You won't find "scare" as the objective for any terrorist. After 9/11 OBL made a statement on their attacks and what he hoped would happen. He also included his long, rambling list of objectives AQ was after.
Why would any country say, "Oh hey so those 12 civilians your foot soldiers just killed with that truck attack in Berlin really got us thinking. So anyhoo what do you want we'll gift you whatever. We know you don't celebrate it but consider it our Christmas gift. Merry Christmas. :)"
I mean who reacts that way? It seems the stupidest possible way to accomplish anyone's goals of any kind. It just seems like a much worse form of pointless trolling, except with real casualties. It just gets a rise out of people.
So I essentially don't get the cause and effect that you seem to describe. It just seems like a bunch of trolls, not actual people meeting actual political goals. It seems stupid and unconstructive. We know there are stupid and unconstructive Internet places (thankfully Hacker News isn't one of them) - so isn't it just the same thing on a much larger level? Just toxic stuff?
The point of those attacks in western countries is to force their hand and make them withdraw their occupying forces. To rethink their foreign policy and make sure they don't see it as worth it anymore.
The biggest hawks were for the Iraq War before they were against. Then the troop body count was getting higher from sniper and IED attacks. A few years later a new president and electorate doesn't see the cost as worth staying and the withdrawal occurs. Terrorists mission accomplished!
The colonial forces largely employed guerrilla tactics as well, out of necessity when facing a larger, better financed and trained British army. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare#American_Re...
Is it illogical that someone would react that way though? Not at all. Here is the logic: "Someone killed people in my country. I like people in my country. I happen to be a leader for my country. I'm responsible for their protection. I should prevent more people dying. Why are they dying? People are killing them. How do I make them stop? Give them what they want? What is it they want (now listening to them)?" etc.
This is why there is a "we will not negotiate with terrorists" rule. If not for that rule I think it'd work pretty well.
For my discussion, I simply used the Merriam-Webster dictionary[0]. It says "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion". You are correct, their final objective is not to just scare people but to get something else. But I believe the immediate objective of the terror action is to scare people so to get to their final objective.
I would like to understand this train of thinking because I don't see any consequence to scaring people. Online trolls don't accomplish any larger objective, for example. What do terrorists have in mind?
I am inclined to just think of them as trolls.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_California_medfly_attack
- foster Islamophobic sentiments in neighboring regions
- destabilize local power structures
these people are getting exactly what they want.
Let's talk about this.
What kind of objective is this? For insight into the psychology of terrorists can I consider the psychology of "trolls"? (i.e. mostly harmless Internet trolls). Or people just generally trying to wreak havoc "for the lolz"?
Or is it different? What I mean is that people like Chomsky accuse the United States of being "terrorists" in whenever he thinks the United States meets some technical definition -- but the United States has some kind of political goals and it's not an end in itself to just have a bunch of people "scared" or "killed and injured". The U.S. doesn't say, "hey could we scare a billion people!! Yeah let's do it!!" Which is precisely what you quoted as the terrorist's objective: "it is to scare people".
So what is the actual motivation of terrorists? Why is it motivating to "scare people"? (For the same reason as trolls are motivated?) Some people ascribe religious motivations for it, but I read through the Koran (you can read it easily here[1], it should take you under an hour, it's very repetitive. Copied into a Word document in 10-point single-spaced font it's 180 pages but you can scroll through it very quickly) and I did not once see anything like "Thou shalt scare people" or "Thou shalt wreak havoc by killing and injuring the highest number of people." I searched for "scare" and did not see that word. So in effect I don't understand why you say the primary rational objective of terrorists is to scare people.
It doesn't really make sense unless it's the same as Internet trolls. I'd like more insight.
[1] http://www.archive.org/stream/thekoranalquran02800gut/koran1...
If you want to get it down to 181 pages to read quickly 1) open the above link 2) select all of it and copy it 3) In word select 10-point font, single (1.0 spacing), 3) paste it into word using the Paste dropdown button in the ribbon, to paste as text only which is the third dropdown option (alternatively you could paste it into some plain text editor and then select all and copy it again and then paste it into Word or I guess since it's .txt you could just download it). This will just paste the text but have a bunch of extraneous line breaks. Next do a search and replace for every instance of "^p" (without the quotes, which means new paragraph) with nothing or even better as a single space (since replaced with nothing, some words run together but this didn't bother me). this will substantially reduce the thing. If you did the single-spacing right you will get 181 dense but highly repepetitive and readable pages of the Qu'ran. I next used the scroll wheel (by pressing down on it) to begin scrolling through all of it and attempted to alight my eyes on each section enough to read it "at a glance" (like speed reading.)
At 24 seconds per page (I timed it and this is what I considered a readable scroll speed) the whole thing should take you about 1 hour 16 minutes. I encourage you to do it! Just focus. Stop if you really need to focus on something.
I read War and Peace this way. It's about some Russians. (I'm kidding, this last part is a woody allen joke.)