Terrorism
Terrorism is an organized and well planned act of violence against a person or property for political, religious or ideological gains and this is normally done through intimidation and coercion in order to make the victims vulnerable and have them give in to their demands.
The term terrorism has proved very difficult to define due to a number of reasons which include the fact that the term itself is subjective and one defines it in a manner that satisfies them. History books often fail to effectively acknowledge the early existence of terrorism. Terrorism is said to have existed as early as the 18th century even before the French revolution. Earlier on, terrorism was considered as a way of liberation and the terrorist were then celebrated but in the modern times the society has attached a negative tag to terrorism not knowing that the much celebrated guerilla fighters and the freedom fighters too are terrorists., the other problem is that people associate terrorism with extreme form of violence while terrorism has taken a new face which is in the form of technological and economic terrorism. Finally terrorism can be divided into two distinct group; terrorism of the state and terrorism of the individual. Terrorism of the individual aim at interfering with the government until individual liberties are denied and an authoritarian leadership is put in place. Terrorism of the state on the other hand aims at silencing the masses so as to prevent rebellion and be able to put in place an unchecked authoritarian kind of leadership (McCormack, n.d).
In her book, Louise Richardson tries to analyze the origin of the terrorism and she also tries to show how organized the terrorists are in that they are able to attack more powerful and more technologically advanced countries than their own. She also analyzes the energy behind the actions of the terrorists. She then discusses the reactions of the Americans after the bombing of the world trade centre on the 11th of September in 2001 and she argues that Bush’s decision to attack Iraq was rush, uninformed and unwise. She then gives some strategies in needed to tackle terrorism.
Since the title of the book is ‘what the terrorists want,’ the author has actually achieved her objectives since she has given a list of things needed to be done so as to appease the terrorists. In her book she explains that the terrorists are basically made of young vulnerable youths from poor countries but the groups are normally founded by well educated mature individuals who organize training for them on the tactics of the battle and then instill in them a conviction of injustice in the society which they are made to believe that they have ability change on their own.
She explains that the response of the Americans with regards to the bomb attack on 11th September 2001 was never the best since Bush in the first place undermined the terrorists and did not take his time to understand why the terrorists attacked.
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