terror 2

042609 terror

Government officials who are the practitioners of State terror come to believe their own propaganda that it is legitimate to use any means to achieve their goals. They fail to recognize that terror generates terrorism.

When legitimate political dissent is characterized as terrorist activity dissidents are forced into the roll of resistance and even insurgencies. Dissidents begin to mirror the State by grasping the tools of terror out of frustration in their sense of powerlessness. The State seizes on this resistance to justify imposing greater State terrorism. The State uses its power to legitimize detaining people with out charges: torture to terrorize detainees becomes a norm. Innocents and dissident are both swept into a broad state network of terror.

Dissidents develop a political agenda that embraces terror as a tactic to achieve their goals. Their acts of terror fall into two categories first direct attacks on the government and second attacks on the population. Attacks on the government generate an even more oppressive State reaction. Attacks on the population generate fear and distrust in a government unable to protect its citizens. These attacks also bring recruits to the dissent movement; they may also generate additional dissents that immediately embrace terror as the way to advance their own agendas.

Both the dissent groups and the State develop splinter groups that are more radical extremist in the use of terror. Terror generates ever more brutal terror until the objective is no longer political change but rather terror for the sake of terror. Nearly a hundred years ago the Soviet Leon Trotsky said that the purpose of terror was to terrorize. Trotsky was speaking of State terror and as practiced by the Soviets was successful at the cost of millions of citizens. Ultimately Soviet terror failed as dissents rejected the Soviet system. The collapse of the Soviet Union generated competing criminal terrorist groups as well as regional dissents employing terror for a share of political power.

Foreign terrorists attack in other countries in today’s linked international community because the community supports oppressive home countries. International terror hopes to generate pressure for change and cut off support for oppressive regimes. International terror however generates terrorist activities as the international community embraces terror in the name of counter terrorism.

Whatever the type, terrorists are difficult to defeat and counter terror generates reactive terror. Terrorism however can be prevented or defeated by understanding the dynamics that generate political dissatisfaction with the current government and giving dissent a voice. This requires enlighten leadership in states and the community of states.