Ideological Terrorists Can Hurt but Can’t Win

All attacks against civilian targets count as terrorism if executed outside a state of war, but what the world has been used to since antiquity is political terrorism. Like any other political act, from putting up a poster to mass demonstrations violent or not, it has a recognizable purpose. That in turn invariably requires that the terrorists identify themselves. If Group X wants to humiliate its own or a foreign government and assert its own power, it must “claim credit” for its act.

Political terrorists have always done that--and more. When the competitors of Arafat’s Fatah were still active, the same bomb was often claimed by the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Front and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

By identifying themselves, terrorists attract retaliation if they present any visible targets at all, but that is the inevitable price they must pay. Unless they attract attention to themselves, they cannot achieve their political purpose: propaganda by acts of violence.

The individual attacks of political terrorists may be horribly inhumane, but they are still rational acts that can lead to real results in the end. Terrorists hardly ever achieve their original aims, which are typically extremely ambitious. But if they are willing to settle for what they can get and their opponents do decide to negotiate, the final result of political terrorism may even be the making of peace. That is what seems to be happening in Northern Ireland, and that was Arafat’s trajectory, from terrorist leader to negotiator, to the (semi-dictatorial) ruler of a territorial entity that will probably become a state with Israel’s consent.

Recently, however, the world has been confronted by the very different phenomenon of ideological terrorism. Its identifying characteristic is the lack of identification; its violence is anonymous. Buildings are blown up, many are killed, as in New York City, Dhahran and now both Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and nobody claims the act. The purpose cannot be political, because no group is asserting its power to frighten, destroy and kill.

Ideological terrorism is not, therefore, a violent form of political propaganda but rather a small-scale form of war. As in any war, the aim is to defeat the enemy--normally by destroying whatever targets can be destroyed, the more important the better.

The more extreme Islamic fundamentalists--the most likely culprits--would like to destroy every church, every government building, every institution in the Western world to pave the way for the victory of Islam. Because they can only attack a few buildings in the most vulnerable places, they naturally choose American targets, because in their minds the United States is the shield and sword of the entire Western world. As the equivalent of an army--and an army that happens to be very weak--ideological terrorists can best protect themselves by remaining anonymous. No conventional military force can find them, while their targets can be anywhere in the world. And they have no need to proclaim their identity, because it is enough for them to hurt the hated enemy--Western civilization itself--which they see as invading the lands of Islam.

The long-term threat of ideological terrorism is virtually nil, because its attacks are too sporadic to cause any real damage. It is futile as a weapon of war simply because its scale is too small. Nor can it achieve any political results. No government, however fragile, can be seriously weakened by anonymous violence, and certainly no government can negotiate when there is nobody to talk to. That is of small comfort to the victims of the latest cruelties.