure, or kill a few in a way that will
  strike terror in the hearts of many.

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Medias Role

• Media plays a major role in the amplification
  process of terrorist attacks.
• The electronic media in particular often shape
  the focus of such terrorist activity, ensuring
  that for every individual victimized, perhaps
  millions are intimidated.
• Through the media and their ability to amplify
  impact, terrorists exert leverage well beyond
  their actual means and strength.
• With a massive media audience, terrorist groups
  can draw attention to their causes, present
  political justifications for their actions, and
  cultivate sympathy for their plights. (Gomme,
  2007)

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Righteous homicide justifies killing innocents

• Nettler (1982) cites the extremist views of
  French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who
  argued that idealistic killing is not murder.
  When killers experience neither personal gain nor
  pleasure and risk their own lives in this deeds,
  the act cannot, according to Merleau-Ponty, be
  defined as murder. Terrorists see themselves as
  governed by a higher morality, under which
  righteous homicide justifies killing innocents.
  (Gomme, 2007)

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Suicide Bombing

• By the summer of 2003, suicide bombers had
  changed the world. On september 11, 2001, four
  attacks by 19 suicide bombers, armed with nothing
  more lethal than a couple of box-cutters,
  suddenyl forced America to start waging a new
  type of world war The War on Terror.
• Suicide attacks affect us profoundly and
  powerfully. They remind us that there are people
  who consider their struggle - whatever the cause
  - to be more important than their own lives. It
  scares us because there is no credible threat to
  be made against someone who has no desire to
  survive.

• Deterrence, punishment, and retaliation all
  become meaningless when faced with an aggressor
  who will impose the utmost penalty on himself at
  the very moment of his victory.
• National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rise said
  I dont think anybody could have predicted that
  these people would try to use an airplane as a
  missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.
  (Thio, 2006)

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Government

• The amount of support terrorists receive from
  recognized work governments varies. The
  sponsorship of terrorism is not confined to
  Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Cuba. Both
  democratic and communist governments, including
  the United States and the former U.S.S.R., have
  been accused of complicity in the training,
  funding, planning, and execution of terrorist
  acts. Not only do some governments terrorize
  others, they terrorize their own citizens to
  maintain control and remain in power (Vetter and
  Perlstein, 1991).
• The terrorist incidents receiving the widest
  attention in the media are those that are carried
  out against a government by individuals or small
  bands of rebels.

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Goals

• The goals of terrorist activities are varied.
  Some groups seek support for worldwide revolution
  against the forces of oppression. Al-Qaeda,
  the Red Army of Japan, the Red Brigade of Italy,
  and the Baader Meinhof gang of the former West
  Germany have championed such causes. Other
  revolutionaries advocate sovereignty for the
  groups they claim to represent. Campaigns to
  overthrow dominant governments, create
  independent states, or accomplish first one and
  then the other are common.
• Infamous examples of groups with these goals in
  mind are the Palestine Liberation Organization
  (PLO) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
  (Nettler, 1982). A militant cell of Canadas
  Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) was a
  terrorist organization of this type. The FLQs
  goal was to create an independent Quebec.

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Fears

• One of the greatest fears regarding terrorism
  involves the acquisition and application of
  nuclear technology. Billed by some as the crime
  of the 21st century, nuclear terrorism would
  involve gangs stealing the essential materials
  and manufacturing small nuclear devices. The
  bomb might then be hidden somewhere in a large
  city and its inhabitants held for ransom.
  Weapons-grade nuclear material is often found
  missing from nuclear reactors, suspected to have
  been stolen.

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The History of Terrorism

• 17th Century Gunpowder Plot (1605) November 5,
  1605 a group of conspirators, led by Guy Fawkes,
  attempted to destroy the English Parliament on
  the State Opening, by detonating a large quantity
  of gunpowder secretly placed beneath the
  building. The design was to kill King James I and
  the members of both houses of Parliament. In the
  resulting anarchy, the conspirators planned to
  implement a coup and restore the Catholic faith
  to England. However the plan was betrayed. The
  event is still annually celebrated in Britain
  with fireworks displays and large bonfires on 5
  November each year.The aims of the conspirators
  are frequently compared to modern terrorists
  however, this is disputed. The plotter's aims
  were nothing short of a total revolution in the
  government of England, which would have killed
  the King along with leading noblemen and led to
  the installation of a Catholic monarch. As such
  the plot can be regarded as a treasonous act of
  attempted regicide.

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The History of Terrorism

• The Terror (1793-1794) The Reign of Terror
  (September 5, 1793 ñ July 28, 1794) or simply The
  Terror (French la Terreur) was a period of about
  eleven months during the French Revolution when
  struggles between rival factions led to mutual
  radicalization which took on a violent character
  with mass executions by guillotine.The victims of
  the Reign of Terror totaled approximately 40,000.
  Among people who were condemned by the
  revolutionary tribunals, about 8 percent were
  aristocrats, 6 percent clergy, 14 percent middle
  class, and 70 percent were workers or peasants
  accused of hoarding, evading the draft,
  desertion, rebellion, and other purported crimes.
• 19th Century Tsarist Russia In Russia, by the
  mid-19th century, the intelligentsia grew
  impatient with the slow pace of Tsarist reforms,
  which had slowed considerably after the attempted
  assassination of Alexander II of Russia. Radicals
  then sought instead to transform peasant
  discontent into open revolution. Anarchists like
  Mikhail Bakunin maintained that progress was
  impossible without destruction. Their objective
  was nothing less than complete destruction of the
  state. Anything that contributed to this goal was
  regarded as moral. With the development of
  sufficiently powerful, stable, and affordable
  explosives, the gap closed between the firepower
  of the state and the means available to
  dissidents. The main group responsible for the
  resulting campaign of terror was "People's Will",
  possessing only 30 members. Despite the efforts
  of the state police "People's Will" attempted
  several assassination attempts upon the Tsar. The
  group succeeded on the 13th of March, killing the
  Tsar as he was traveling by train

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The History of Terrorism

• Irish Republican Brotherhood In 1867 the Irish
  Republican Brotherhood, a revolutionary
  nationalist group with support from
  Irish-Americans, carried out attacks in England.
  These were the first acts of "republican
  terrorism", which became a recurrent feature of
  British history, and these Fenians were the
  precursor of the Irish Republican Army. The
  ideology of the group was Irish nationalism.
• Nationalist terrorism The Fenians/IRA, the
  Hunchaks and Dashnaks, and the IMRO may be
  considered the prototype of all 'nationalist
  terrorism', and equally illustrate the (itself
  controversial) expression that "one man's
  terrorist is another man's freedom fighter". At
  least one of these groups achieved its goals an
  independent Ireland came into being. So did an
  independent Macedonia, but the original IMRO
  probably contributed little to this
  outcome.Anarchists in Europe and the United
  States resorted to the use of dynamite, as did
  Catalan nationalists such as La Reixa and Bandera.

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The History of Terrorism

• Ku Klux Klan (1865) Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was
  created after the end of the American Civil War
  on December 24, 1865, by six educated,
  middle-class Confederate veterans from Pulaski,
  Tennessee. It soon spread into nearly every
  southern state of the United States. The Klan has
  advocated what is generally perceived as white
  supremacy, antisemitism, racism,
  anti-Catholicism, homophobia, and nativism. They
  have often used terrorism, violence and acts of
  intimidation such as cross burning to oppress
  African Americans and other groups.The name "Ku
  Klux Klan" has been used by many different
  unrelated groups, but they all seem to center on
  the belief of white supremacy. From its creation
  to the present day, the number of members and
  influence has varied greatly. However, there is
  little doubt that, especially in the southern
  United States, it has at times wielded much
  political influence and generated great fear
  among African Americans and their supporters. At
  one time the KKK controlled the governments of
  Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon, in
  addition to some of the Southern U.S.
  legislatures.

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The History of Terrorism

• 20th Century Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
  (1914) June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand
  of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne,
  and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were
  shot to death in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and
  Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group
  of six assassins.The murder of the heir to the
  Austro-Hungarian Empire and his wife produced
  widespread shock across Europe. The
  Austro-Hungarian Empire produced a list of
  demands, which became known as the July Ultimatum
  and presented it to Serbia. This ultimatum
  contained specific demands aimed at destroying
  the funding and operation of terrorist
  organizations which arguably had led to the
  assassination. In addition, it contained demands
  that Serbia suppress any "propaganda" against
  Austria-Hungary in Serbia, even by private
  persons. Some have claimed that the ultimatum was
  designed to create a casus belli to enable
  Austria-Hungary to invade and punish Serbia.After
  receiving a telegram of support from Russia,
  Serbia mobilized its army and replied that it
  would agree to some of the demands, partially
  accept some, and politely rejected the rest.
  Austria-Hungary rejected Serbia's conditional
  acceptance of part of the ultimatum and broke off
  diplomatic relations.After a minor incident,
  Austria-Hungary declared war, and this set into
  motion a series of events which led to World War
  I.

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The History of Terrorism

• World War II The Holocaust
• Nationalism and the End of Empire
• Cold War proxies
• IRA Bombing (1996)
• Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa 1961-1990)
• PLO (1964-c.1988)
• Colombian terrorist groups
• Munich Massacre (1972)
• Aum Shinrikyo (1984-1995)
• Achille Lauro Hijacking (1985)
• Lockerbie bombing (1988)
• Matsumoto incident (1994)
• Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway (1995)
• Oklahoma City bombing (1995)

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The History of Terrorism

• 21st Century 9/11 (2001) Arguably, the most
  widely known act of terrorism was when nineteen
  terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four
  commercial passenger jet airliners and crashed
  two of them into the World Trade Center and one
  into the Pentagon.
• London underground bombings On the 7th of July
  2005 several suicide attacks were carried out
  against the London underground, bombs were
  detonated on several tube trains, and was
  prematurely detonated on a bus. On the 21st of
  July, a apparently failed attack occurred none of
  the suspected bombers were caught at the time, an
  innocent man Jean Charles de Menezes was caught,
  restrained and then shot in the head ten times by
  the police, who then tried to cover up the
  "mistake."

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_terrorism
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Q A

• Do you think that there is disintegrative shaming
  of immigrants in North America?
• Do you think it is bias of the media to discuss
  North American events as if they are more
  important than others?
• Do you think that the media ignores the aftermath
  of once horrific events?
• Ie. 9/11, Jesse Imeson, Virginia Tech, etc..
• Is revenge necessary?

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Debate

• Debate Terrorism is a worldwide epidemic and we
  have our own ways of defining deviant behaviour.
  Do you think that it should be addressed as a
  multinational problem or should every country be
  solely responsible for any terrorist activities
  that effect them? Should we impose our definition
  of terrorist to other countries that may
  disagree and see them as a hero?
• Left side of classroom argue for the idea that
  the world should work together and become
  involved in eachothers terrorist activities.
  Also, argue for the notion that there should be
  one universal definition of terrorist.
• Right side of classroom argue against the idea
  and provide arguments for the independent control
  of each country for their own terrorist
  activities. Also, argue against the imposition of
  one universal definition of terrorist.