1) terrorist organizations do not achieve their stated political goals by attacking civilians; 2) terrorist organizations never use terrorism as a last resort and seldeom seize opportunities to become productive nonviolent political parties; 3) terrorist organizations reflexively reject compromise proposals offering significant policy concessions by the target government; 4) terrorist organizations have protean political platforms; 5) terrorist organizations generally carry out anonymous attacks, precluding target countries from making policy concessions; 6) terrorist organizations with identical political platforms routinely attack each other more than their mutally professed enemy; and 7) terrorist organizations resist disbanding when they consistently fail to achieve their political platforms or when their stated political grievances have been resolved...”
These claims are false. The IRA, the PLO, Hezbollah, and Hamas, who are AFAIK the prototypical terrorist organizations, aren’t described by any of them except sometimes point 6. (Correct me if I’m wrong; I’m not an expert.)
Let’s stop pretending that terrorism doesn’t work. Do you think England would ever have talked with the IRA, or that Israel would have given territory to the Palestinians, if not for terrorism?
I’m a little surprised that you’re arguing anecdotally against a statistical generalization. But once more into the breach...
You’re citing the IRA as a terrorism success? Let’s look at that:
“The IRA’s stated objective is to end “British rule in Ireland,” and according to its constitution, it wants “to establish an Irish Socialist Republic, based on the Proclamation of 1916.”[3] Until the 1998 Belfast Agreement, it sought to end Northern Ireland’s status within the United Kingdom and bring about a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion.”
Yeah, how’s that worked out for them? Oh right, Northern Ireland still exists! How about that.
“In 1988, the PLO officially endorsed a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine living side by side contingent on specific terms such as making East Jerusalem capital of the Palestinian state and giving Palestinians the right of return to land occupied by Palestinians prior to the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel.”
Funny thing, one never hears of any Palestinian legislation being passed in East Jerusalem, or any rights of returns. That’s because, you know, the PLO accomplished jack squat.
“Hamas wants to create an Islamic state in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, a goal which combines Palestinian nationalism with Islamist objectives.[41] Hamas’s 1988 charter calls for the replacement of Israel and the Palestinian Territories with an Islamic Palestinian state.”
Israel is still there, and still killing as many Palestinians as it pleases. Your vaunted organizations haven’t achieved a heck of a lot of their goals.
As for Hezbollah:
“Hezbollah’s 1985 manifesto listed its three main goals as “putting an end to any colonialist entity” in Lebanon, bringing the Phalangists to justice for “the crimes they [had] perpetrated,” and the establishment of an Islamic regime in Lebanon.[12][13] Recently, however, Hezbollah has made little mention of establishing an Islamic state, and forged alliances across religious lines.[11] Hezbollah leaders have also made numerous statements calling for the destruction of Israel, which they refer to as a “Zionist entity… built on lands wrested from their owners.”″
I’d note that what notable successes they’ve had stem from guerrilla campaigns and open warfare; and not primarily terrorism.
Finally, I get the impression you didn’t even bother to read the paper I carefully linked, Why Terrorism Does Not Work, specifically to address such objections. Let’s spoonfeed some important bits...
“Not only is his sample of terrorist campaigns modest, but they targeted only a handful of countries: ten of the eleven campaigns analyzed were directed against the same three countries (Israel, Sri Lanka, and Turkey), with six of the campaigns directed against the same country (Israel).19 More important, Pape does not examine whether the terrorist campaigns achieved their core policy objectives. In his assessment of Palestinian terrorist campaigns, for example, he counts the limited withdrawals of the Israel Defense Forces from parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 as two separate terrorist victories, ignoring the 167 percent increase in the number of Israeli settlers during this period—the most visible sign of Israeli occupation.20 Similarly, he counts as a victory the Israeli decision to release Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin from prison in October 1997, ignoring the hundreds of imprisonments and targeted assassinations of Palestinian terrorists throughout the Oslo “peace process.”21 Pape’s data therefore reveal only that select terrorist campaigns have occasionally scored tactical victories, not that terrorism is an effective strategy for groups to achieve their policy objectives.”
“This study analyzes the political plights of twenty-eight terrorist groups—the complete list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) as designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001.7 The data yield two unexpected findings. First, the groups accomplished their forty-two policy objectives only 7 percent of the time.”
“Using this list provides a check against selecting cases on the dependent variable, which would artificially inflate the success rate because the most well known policy outcomes involve terrorist victories (e.g., the U.S. withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1984). Furthermore, because all of the terrorist groups have remained active since 2001, ample time has been allowed for each group to make progress on achieving its policy goals, thereby reducing the possibility of artificially deflating the success rate through too small a time frame. In fact, the terrorist groups have had significantly more time than five years to accomplish their policy objectives: the groups, on average, have been active since 1978; the majority has practiced terrorism since the 1960s and 1970s; and only four were established after 1990.”
“As frequently noted, Hezbollah successfully coerced the multinational peacekeepers and Israelis from southern Lebanon in 1984 and 2000, and the Tamil Tigers won control over the northern and eastern coastal areas of Sri Lanka from 1990 on. In the aggregate, however, the terrorist groups achieved their main policy objectives only three out of forty-two times—a 7 percent success rate.31 Within the coercion literature, this rate of success is considered extremely low. It is substantially lower, for example, than even the success rate of economic sanctions, which are widely regarded as only minimally effective.”
(Personally, I wouldn’t even count the Tamil Tigers, as they currently seem to be screwed.)
Already read that paper. It uses the unrealistic criteria of “achieving objectives”. Nobody achieves their objectives. The Republicans were in control of the US for 8 years and didn’t achieve their objectives. What percentage of US Presidents “achieved their objectives”? Less than 7%, I’ll bet.
England made compromises with the IRA. Israel has made compromises with the Palestinians. This would not have happened without terrorism.
Nobody achieves their objectives. The Republicans were in control of the US for 8 years and didn’t achieve their objectives. What percentage of US Presidents “achieved their objectives”? Less than 7%, I’ll bet.
GWB was tremendously successful in achieving stated objectives. Lowering taxes, passing PATRIOT, No Child Left Behind, invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, the surge, the Medicare private insurance revamp, blocking stem cells, and even more than that. There were, what, 3 noteable failures? (Privatizing Social Security, Clear Skies, and immigration.) That these policies were all miserably ruinous in the real world doesn’t matter. A lot of his programs went through. 7%? Not hardly! You’ve just pulled that assertion out of your arse.
″...one useful measure is to see if Bush met his own goals. We would argue he largely did during his first term, and this is made more impressive because American presidents are institutionally weak, especially in domestic affairs, and because the manner of this election provided very little political capital to bolster his prospects.”
If we really believed that <7% of presidents achieved their goals, then that implies less than 3 US presidents were successful, and the other 41 failures. We can obviously count FDR, Lincoln, and Washington as successful (which technically is all we need to disprove x<7%); is it really plausible that no other president achieved their goals? Of course not. Goetz’s reading of ‘achieving objectives’ is absurd. To quote the paper again:
″ To construct a hard test for the argument that terrorism is an ineffective means of coercion, I afforded generous conditions to limit the number of policy failures. First, for analytic purposes both a “total success” and a “partial success” are counted as policy successes, while only completely unsuccessful outcomes (“no successes”) are counted as failures. A “limited success” is counted as neither a success nor a failure, even though the terrorist group invariably faces criticism from its natural constituency that the means employed have been ineffective, or even counterproductive. Thus, a policy objective is deemed a success even if the terrorist group was only partially successful in accomplishing it, whereas an objective receives a failing grade only if the group has not made any noticeable progress toward achieving it. Second, an objective is judged successful even if the group accomplished it before 2001, the year the State Department assembled its official list of foreign terrorist organizations. Third, all policy successes are attributed to terrorism as the causal factor, regardless of whether important intervening variables, such as a peace process, may have contributed to the outcome.”
The decks are heavily stacked in this analysis in favor of the terrorist groups.
These claims are false. The IRA, the PLO, Hezbollah, and Hamas, who are AFAIK the prototypical terrorist organizations, aren’t described by any of them except sometimes point 6. (Correct me if I’m wrong; I’m not an expert.)
Let’s stop pretending that terrorism doesn’t work. Do you think England would ever have talked with the IRA, or that Israel would have given territory to the Palestinians, if not for terrorism?
I’m a little surprised that you’re arguing anecdotally against a statistical generalization. But once more into the breach...
You’re citing the IRA as a terrorism success? Let’s look at that:
Yeah, how’s that worked out for them? Oh right, Northern Ireland still exists! How about that.
Funny thing, one never hears of any Palestinian legislation being passed in East Jerusalem, or any rights of returns. That’s because, you know, the PLO accomplished jack squat.
Israel is still there, and still killing as many Palestinians as it pleases. Your vaunted organizations haven’t achieved a heck of a lot of their goals.
As for Hezbollah:
I’d note that what notable successes they’ve had stem from guerrilla campaigns and open warfare; and not primarily terrorism.
Finally, I get the impression you didn’t even bother to read the paper I carefully linked, Why Terrorism Does Not Work, specifically to address such objections. Let’s spoonfeed some important bits...
(Personally, I wouldn’t even count the Tamil Tigers, as they currently seem to be screwed.)
Already read that paper. It uses the unrealistic criteria of “achieving objectives”. Nobody achieves their objectives. The Republicans were in control of the US for 8 years and didn’t achieve their objectives. What percentage of US Presidents “achieved their objectives”? Less than 7%, I’ll bet.
England made compromises with the IRA. Israel has made compromises with the Palestinians. This would not have happened without terrorism.
GWB was tremendously successful in achieving stated objectives. Lowering taxes, passing PATRIOT, No Child Left Behind, invading Iraq, invading Afghanistan, the surge, the Medicare private insurance revamp, blocking stem cells, and even more than that. There were, what, 3 noteable failures? (Privatizing Social Security, Clear Skies, and immigration.) That these policies were all miserably ruinous in the real world doesn’t matter. A lot of his programs went through. 7%? Not hardly! You’ve just pulled that assertion out of your arse.
If we really believed that <7% of presidents achieved their goals, then that implies less than 3 US presidents were successful, and the other 41 failures. We can obviously count FDR, Lincoln, and Washington as successful (which technically is all we need to disprove x<7%); is it really plausible that no other president achieved their goals? Of course not. Goetz’s reading of ‘achieving objectives’ is absurd. To quote the paper again:
The decks are heavily stacked in this analysis in favor of the terrorist groups.
Incidentally, the Tamil Tigers are now dead as a doornail and complete utter failures, with no policy successes to their name.