If terrorism is just about socialising why don’t they just go down the pub or whatever—it’s far less likely to get you killed or banged up.
If I may, can’t this question be asked another way? If we look at non-terrorist mass murders (curiously, Koreans have set records both in America and worldwide; Woo Bum-kon killed 58 people, and Seung-Hui Cho 32), we notice that they rarely involve extremely elaborate preparations. One has the impression that Seung could’ve finished all his preparations in just a few hours, even counting the trips to the gun store, videos, letters etc.
Given that it’s so easy to kill a large number of people in an immediately doable way, and that methods like just walking around and shooting people are so effective, why do terrorists so rarely actually attack? And why do they carry out such elaborate and relatively ineffective attacks when they actually do? For every effective attack like 9/11, there are multiple attacks which kill only 1 or 2 people or even just the terrorist.
If I may, the social explanation works better. Have you never discussed flipping out or going postal or carrying out a terrorist attack with your friends? Have you noticed that always it is the elaborate and fun-to-discuss attacks you discuss?
No terrorist says to himself, I’m going to follow a boring but effective strategy: I’ll enlist, get sniper training, and kill a couple hundred civilians—even though Simo Häyhä killed over 500 Russians under conditions of war and even as the Russians were specifically targeting him and calling in artillery strikes. This kind of strategy would accomplish much more than a regular suicide bombing, but they never do it or any halfway effective strategy. (I refer again to “Why Terrorism doesn’t work”; if many terrorists failed to adopt effective strategies, that’d be one thing—but just about all of them?)
Modeling terrorists as trying to kill as many people as possible strikes me as insufficient. In Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt models their aims as propagandistic, which feels more like the right angle—hence the focus on inefficient but spectacular killing.
This would, I think, fall afoul of Abrahm’s point, ‘5) terrorist organizations generally carry out anonymous attacks, precluding target countries from making policy concessions;’. It’s hard to be propagandistic if it’s unclear what this deed is the propaganda of.
Hm. I’m far from an expert, and it could well be that there are ten times as many anonymous attacks, but off the top of my head I think of WTC ’93, the Millenium plot, 9/11, London trains, Madrid trains, Israel suicide bombings, Munich massacre, Iraq beheadings, USS Cole, bombings of US embassies.
Not off the top of my head: Golden Mosque bombing, Tamil Tigers numerous bombings, IRA-related terrorism, etc. Scanning through this I find many more terrorist attacks that were done with a clear political or propaganda purpose.
...it could well be that there are ten times as many anonymous attacks...
No, it’s not quite that bad! It’s more like twice as many:
“Since the emergence of modern terrorism in 1968, 64% of worldwide terrorist attacks have been carried out by unknown perpetrators. Anonymous terrorism has been rising, with 3 out of 4 attacks going unclaimed since September 11, 2001. Anonymous terrorism is particularly prevalent in Iraq, where the US military has struggled to determine whether the violence was perpetrated by Shiite or Sunni groups with vastly different political platforms.”
Abrahms references his analysis of a RAND dataset, and also Bruce Hoffman’s “Why Terrorists Don’t Claim Credit” (in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol 9 #1 1997). I haven’t read the latter, but his analysis seems enough for me.
I think there’s definitely something of a mental bias here—it’s vastly easier to remember the rare dramatic attack (which sooner or later someone will claim credit for) than the many anonymous ones.
Funny thing about your comment is that just yesterday I was reading about a large anonymous terrorist attacks that authorities were trying to figure out who was responsible for.
I’d tell you more, but I’ve forgotten how many people died and where it was.
Maybe they want to associate themselves with a high status group rather than any other one? Terrorist organizations have money and a purpose after all.
Terrorism is partly about socialising, but I don’t think that can be the whole story, for two reasons:
If terrorism is just about socialising why don’t they just go down the pub or whatever—it’s far less likely to get you killed or banged up.
Socialising is a human universal, so what makes different societies have different amounts of terrorism?
If I may, can’t this question be asked another way? If we look at non-terrorist mass murders (curiously, Koreans have set records both in America and worldwide; Woo Bum-kon killed 58 people, and Seung-Hui Cho 32), we notice that they rarely involve extremely elaborate preparations. One has the impression that Seung could’ve finished all his preparations in just a few hours, even counting the trips to the gun store, videos, letters etc.
Given that it’s so easy to kill a large number of people in an immediately doable way, and that methods like just walking around and shooting people are so effective, why do terrorists so rarely actually attack? And why do they carry out such elaborate and relatively ineffective attacks when they actually do? For every effective attack like 9/11, there are multiple attacks which kill only 1 or 2 people or even just the terrorist.
If I may, the social explanation works better. Have you never discussed flipping out or going postal or carrying out a terrorist attack with your friends? Have you noticed that always it is the elaborate and fun-to-discuss attacks you discuss?
No terrorist says to himself, I’m going to follow a boring but effective strategy: I’ll enlist, get sniper training, and kill a couple hundred civilians—even though Simo Häyhä killed over 500 Russians under conditions of war and even as the Russians were specifically targeting him and calling in artillery strikes. This kind of strategy would accomplish much more than a regular suicide bombing, but they never do it or any halfway effective strategy. (I refer again to “Why Terrorism doesn’t work”; if many terrorists failed to adopt effective strategies, that’d be one thing—but just about all of them?)
Modeling terrorists as trying to kill as many people as possible strikes me as insufficient. In Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt models their aims as propagandistic, which feels more like the right angle—hence the focus on inefficient but spectacular killing.
This would, I think, fall afoul of Abrahm’s point, ‘5) terrorist organizations generally carry out anonymous attacks, precluding target countries from making policy concessions;’. It’s hard to be propagandistic if it’s unclear what this deed is the propaganda of.
Hm. I’m far from an expert, and it could well be that there are ten times as many anonymous attacks, but off the top of my head I think of WTC ’93, the Millenium plot, 9/11, London trains, Madrid trains, Israel suicide bombings, Munich massacre, Iraq beheadings, USS Cole, bombings of US embassies.
Not off the top of my head: Golden Mosque bombing, Tamil Tigers numerous bombings, IRA-related terrorism, etc. Scanning through this I find many more terrorist attacks that were done with a clear political or propaganda purpose.
No, it’s not quite that bad! It’s more like twice as many:
Abrahms references his analysis of a RAND dataset, and also Bruce Hoffman’s “Why Terrorists Don’t Claim Credit” (in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol 9 #1 1997). I haven’t read the latter, but his analysis seems enough for me.
I think there’s definitely something of a mental bias here—it’s vastly easier to remember the rare dramatic attack (which sooner or later someone will claim credit for) than the many anonymous ones.
A good heuristic I use when I’m tempted to write comments such as these: “The plural of anecdote is not data!”
Note also that attacks for a reason may well be more memorable than anonymous attacks.
Funny thing about your comment is that just yesterday I was reading about a large anonymous terrorist attacks that authorities were trying to figure out who was responsible for.
I’d tell you more, but I’ve forgotten how many people died and where it was.
Incidentally, I’ve expanded my above comment into an essay called ‘Terrorism is not Effective’ (http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective).
Maybe they want to associate themselves with a high status group rather than any other one? Terrorist organizations have money and a purpose after all.