Louise Richardson's book, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat (2006, Random House, 312 pp.) provides an uncommon amount of common sense as well as comprehensive research on terrorism and Bush's misbegotten war. She grew up in an Irish community disposed to support the IRA, before breaking away into academia, where she became an expert at comparing and generalizing from the entire range of terrorist movements. I've collected a lot of quotes from this book, which follow. In a future post I'll try to develop my own views. So for now, this is mostly background info. I've tended to pull out conclusions. The book itself has numerous examples, of which the current Islamist focus of Bush's War is just one.

She starts off with a definition (pp. 4-6):

Terrorism simply means deliberately and violently targeting civilians for politican purposes. It has seven crucial characteristics. First, a terrorist act is politically inspired. If not, then it is simply a crime. [ . . . ]

Second, if an act does not involve violence or the threat of violence, it is not terrorism. [ . . . ]

Third, the point of terrorism is not to defeat the enemy but to send a message. Writing of the September 11 attacks, an al-Qaeda spokesman declared, "It rang the bells of restoring Arab and Islamic glory."

Fourth, the act and the victim usually have symbolic significance. Bin Laden referred to the Twin Towers as "icons" of America's "military and economic power." The shock value of the act is enormously enhanced by the symbolism of the target. The whole point is for the psychological impact to be greater than the actual physical act. Terrorism is indeed a weapon of the weak. Terrorist movements are invariably both outmanned and outgunned by their opponents, so they employ such tactics in an effort to gain more attention than any objective assessment of their capabilities would suggest that they warrant.

Fifth -- and this is a controversial point -- terrorism is the act of substate groups, not states. [ . . . ]

A sixth characteristic of terrorism is that the victim of the violence and the audience the terrorists are trying to reach are not the same. Victims are used as a means of altering the behavior of a larger audience, usually a government. Victims are chosen either at random or as representative of some larger group. Individual victims are interchangeable. [ . . . ] This is different from most other forms of political violence, in which security forces or state representatives are targeted in an effort to reduce the strength of an opponent.

The final and most important defining characteristic of terrorism is the deliberate targeting of civilians. This is what sets terrorism apart from other forms of political violence, even the most proximate form, guerrilla warfare. Terrorists have elevated practices that are normally seen as the excesses of warfare to routine practice, striking noncombatants not as an unintended side effect but as deliberate strategy.

Some sort of definition is a necessary starting point, especially if you're trying to develop a comparison set. This one works, although it reflects a subtle bias: it takes the state's view that terrorism is something others do, ignoring the fact that states often do as bad or worse. But it is more limited than most states' charges, which are quick to brand every violent political act against the state as an act of terrorism. Another bias is to exclude non-violent disruptions, such as sabotaging computer networks ("cyberterrorism"). The latter is helpful is that by excluding nonviolent resistance this makes the threshold of interest to be violence itself. The distinction between terrorism and guerrilla warfare matters less, as both are based on violence, on applying force against government power. In point of fact, those distinctions are ultimately so hard to make as to become meaningless. Even the most disciplined military operation results in unplanned, if not unforseeable, violence against noncombatants. Trying to justify such operations takes you over a moral line.

First, a basic rule (p. 40):

The emergence of terrorism requires a lethal cocktail with three ingredients: a disaffected individual, an enabling group, and a legitimizing ideology.

On the frequency of terrorism (pp. 40-41):

There are at least two reasons why it is very difficult to come up with a convincing explanation for terrorism. The first is that there are so many terrorists. The second is that there are so few. Terrorism is a tactic employed by many different groups in many different parts of the world in pursuit of many different objectives. It cocurs in democracies, autocracies, and, most often, transitional states. On the other hand, there are actually very few terrorists. If Islam causes terrorism, with 1.2 billion Muslims in the world and, at most, a few thousand Islamic terrorists, why are there not more? If the social revolutionary movements in Europe in the seventies were caused by the alienation of disaffected youths, why were there not more terrorists? Alienation was widespread among European and American youths, but there were actually very few members of the RAF, Action Directe, the CCC, and the Red Brigades in Germany, France, Belgium, and Italy, respectively.

On the psychology of terrorism (p. 41):

From the vast literature on psychology, three points in particular stand out. Terrorists see the world in Manichean, black-and-white terms; they identify with others; and they desire revenge. They have a highly oversimplified view of the world in which good is pitted against evil and in which their adversaries are to blame for all their woes. They tend to act not out of a desire for personal gratification but on behalf of a group with which they identify (though the two motives can of course coexist). Islamic terrorists, for example, regularly invoke the suffering of Palestinians and other Muslims.

On the question of state sponsors of terrorism (pp. 51-52):

It is often, in fact, a political judgment as to who is or is not a state sponsor of terrorism and who does and does not use terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy. In the 1970s, the USSR and Cuba topped the American public's list of state sponsors of terrorism. In the 1980s, it was Iran and Libya. In the 1990s, Iraq and Syria. Yet if you were to ask people in other countries, even in allied countries, you would find the United States high on most lists, and if you were to ask people in countries hostile to us you would find the United States at the top of their list. The examples invoked in support of the contention that the United States has sponsored terrorism would include the Contras in Nicaragua, the American support for the mujahedin in Afghanistan, and support for local groups trying to overthrow Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile.

Richardson messes up after this quote with some needless and unuseful equivocations. The key point here is that terror groups are invariably local based, even when they are able to attract material support from foreign states. The states have their own reasons for backing such groups -- usually some form of weakness, including lack of popular domestic support which leads even a strong nation to seek deniability. The reasons why states act in this way are outside the scope of study here, but it is worth noting that one reason terrorist groups exist is that they serve the interests of states acting outside the limits of international law. As such, stronger international law would help curb terrorism.

On the expectations of terrorists (p. 98):

Terrorists often have wildly optimistic expectations of the reactions their action will elicit: American and Israeli withdrawal from the Middle East, British withdrawal from Northern Ireland, the collapse of capitalism. There are several revealing accounts of the first meeting between British politicians and leaders of the IRA in July 1972, including Martin McGuinness and a very young Gerry Adams, who was released from Long Kesh internment camp for the occasion. The British officials were stunned by the expectations of their interlocutors, whom they considered, at best, young hooligans. The IRA representatives insisted upon an immediate declaration from Britain of its intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland and for the withdrawal to be completed by January 1, 1975. [ . . . ] For radical Islamists their faith that Allah is on their side best explains their optimism. In the words of the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, "America is very strong. Even if it were twice as strong or twice that, it could not be strong enough to defeat us. We are confident that no one can harm us if God is with us." This optimism is reinforced by the group members, who create their own reality. The more isolated from their society they become, the more their optimistic fantasies go unchallenged.

Summarizing, Richardson writes, "So long as there is a reaction, therefore, the terrorist purpose is served." She continues (p. 100):

Not reacting is hardly an option for a democratic country with a free press. The actions of the terrorists and the spectacular nature of their attacks are designed to make good television coverage. The media then become tools for terrorists to spread fear. Though it should be said that the media rarely spread sympathy for or understanding of terrorists, they do publicize their actions and thereby serve their purpose. The public are frightened and insist on action to ensure their security. It is part of the power of terrorism that the fear it spreads, due to the random nature of the victims, tends to be out of all proportion to the actual threat posed. In an effort to try to ensure the safety of their citizens and to demonstrate their competence, governments invariably react strongly, and often forcibly. Moreover, if governments do not act, not only do they jeopardize their own political survival, but they run the risk that terrorists will feel compelled to commit ever-larger atrocities in order to elicit a reaction.

Maybe "not reacting is hardly an option," but how you react is the real issue. What feeds the terrorists isn't reaction per se but bad reaction. If political leaders can't resist the demands, often amplified by the media but really rooted in political culture, for revenge, they're letting the terrorists push their buttons. It may be that democracy is particularly susceptible to demagoguery here, but political leaders can be effective arguing both with and against the wind. To take the specific case of Bush on 9/11, he chose a path to war not just because the wind blew that way, but because he saw political opportunities in that direction.

On suicide bombers (pp. 128-129):

In attempting to ascertain what it is that drives an individual to volunteer to be a martyr in the first place, the evidence that, as with terrorism in general, the key motivators are revenge, renown, and reaction is very strong. From Chechens to Tamils to Palestinians to Saudis, from women to men, from young to old, the words of volunteers for suicide are replete with the language of revenge. [ . . . ] Sometimes the desire is to avenge a personal injury, the death or arrest of a relative, and sometimes it is to avenge the ill-treatment of people they do not know but with whom they identify. Often it is to avenge a sense of humiliation. The longer a conflict continues, the more atrocities there are to be avenged.

While the desire for revenge has proven to be a powerful motivator in the human condition generally, in the past it has not sufficed to propel people to commit suicide in large numbers. There are other motivations at play too, and these are the social motivations, the desir eto be loyal to your peers and to be revered in your community. I cannot help getting the sense in seeing some of the final videos, especially the less carefully scripted ones, that the volunteers' desire to be the center of attention is being briefly indulged by the movement's leaders before they are dispatched to war as cannon fodder.

On the fear of WMD attacks by terrorists (p. 165):

In all the discussion of our vulnerabilities to WMDs, there was almost no public discussion of the nature of the threat, no distinctions drawn among chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons, nor any public discussion of the limitations of these weapons. Rather, government statements have tended to group all forms of weapons of mass destruction together as an apocalyptic means of destroying the country. In fact, as I have pointed out, there are very real differences between the different types of weapons that are linked under the rubric of WMD. Moreover, the lethality of any biological and chemical weapons or dirty bombs likely to be acquired by terrorist groups pales in comparison to that of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina. [ . . . ]

The detonation of a nuclear bomb would undoubtedly be devastating and would indeed constitute a turning point in history. But the conflation of this risk with that posed by a hapless Frenchman concocting ricin in his parents' spare bedroom serves only to undermine our ability to formulate coherent and effective counterrterrorist policies.

On America's response to 9/11 (p. 168):

Abroad, the American government conflated the threats it faced and based its policies on the vulnerabilities it felt, rather than the threats it faced. The heinousness of the attack, moreover, blinded the United States to some of the legitimate objections to its policies overseas. One thing that did not change was Americans' confidence in the rectitude of their actions or the unassailability of their moral position.

Domestically, a weak and unpopular president, recently elected with a highly questionable mandate, was transformed into a war leader by a population seeking the security of a strong leader. Believing that the world had changed, we were prepared to accept changes in our longstanding national security doctrine and infrastructure in response. The enormous scale of the atrocity seemed to merit a powerful response, and the United States responded with the most potent weapon in its armory, a declaration of war. But the war was not declared on those who had committed the crime, but rather on the tactic they had used to hurt us. It was a war we could not win.

On the concept of a Global War on Terror (p. 176-177):

The problem with a declaration of war is that warfare conjures up notions of victory and defeat. Yet, as was obvious at the time and as we have begun to realize since, it is very difficult ever to declare victory in a war on terrorism or terror, much less evil. We succeeded in defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan, but that has not brought us victory in the war on terrorism. Indeed, at the time, Americans believed that toppling the Taliban but failing to capture bin Laden and his aides would constitute failure. We have succeeded in severely curtailing the freedom of operation of the al-Qaeda leadership. We have captured many, but by no means all, of its leaders and destroyed its command, communication, and training systems, yet this has not brought us victory in the war on terrorism.

If victory means making the United States invulnerable to terrorist attack, we are never, ever going to be victorious. Here's why casting a conflict in terms of a war one cannot win is a big mistake. By dispatching any operative into any Starbucks, subway station, or shopping mall in the country and blowing it up, a terrorist group could demonstrate that the most powerful country in the history fo the world has not been able to beat it. This is making it much too easy for the terrorists. [ . . . ]

The ultimate goal of any war must be to deny the adversary what it is that he wants. Terrorists want to be considered at war with us, so to concede this to them is to grant them what they want, instead of doing our utmost to deny them what they want.

Terrorists like to be considered soldiers at war both because of the legitimacy they believe it brings their cause and for the status they believe it confers on them. For the United States to declare war on a bunch of radical extremists living under the protection of an impoverished Afghanistan is to elevate their stature in a way that they could not possibly hope to do themselves.

Again (p. 179):

By declaring war yet refusing to be bound by the agreed constraints on warfare and refusing to conduct the war through existing international institutions, the United States alienated its allies and confirmed the worst views of neutrals and adversaries. In 2001, for example, according to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, three out of four Indonesians had a positive view of the United States. Two years later, four out of five had a negative view. A BBC poll in summer 2003 revealed that the vast majority of Jordanians and Indonesians considered the United States to be more dangerous than al-Qaeda. A majority in India, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil saw the United States as more dangerous than Iran. The U.S. government believed that the atrocity committed against it was so great that it could not afford to have any constraints on the exercise of its power in response. Ironically, it was precisely the unbridled deployment of that unrivaled power that alienated its allies, turned neutrals against it, swelled the ranks of its adversaries and destroyed its chances of achieving its longterm objective, that is, the containment of the resort to terrorism.

On Bin Laden and Bush (p. 194):

In responding to the attacks of 9/11 with a declaration of war on terror, the United States mirrored the behavior of its adversary. Bin Laden has ignored the rich complexity and nuanced teachings of Islam and superimposed a highly simplified, Manichean view of good and evil: he represents the good servant of Allah; the United States represents the infidel. In response the U.S. government adopted the same black-and-white view of the world, only in its view it represents goodness and he represents evil. Nowhere was this similarity more in evidence than in the unfortunate use of the term "crusade" in describing our war on terror. A few days after the attack, President Bush told reporters that "This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." The word might have been dismissed as an unfortunate slip of the tongue had it not been repeated in a set speech tro the troops in Alaska some months later. In that instance, the president said of the Canadians, "They stand with us in this incredibly important crusade to defend freedom."

Again (p. 195):

One of the striking featuers of bin Laden's many statements is the endless litany of grievances against the West. He never takes into account the suffering he has inflicted on others, even of the hundreds of innocent Africans killed and injured in the attacks on the American Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. In our response to bin Laden, it appears that for us, too, only our suffering, only our grievances, matter. In fighting back at al-Qaeda, we inadvertently killed a large number of civilians. By August 2002, the estimated number of Afghan civilian deaths from U.S. bombings was between 3,125 and 3,620; that is, significantly more than the number of civilians killed by al-Qaeda on 9/11. These numbers never became a topic of discussion, much less a cause of concern, in this country. We were so taken with the extent of our own suffering that we didn't consider the suffering we were inflicting on others.

Under "What Is to Be Done?" Richardson offers six rules for counteracting terrorism (pp. 203-233):

1. Have a Defensible and Achievable Goal
2. Live by Your Principles
3. Know Your Enemy
4. Separate the Terrorists from Their Communities
5. Engage Others in Countering Terrorists with You
6. Have Patience and Keep Your Perspective

These are mostly self-explanatory. Somewhere between #2 and #3 there should be a "know thyself" -- which is clearly an American affliction. A couple of quotes from these sections. From Rule 3 (p. 213):

Wars are easier to begin than to end; they tend to last much longer than an objective assessment of the interests of the participants suggest that they should. The same is true of terrorism and counterterrorist campaigns. In some cases one side has overwhelming power and simply wins the conflict, but this is rarely the case. The First World War, for example, ended in 1918 on terms that had essentially been available two years earlier. The Boer War could have ended on the same terms as it eventually did eighteen months earlier. The IRA finally called an end to its campaign seven years after the Good Friday Agreement, and the broad terms of that agreement could have been available many years earlier. There are a variety of reasons for this. The costs of wars are such that participants feel they need to continue fighting to justify the costs already borne. Wars and terrorist campaigns tend to be prolonged by an unlikely alliance of hawks on both sides and generally require an alliance of doves on both sides in order to make peace.

From Rule 4 (p. 216):

Our purpose in alienating the terrorists from their communities is not to win a popularity contest. The reality is that the extent of our wealth and strength will always breed resentment. We do not need to be loved; great powers rarely are. The only threshold we need to reach is that ordinary members of society not be prepared to support those who wish to oppose us by killing our civilians. That is not such a high threshold to achieve. Nevertheless, if by our actions we seem to confirm the view of us held by the terrorists themselves, if our behavior seems more in keeping with their account of our motives than with our own, then we will strengthen our adversaries immeasurably.

Again from Rule 4 (p. 219):

The fact that someone who has committed heinous crimes makes allegations against us does not mean that those allegations are without foundation and should be dismissed out of hand. If our audience is the broader community to which he is appealing, then we need to listen and to respond to the allegations. Nowhere is the gulf between al-Qaeda's argument and ours more in evidence than in the question of the impact of economic sanctions on Iraq. In his statements over the years bin Laden regularly invoked the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children killed by American sanctions. "A million innocent children are dying as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt." Americans simply dismissed these claims as the outrageous rantings of a diabolical fanatic. Economic sanctions, after all, are benign; they are a means of putting pressure on a pariah government without using force. Americans saw our sanctions as evidence of our restraint, and if they caused hardship for Iraqi civilians it was because Saddam Hussein was impeding their implementation in the humanitarian way we had intended.

The fact is that the UN sanctions did cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. A UNICEF report issued in 1999 indicated that 500,000 children under the age of five died between 1991 and 1998 in Iraq due largely to the impact of the sanctions. The British medical journal The Lancet reported, "Infant mortality rose from 47 per 1,000 live births during 1984-89 to 108 per 1,000 in 1994-99, and under five mortality rose from 56 to 131 per 1,000 live births." Two successive UN officials in charge of the program resigned to protest the humanitarian catastrophe over which they were presiding.

One reason I quoted this book so extensively is that I was reading a copy from the library, so don't have the book to refer to. There is a section where she argues that a major obstacle to international law regarding terrorism is that too many nations tend to interpret terrorism in the context of their own political agendas. For example, the US likes to make a distinction between "good" terrorists (the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen, the anti-Sandinista contras) and "bad" terrorists (e.g., the anti-American Afghan mujahideen). I don't have a quote on that, but she argues that all terrorism, given her definition, is always terrorism. That seems right to me, but it's worth noting that that argument leads to a pacifist position. That's alright with me, too.

But if we take the acts of terrorism as definitive, then we have to provide some accounting for equivalent acts by the state. Such acts are in fact contrary to human rights as commonly defined, so it's not necessary to define them as terrorism in order to condemn them. Moreover, it seems to me that there is a moral equivalence between terrorism and state acts of terror, unless you want to argue that states, by dint of their presumed responsibilities, are even more immoral.

Another point I missed quoting is where she argues that one of the great missed opportunities of the Bush War on Terror was how it failed to consolidate near-universal outrage over the 9/11 attacks into a great strengthening of international law over terrorism. This didn't happen primarily because Bush et al., as rulers of the world's presumed sole hyperpower, intended to settle all scores on its own. That this sounds like something from a Mafia opera isn't coincidental. Bush isn't merely the ruler of a rogue nation; he's the scion of one of the world's great crime families.