"Terrorism" or "Innocent People Suffering, Holy Balls"

[Seil]

So my dad picked up this movie for tonight, you know - sit in, watch a romance, get that sweet fuzzy feeling.... This is one of the trailers that played before the film:

Welp.

Now, I don't know any Canadian terrorists, or the most recent attack, so... Oh. Oh, dear.

Here's a quick question - why? Most of the more recent, or present in people's memories, happens against America:

It was bad. We all know it was bad - and if you look through history - the Baader Meinhoff gang, Carlos the Jackal, the Oklahoma Bomber, to name a few North American persons. (I don't know if I could call Charles Manson a terrorist.) Obviously, they all have their own motives, and the usual stereotypical American redneck gets their fifteen minutes of "If I see any brown people crossin' that border, Imma shoot their terrorist hides, I tell you what." But what's going on?

Terrorists, as their name would imply, cause terror. They attack an unsuspecting place, and cause large civilian casualties in order to promote a cause. Why?

I'm not asking "Why do they attack who they perceive to be their enemies," but "why bomb innocent people?" Why don't people attack military installations? It's understandably easier to attack a marathon, or a sky scraper, and instill fear in an entire nation for a few bombs, or bombers, and... oh.

---------- Post added at 10:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:38 PM ----------

Maybe if we stopped making movie stars out of terrorists and serial killers.

[Magus]

Attacking mundane civilian targets and innocent civilians is more terrifying because it is unexpected. If terrorists solely attacked military installations they probably wouldn't be called terrorists but instead rebels, insurgents, freedom fighters (depending on your perspective), etc.

I mean The Dark Knight is 5 years old now but the Joker still summed it up pretty perfectly, "If I said, like, a gangbanger is going to get shot, or a truck full of soldiers is going to get blown up, nobody cares. Because it's all part of the plan. But I say I'm going to kill one little old mayor, and everybody loses their minds!"

But that is only for political terrorism, not necessarily just spree killings or what have you. I forget what the Oklahoma City Bomber's agenda was, I think it was political as well?

Spree killers, serial killers, and some terrorists are definitely dwelled upon in the media in a way that a lot of psychologists say leads directly to copy cats. I don't know if they are necessarily romanticized but they do become larger than life and that appeals to a subset of people who feel alienated from society or want that kind of press "immortality" put upon themselves.

[Flarecobra]

Terrorism: Noun. "Systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective."

Seems to explain it well enough for me.

[Bum Bill Bee]

But ordinary citizens themselves are not politically important Flarecobra, so why target them?

[Bells]

Because they are politically relevant.

Again, citing from movies i go with Iron Man 2 "If you make god bleed, people will cease to believe in him".

If you are a political figure, instead of attacking you, i'm going to attack the thousands around you who you can't fully protect all the time, that are vulneable and not 100% aware of all the facts related to our relation... so i can make you look weak, and turn your people on you. Give you internal pressure, and make those loyal to you question their decision.

Also, i think i could just past the "Art of War" PDF here and it would summarize a lot of stuff nicely...

[Amake]

You just have to look at any given terrorist action and see how tremendously successful they have been in getting us to question our elected leaders' competence, sanity and honesty as well as the entire system that supports them.

If they raise securitycontrol in response to terrorists, they reveal themselves as imperialist oppressors who we will eventually be forced to overthrow and then the terrorists win; if they make an effort to improve living conditions and stop killing people in the terrorists' region in order to undermine the reason for the terrorists to wage terror, everyone wins. As long as you're desperate enough to kill people who have done nothing to you, terrorism is going to be a valid strategy.

[Osterbaum]

Going by the dictionary definition that Flare posted up there, lots of actions by a lot of groups motivated by different factors and several 'military actions' around the world by states are terrorism.

These days the word 'terrorism' is often just a way to describe violence by 'them' as opposed to violence by 'us' (which is described as a military intervention, a peacekeeping operation or something along those lines.

[Flarecobra]

That's the thing. One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. It's always about perspective.