Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists A Framework for Program Assessment (2008) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Terrorism and Terrorists
Appendix B: Terrorism and Terrorists
Pages 111-119
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From page 111... ...
Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington D.C., 1998; L Richardson, What Terrorists Want, Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, Random House, New York, 2006; Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, Pa., 2004.
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From page 112... ...
Box B.1 draws the contrast between conventional war and a war against terrorists. Unlike the case for perpetrators of other forms of political violence, for terrorists the victims of their violence and the audience they seek to influence are not the same.
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From page 113... ...
Lastly, for most practical purposes, terrorists do not appear to place many limits on the violence that they are willing to perpetrate,2 and so the specter of terrorists with weapons of mass destruction looms large in counterterrorist efforts. Likewise, the highly interdependent nature of modern society leaves the United States (and other developed nations)
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From page 114... ...
This changed in the 1970s with the impact of the Iranian revolution and the popularization of the ideas of fundamentalist Islamic writers like Maulana Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb that again fused religion and politics and inspired the founders of contemporary Islamic terrorist groups. Although the primary terrorist threat to the United States emanates from Islamic extremists, terrorists have belonged to most religious traditions and to none.
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From page 115... ...
This holds true no matter what the precise political objective is or where in the world the terrorist is operating. Sometimes this is revenge for a perceived wrong inflicted on the individual or his family; more often it is a wrong inflicted on a group with which the terrorist identifies.
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From page 116... ...
The breadth of these criticisms of the West means that disaffected Muslims all over the world can identify with some part of the ideology while the religious basis provides a legitimacy and coherence to the appeal. Unlike earlier terrorist groups that tended to start with local grievances and then build from there, part of the success of Al Qaeda has been the ease with which the ideology has infused local conditions, thereby gaining adherents for the transnational cause.
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From page 117... ...
The problem for the security services is that the smaller the group, the more difficult it will be to detect. Up until now, terrorist groups, with the singular exception of the Aum Shinriku cult in Japan that released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in March 1995, have evinced little interest in using weapons of mass destruction, specifically nuclear, radiological, chemical, or biological weapons.
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From page 118... ...
However, the psychological payback of a successful deployment of even a crude chemical or radiological device is such that some terrorists are likely to try to acquire these weapons. Still, the probability is higher that terrorists will attempt an attack with conventional explosives that can be acquired very easily but when strategically deployed can inflict significant casualties and even great psychological damage.
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From page 119... ...
Once recruited, they use the Internet to train their followers by providing online education manuals as well as directions to training camps. They produce propaganda videos both to sustain the converted and to intimidate Western publics as well as to win recruits and to raise funds.
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