Talk:Terrorism/Archive 2

I don't believe the following is true, so I removed it:

but it is a criminal offense under nearly every national or international legal code (see Hague Regulation of 1907 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949).

Firstly, many countries still don't have specific legislation against terrorism, although often terrorist offences can be prosecuted as ordinary criminal offences such as murder or destruction of property. Secondly, talking about "nearly every national legal code" is strange, since many states don't have codes. Talking about "nearly every international legal code" is even stranger, since what is an international legal code? A treaty? It certaintly isn't illegal under nearly every treaty, because most treaties have nothing to do with terrorism. And referencing the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions is also strange. Their provisions might have some application in cases of terrorism, but they primarily deal with international armed conflict between states (i.e. wars), not isolated acts of terrorism. But there are several whole conventions, which unlike the Hague Regulations or Geneva conventions actually deal specificially with terrorism. A list of the main ones is already in the article.

I also can't make sense of the following paragraph, so I removed it as well:

Many governments have also taken a direct hand in terrorist activities against their own or other countries' peoples. Victims include the Jews in Germany, the Soviets under Stalin, China and Japan in China, Armenians in Turkey, Chileans under Pinochet, East Timor under Indonesia, Palestinians under Israel, and Americans under COINTELPRO in the United States.

This passage seems to use a potentially overly broad definition of terrorism. Genocide, killings by death squads, and forced famines are not generally considered to be terrorism, though it depends on who you ask. -- SJK

They're just as bad, if you ask me. There is so much evil in this world that it helps us good folks to name the various categories. And don't bother to ask me to take the NPOV on this, my opposition to evil is implacable. Ed Poor

The definition says: "Terrorism refers to the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence, often against the civilian population, to instill fear in an audience for purposes of obtaining political goals."

In other words, there's a motivation behind terrorism.

The article then goes on to name some famous terrorist acts. Have all of these acts been proven to be carried out in order to instill fear? The page Terrorist incidents at least uses the phrase 'claimed to be terrorist by some people', which is unfortunately vague, but considering that the motivation of the people causing the attack cannot always be reconstrued, it seems a logical description.

Also a question: is every non-governmental attack that is mainly aimed at innocents a terrorist attack?--branko

I would say it would have to be for a political goal. --Robert Merkel

By the way, couldn't you argue that say, the French Resistance, was a terrorist organisation by the definition at the top of the page? If so, should it be considered so? If so, are terrorists always "evil", or is terrorism a legitimate tactic in some circumstances? --Robert Merkel

The resistance was indeed categorized as "terrorist" by the Nazis. DanKeshet, Friday, March 29, 2002

Were there acts in the French Revolution against civilians or just against those who made up the government at the time? However we would probably say that it was a terrorist organisation. Of course, I myself, wouldn't defend them as "good" --rmhermen

I was talking World War II, not the revolution. If you read the definition at the top of the parent page, it doesn't say you *have* to attack civilians to be considered a terrorist organisation. I also believe the Resistance dealt with "collaborators" fairly summarily. --Robert Merkel

My bad. French and terrorist seem to describe the Revolution so well. However the Resistance is of course a different question. The main purpose of the Resistance was to hinder the Nazis and the Petain government, not to terrorise the French populace. Perhaps you could say that they tried to terrorise the French government into changing policies that supported the Nazis but I don't really know enough about the Resistance actions to say. We usually call the groups guerrilla groups if they are directly fighting the government but terrorist if they attack targets, military or civilian, in order to inflict terror on the populace and thereby get the government to change policy. Say the guerilla group controls the interior of Columbia and attacks any government forces in range preventing them from governing the area, while the various Palestinian terrorist groups attack civilian and military targets to show the Israelis that no one is safe anywhere unless you make peace with us. Even the military cannot protect you. Does that explanation work? --rmhermen

Guerrilla describes tactics, while terrorist describes motives. Guerrilla is a pretty objective term, but terrorist is subjective. In listing terrorist groups, instead of debating whether or not we should consider a group terrorist, we should look to the historical record and see if the group were ever called terrorists, and by whom. --TheCunctator

The problem with this is that just about any organisation that's ever used violence has been described as "terrorist" by their opponents. (For example, during WW2 the German government described the British and American bombing raids on cities as "terrorist"). If the term is used this widely, it loses descriptive force, and becomes useless. -- Cabalamat 22:35, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Is the Earth Liberation Front really a example of a religious terrorist group, isn't the ELF more of a terrorist group relating to environmentalism? If that's true why is it on the list of religious terrorist groups together with groups like Al-Qaeda? - Peter Winnberg

The ELF just doesn't fit the official US DoD definition, although the FBI has called them that. I moved them up to the front to illustrate the subjectivity of the definition. I also made note of the BBC non-use of the word, and added the Jewish Defense League (two of whose members were arrested for planning to blow up mosques and the office of an Arab-American congressman) to the list of groups. Perhaps that's unfair as they are not yet convicted? It would be nice to have a standard for this type of thing.

Even though we aren't contrained in what we can report about criminal activity as the British press and others are, I'm still inclined to think that some formal designation or conviction would be good to have. After all, if someone simply removes "JDL" from the list (as I strongly suspect someone will), we can argue about it ad nauseam and get nowhere, because saying "X is a terrorist" is inherently subjective. But if the text of the article says "Goverment X has designated organization Y as a terrorist group" or "Group X has been convicted of action Y", then they have far less standing to remove such statements, as they can't be reasonably argued--they are clearly true or false. --Lee Daniel Crocker

I agree and plan on removing the list of groups from this page. (Please object now if you're going to object as I do this.) We can use terrorist groups as a place to list groups and whom they were designated as terrorists by. DanKeshet, Friday, March 29, 2002

Of course there can't be a standard definition, sorry for my dumb suggestion, and that's why the BBC doesn't use the word... but no I don't think that it's inherently subjective if avowed members of a group who have never been distanced by other members are convicted (not necessarily just "arrested") of planning to bomb mosques and Congressmans' offices with them in it... I would question the definition if it was clear that the group wsa only blowing up the *place* with no one in it... but as I understand it that was not their intent...

I absolutely agree that we should stick to BBC standard if we can, and use the objective language you describe: "Goverment X has designated organization Y as a terrorist group" or "Group X has been convicted of action Y", and nothing but. I don't know about you, but I get creeped out by things on TV like "convicted pedophile" (no such thing, the crime is "sexual assault" or "child molesting") or "known Communist" - which sounds much like labelling someone as a way to make attacking or hating them socially "okay"...

But maybe we are thinking of this wrong - maybe it's a way to get publicity and lots of well-funded help? Maybe we should officially invite all governments and terrorist groups to hack at this definition, each adding their own propaganda refinements and each other's agencies to the list, until they are all defined as the moral equivalents they sometimes are...

As each group is wiped out or government is defeated, over time, they will no longer be adding their particular slant, and we'll be left with an amazing historical record of the "War on Terror" and how its propaganda ebbed and flowed and waxed and waned... plus whatever other articles the whole CIA or all of Al Qaeda could contribute... just think of the stuff those guys know...

Bryce asked "how do we approach describing the CIA's involvement with terrorism?" - I gave it a shot in assassin where I think it belongs.

---

The short list:

Examples of State-sponsored Terrorist Groups:

Hezbollah (Lebanese proxy, sponsored by Iran through Syria)
Abu Nidal Organization (Iraq)

Makes a strong point that Iraq and Iran are the only one.

Conta (USA upto Iran Conta affair)
Rote Armee Fraktion (GDR upto unification)

And others should be added.

harrystein

Now how is it possible that "States widely classed as 'terrorist'" list includes Cuba (when was the last time they were doing executions of random people for no reason and stuff like that) and doesn't include Israel ? Taw 13:48 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I really disagree with including Nagasaki and Hiroshima here, and especially with including the amounts of deaths and calling them the most terrorist deaths in history. By the decree of the Japanese government itself, all civilians were expected to take part in fighting to keep the United States from invading the island, and millions of civilians and US forces would have died if the US had been forced to do a landing on the islands. The Japanese government even continued to refuse to surrender after the dropping of the first bomb, and continued to call for civilian resistance. So tell me, which would have resulted in the most deaths -- the dropping of the two bombs, or the invasion and island-to-island, house-to-house, hand-to-hand combat which would have ground on for months? RickK

Bah. If terrorism is the deliberate targetting of civilians then these arguably qualify. An NPOV version might say "some consider acts X and Y to be terrorism" etc... Evercat 01:18 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Besides, your argument is essentially "it's not terrorism if it prevents deaths." - but there's nothing in the definition of terrorism to say that it can't do so. Evercat 01:20 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

By definition of the Japanese government, these people were combatants. RickK 01:21 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The Japanese government speaks for everyone in Japan, does it? Anyway, I expect most American civilians would have resisted an invasion of the U.S. So targetting American civilians is OK? Of course not. Evercat 01:23 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Evercat is wrong, sorry Evercat. The nuking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not acts aimed at civilians - both these cities were significant military targets, with industries turning out offensive naval craft and large numbers (50,000+) soldiers. The US in fact took extraordinary steps to try and warn the civilian population to leave the target areas. This is documented fact. MarcusVox

Washington contains significant military targets. So, if al-Qaeda detonates a nuke in Washington, it won't be an act of terrorism?

Anyway, who's right or wrong here isn't important, we have an NPOV policy whereby both arguments can be presented. :-) Evercat 18:13 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Marcus - may I suggest that you describe the military and ethical justifications at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, respectively. Alternatively, you could spin off new articles at bombing of Nagasaki and bombing of Hiroshima. There's a fair bit of work involved, but it sounds like you have a handle on the relevant facts and figures that would really help clear up the issue. Personally, I'd be very interesting in reading such an article. :) Martin 10:20 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

that goes for RickK too! :)

This is my comment from the VFD page. USER 62.212... make an identity please -- theres no good reason not to, and there are dozens of reason for it, like having a talk page where people can respond to you. I take issue with both parties here -- both are making a polarist issue out of something, and both are representing their pov as npov. Neither one of the two is NPOV. I do not oppose including these figures as a *comparison within a terrorism article -- it would be POV to state that only certain events fall under the category of terrorism, while others do not.-豎眩sv

I should also comment, having read some few recent discussion entries. Using a more recent example, George Bush first called those who died on 911 "innocent victims," and later refered to them as "the first soldiers to die in the war on terror." (or similar). The ridiculous assertion, by some that those civilians killed by Nagasaki or Hiroshima, is based on a terrible ignorance of the facts, namely that the reasons for bombing each were strategically different, and that the reports urging an attack on civilian targets was ramrodded through to Trumans office --without a complete or human description of the terrible harm they would inflict. Truman in fact went to his grave with some terrible guilt at the fact that he had had inflicted such destruction, and attempted sometimes vehemently to deny it.

To say that "this is black" and "this is white" is simply the height of moral and intellectual dishonesty. True, the Japanese killed millions in China, -- these were military atrocities. That the US could say 'Mrs. Akiko and her four small children' should pay for the warcrimes of 'young ashigaru, Mr. Morimoto', or whomever -- was and still is a moral outrage. The fight against terrorism is a moral argument -- not a practicalist one. The moral standards must be kept, or honor is lost. The fact remains, in war only a quarter of all deaths are actually combatants. Does this mean that acts of killing innocents cannot be compared? -豎&#30505sv

P.S. And then someone explain Hirohito's US-sanctioned survival?

The real point with terrorism is the motivation and intent of the act. The US bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not aimed at killing civilians, although this was an outcome of the act. The US was seeking to destroy the naval facilities at Nagasaki and the large army bases at Hiroshima, and thus encourage the Japanese to surrender. That's why these cities were selected as targets. If the US had simply wanted to kill civilians in order to achieve a political end, it could have nuked Tokyo. That would have caused a maximum amount of civilian loss of life - and it very probably would have fitted the criteria for an act of terrorism.

To address the comparison made above by Evercat: "Washington contains significant military targets. So, if al-Qaeda detonates a nuke in Washington, it won't be an act of terrorism?" If al-Qaeda sought to destroy military targets in Washington, and not merely to kill civilians, then this would be an act of war. In that case, al-Qaeda would be a bonafide revolutionary force fighting against its perceived enemy, the United States. Its non-terrorist status would be even stronger if al-Qaeda took some steps to minimize civilian harm by issuing warnings, etc., of its impending attack and by centering its attacks on military targets only. But this is not, to date, the style of al-Qaeda: the attacks on the World Trade Center, for example, were classics acts of terrorism, not warfare. MarcusVox

No, Im afraid you're wrong. The US did "intend" to kill civilians when they dropped their bombs on civilan targets. To say otherwise would be to call these people blind, dumb and stupid. Once again, the moral standard you (or anyone who attempts to defend any atrocity) is the same meaningless sliding scale.

Lets put it the other way... Al Qaeda has said (I think) that their intent wasnt to kill civilians, rather that as agents of 'Americas financial empire' anyone who worked in those building wasnt a civilian. Compare this to your rather weak argument. OF course was an outrage for Al Qaeda to say that "civilians werent the real target" in the 911 case -- so too was it an outrage in Nagasaki and Hiroshima....and Tokyo too, if you want to go there. (Tokyo had already been bombed in excess of both these cities by conventional bombs -- 90 thousand dead in one night alone.)

Not too long ago there was the Israeli rocket attack on an apartment that killed around a dozen people. 8 of them were kids, only one or two were actual targets. According to your logic, "thats what these kids get for bein' where the bombin' is." It would seem, morally that your position, that of the hawks, typically, and Al Qaedas -- are similar, if not identical. War indeed makes strange bedfellows. -豎&#30505sv

Steve, I think you are getting a little mixed up here; we are arguing about the distinction between terrorism and conventional warfare. You seem to be arguing the case that all violence is equally immoral, no matter what its motivation or intent. You may well be right about that, but that's not the issue here. There is a valid distinction between terrorism and war. I am not aware of any proof that the U.S. has ever set out to deliberately kill civilians. I know of many instances when civilians have been killed as a result of military action that was intended to achieve a military objective. That sadly is an inevitable consequence of warfare, because in war there is no perfect knowledge about the exact location of each and every civilian. As a result, civilians are killed accidentally, just like soldiers are killed accidentially by "friendly fire." It happens. But that is a world away from saying that the U.S. dropped bombs on targets with the sole and deliberate intention of killing civilians. If you could prove to me that the U.S. did this, I would be crushed. My whole world view would need to change. But I think you will find such proofs hard to find, because I know the culture of the U.S. and the deliberate killing of civilians is not part of the way Americans think. MarcusVox

I suppose Mr. Marcus proposes to speak for all Americans -- no doubt to validate the belief that Americans are inherently distinct from all other human beings -- and being far more closely related to angels, cannot be questioned in their motives. Respectfully, this is nonsense. Mr. Marcus here likes to play the "name game" -- its terrorism, if you intent to kill civilians, while its "warfare" if you dont consider the lives of civilians at all!

Its natural to want to assume that "since this is an article on Terrorism^TM", its perfectly fine to define such a thing by its standard, rhetorical, Pentagon-dicated definition. How dare people challenge the validity of such an important rhetorical distinction? Especially by bringing up irrelevant issues like "morality," consequence, hypocrisy, and not the least of which... semantic obfuscation and bufoonery! Or perhaps the fact that the CIA's very own definition is practically identical to most clandestine, "low-intensity warfare" operations.

豎&#30505sv P.S. Respectfully. "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -H.L. Mencken

Hmmmmm ... I am not an American ... And Steve (is that your name?), alas, I think you have slipped into terminal rant-mode, at which I also excel, but from which I will attempt to refrain. Your argument reflects a classic and predictable left-wing anti-American position, espoused by people like Noam Chomsky. We've heard it all before, in a multitude of forms. I believe it is the common thesis of moral idiots - sorry about that crude expression. By moral idiots, I mean people who cannot (apparently) tell the difference between right and wrong. For example, people who equate the actions of the U.S. with those of terrorists like al-Qaeda. Such people appear to lack the capacity for normal moral perception. I am not being facetious in saying this - I am genuinely baffled by their thinking. Perhaps you can explain it to me.

I also note that you did not meet the challenge I put: to find one piece of evidence that it is the policy of the U.S. to deliberately attack and kill civilians. If you can find this evidence, I will become a socialist also and curse the Great U.S. Satan to death. And I will shave off all my butthairs and de-grease the ridge. MarcusVox

Well, I feel I owe an apology. I did not intend to make taunts, as I respect your point of view - and those similar -- but I will take issue with some very basic parts of your premise in a more appropriate way; These are flaws of reason, by the way -- not flaws of evidence.

It is wrong to state that terrorists "want to kill people" or that a military "doesnt want to kill people." They both do. Does it matter to the US that Al Qaeda only targeted "soldiers for the state's financial institutions?" Of course not. Your circumlocution of reality -- belies the facts of the immorality of the imposition of death. Seen through a different prism for each POV -- this view that a state can impose peace through violence is a popular one -- it was popular among Germans in the thirites and early forties -- and so on, and so on.

Peace through violence. Say it enough times, and it sounds almost logical.

As for the position of leftists like Chomsky -- an explanation never did much good for people with deaf ears, but --- if you think of Chomsky as a kind of Truthsayer -- a modern day John the Baptist, if you will -- someone who defies the normal conventions, dispenses with the unsupported assumptions, gets the self-congratulating nonsense out of the way... then you can kind of understand. Chomsky knows all the high-level languages, (making a computer analogy) but far more interesting is the machine code -- the underlying reality of human events is survival, and the means by which it is to be achieved. Certainly, the US has done great good in the world, and it has made mistakes -- the important thing is to connect those mistakes with what is happening now, otherwise the US becomes something so morally callous, so reprehensible and indifferent --that it becomes abominable for the good people of the world to bear. A good chunk of America *tends to view people who disagree with it as evil or bad, or anti-American -- when in fact this is the most false of assertions. But Bush has been incredibly wise to cut the cake as he has -- marginalizing extremists, isolating terror as a paradigm in and of itself to defeat -- and most importantly, to make a direct connection between economic disaster cases as "breeding grounds" for terrorism. The thing he doesnt say is why some of these states are disaster cases -- but he does come close. All in all, Bush has a fairly decent moral compass.

All that said, "terrorism" is still at best a misnomer. Though its been said a million times -- "911 was an act of war" -- was it then also "terrorism?" And if it was also *terrorism, then certainly to call it an "act of war" is not a defense. Your position seems to want to have your cake and eat it too." (continued on your talk page.)-豎&#30505sv

P.S. To the above, you no doubt want to insert some further distictions -- like "state acts" versus "terrorist acts"... all seeking to refine the definition of terrorism down to the point where all its good for is meaningless rhetoric. What's the debate about then? :)

Let's see if I can get you to understand why, although both are arguably evils, we still differentiate between "terrorism" (defined, briefly, as "deliberate targetting of civilians with violence directed toward a political goal") and "military actions" (defined, briefly, as "the use of violence, by intent directed at military targets toward a political goal, but which may involve civilian death"). To this end, I will employ an analogy to help divest some of the emotional reactions which seem to be making people talk past one another.

Let us consider two diseases: anthrax and ebola. Both of these diseases are intensely undesirable. One could go so far as to call them evils (but not "evil"). Both of them are very unpleasant diseases that are actually pretty damned frightening. This is analogous to calling terrorism and military actions both evil and pretty damnable activities.

Continuing the analogy, I submit that, just because anthrax and ebola are similar diseases (in that they're both thoroughly unpleasant and terribly frightening) does not mean they should be lumped together and treated the same way. This is because anthrax is a bacterial disease and ebola is viral, for starters. If we treated them the same way, one or the other could be cured but not both. (Or, more likely, if we tried to treat diseases with this muddled conception of their nature, we'd not successfully treat either one.)

This carries over to terrorism vs. more conventional military actions. Both are evil. Only moral idiots would say that this isn't the case. Lumping them together, however, and claiming they are one and the same is equally foolish as would be lumping anthrax and ebola and treating them the same. Just as the root causes of anthrax and ebola differ dramatically (as do the vectors of infection and the possible cures), so too do the root causes of terrorism and conventional warfare. Attempting to treat terrorists as if they were the same as regular soldiers performing regular soldierly duties has in the past proven disastrous for all concerned. Similarly, attempting to treat military personnel doing standard military actions as terrorists would be an unmitigated disaster.

In summary: we distinguish between terrorism and regular military actions not (necessarily) because we view one as wrong and the other as right, but because they are actually two completely different kinds of wrong demanding different "treatment" mechanisms if we are to "cure" them. --MTR 00:08 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

From the list of famous terrorists I removed David Ben Gurion (very rarely described as a terrorist) and added Yitzhak Shamir and Abraham Stern (both leaders of Lehi; the latter became prime minister if Israel many years later) and Abu Nidal.

This writer (Zero?) means "... the former became ...", bcz she/he is referring to Shamir, not Stern. (former= earlier; latter= later) Jerzy 08:25, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Going back to some discussion earlier on this page: some truly mind-boggling ignorance is displayed above concerning the bombing of Japan in WWII. Of course civilians were deliberately targeted as a matter of policy; go and read any book on the subject more recent than about 1990. There are truck loads of documents in the public domain about this. As for idiotic statements like "That's why these cities were selected as targets. If the US had simply wanted to kill civilians in order to achieve a political end, it could have nuked Tokyo", the writer should learn about the fire bombing of Tokyo that killed more civilians than died in Hiroshima. And I won't even start on the "citizens of Hiroshima were warned to leave", it must be someone's idea of a joke as nobody can be that stupid in reality. --- zero

There's a glaring factual inaccuracy in the first two sentences of this article, where it says that the UK Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism as acts/threats of violence against civilians. In fact, the Act's definition includes violence against military personnel and installations, and non-violent acts (such as shutting down a website if one dislikes its politics). I would change the article myself, however I have serious doubts as to whether "terrorism" can ever be an NPOV term so I am holding off for now. -- Cabalamat 22:50, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

User:MarcusVox, I assert that your recent changes saying "Although the exact meaning of the term is disputed, it is commonly held that the distinctive nature of terrorism lies in its deliberate and specific selection of civilians as targets" are factually inaccurate, at least as far as UK English is concerned. In the UK, the IRA were commonly refered to as a "terrorist" organisation, and are by far the most important terrorist organisation to operate in the UK in recent years, and they most certainly did not have a policy of targetting civilians only; they often targetted military or economic targets (in the latter case, warnings were often given to prevent casualties). So IMO your changes are both wrong and a possibly also violation of NPOV, because they emphasize one possible meaning of "terrorism" at the expense of other, equally popular meanings of this word. -- Cabalamat 00:14, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think that the Arab killing of Israelis civilian and Israelis killing of Arabs civilians, or the house destruction, need to be keep, all are examples of targeting civilians to obtain a political goal. Milton 13:26, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Using this page to justify my edits of today that I suppose could spawn controversy, and to archive portions I cut in case it's needed.

As if to illustrate the over-politicized use of the term terrorist, FBI director Louis Freeh listed Reclaim the Streets a party organiser amongst the "Threats of Terrorism to the United States". The list also included "extreme fringes of animal rights, environmental, anti-nuclear, and other political and social movements" as well as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Earth Liberation Front have never done bodily harm of any type, claim only to have committed arson and "animal liberation", and claim non-violence to all living things as an explicit part of their doctrine. This group cannot conceivably satisfy the US Department of Defense definition, but the FBI finds it convenient to motivate its funding and "counter-terror" activities, gaining prestige for what would otherwise be ordinary arson cases.

The report reads in part: "Anarchists and extreme socialist groups - many of which, such as the Workers' World Party, Reclaim the Streets, and Carnival Against Capitalism - have an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential threat in the United States. For example, anarchists, operating individually and in groups, caused much of the damage during the 1999 World Trade Organization ministerial meeting in Seattle."

I removed these two paragraphs because (a) they are not very relevant to "Problems with the definition", especially the second paragraph; and (b) the first paragraph has POV elements. It would be easy to state this as a position and remove the POV, but I think the article is improved by simply removing them.

He is known to be assisted by Cratos (personification of strength and power) and Bia (personification of force).

The whole discussion of the Greek gods as terrorists seems very far fetched for an encyclopedia article on the general subject of terrorism, but for the moment let's only remove the least relevant sentence.

Over the 20th and 21st centuries, however, as states have become increasingly bureaucratized, the death of a single individual leader did not produce the political changes that the terrorists desired, so they turned to more indirect methods to cause general anxiety and loss of confidence in the government.

Please cite a source for this. Firstly, has there really been a reduction in assassination attempts? Secondly, if there is a reduction, is it really because countries have bureaucracies? What about small countries? Also, it does seem like common sense to claim that states are increasingly bureaucratic, but is there proof? Ancient Rome was pretty bureaucratic.

A third common reason to engage in terrorism is to demoralize and paralyze one's enemy with fear; this sometimes works, but can also stiffen the enemy's resolve.

I didn't remove this, but I think it screams for a supporting source. I believe there are plenty of cases in which prisoners have been released due to a hostage threat, but is there really a case where an enemy has been demoralized and paralyzed with fear in a way that led to the fulfillment of the terrorists' demands?

The US operated in Panama the infamous School of the Americas to train Latin American military personnel, formally in counterinsurgency. The alumni often, though, formed the core of the torturing agencies in Latin America that supported military dictators.

Although I believe all of this to be true, I don't believe it's germane to the subject; it's just more information about Latin American dictatorships, continued from the previous sentences.

In virtually every case where a terrorist group has achieved power it has been marked by a dictatorship.

A cheering thought, but it requires examples.

al-Qaeda

Is al-Qaeda a religious terrorist group?

This violence included both the broadest definition of the word as the destruction of property and the more narrow definition of the word as being beaten or teargassed by police.

This sentence was out of place in the paragraph.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

Columbine High School slayers

John Allen Muhammad aka the "Beltway Sniper"
The Tylenol Murderer

I removed these three because they are mass murderers and not terrorists. Also, Muhammad has not been convicted of the sniper killings as of this writing.

I think that the expresion:

needs to be part of the article, it is not info about latinamerica dictatorships, but information about how USA government use, and teach, terrorirsm to gain political goals in L.A.

Perhaps you could rewrite the statement to emphasize that you're talking about state terrorism. Where is the jump that was made from counterinsurgency to state terrorism? Tempshill

As far as the Beltway sniper use terror but we don't know if terror is associated to some political goal we can't clsified it as a terrorism. But I disagree with the reason to remove because "Muhammad has not been convicted of the sniper killings as of this writing" This is an enciclopedia, not a court ! Note that Pinochet, SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY or Hitler are not convinced by a court at this time !

Well, we already agree this is moot, but the proper way to mention the Beltway sniper at this time would have been "the Beltway sniper", presumably with a wikilink to an article on him, and not mention a guy's name. Tempshill

Oops, I meant, "not mention a guy's name who is only a suspect at the present time". We would want to name names if a person is convicted -- though your point is well taken that Hitler and Stalin weren't ever convicted. Tempshill

I think also that anarquist acts of the first part of the past century, including Sarajevo, was NOT terrosim act, the civilian population was usually not the target Milton 09:36, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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