A point from Enlightenment Now that I wish was better understood. Groups that use terrorism to get their way almost always fail. This should not surprise us. Terrorism is the last available option for a weak interest group that has no better way to make their will felt. Therefore as scary as it is to face, the fact that they are resorting to it is evidence that they are underdogs and we should not be surprised that t…
> Groups that use terrorism to get their way almost always fail. Totally untrue. When the US used atomic bombs to level cities in Japan, that was terrorism. The goal was to strike fear into the regime and the people for an unconditional surrender. It was not an attack against the military or government, it was an act of terrorism. When the US uses drone strikes to blow up weddings, that's terrorism. They are not acti…
What I meant was asymmetric use of violence where a much weaker force uses their ability to show up unexpectedly and cause damage to cause fear and terror far out of proportion with the true damage that they are capable of inflicting. Those are the defined underdogs.
This is as opposed to war where a force capable of large sustained violence actually engages in sustained violence (though often by following certain rules of conduct - see the Geneva conventions) to force an enemy to capitulate. This use of force may indeed cause terror but does not indicate an inherent weakness in the force using the tactic.