Terrorism is not a new phenomenon for us. The term “terrorism” originated in French Revolution in 1789 to describe the behaviour of revolutionaries. However, with the development of technology, international terrorist activities become easier, we heard the news about terrorism more and more frequently in the past few years. In order to protect the countries from terrorists, some countries passed laws that allow government to use extreme measures against terrorists. Those actions caused great controversy within the international community, people start to think about if the government has the right to do anything in the name of justice. Therefore, it is important for us to know about the nature of terrorism and what the difference between terrorism
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John Horgan in “The Psychology of Terrorism,"(1) Walter Reich in " Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind,"(2) and John C. Rock in “The Geographic Nature of Terrorism”(3), all demonstrates that terror attacks are politically motivated even though the perpetrator may use religious symbolism to justify their acts. ISIS wants to control the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe within 5 years (4), Al-Qaida aims to attack America and establish an emirate and Taliban wants to establish a most stringent Islamic law country. All of those behaviours show that terrorist organizations use extreme means to gain their own political interests. Second, terrorism is an act of violence. Since “9.11” event, more and more terrorist attacks happened in Europe and America, means of attacks also changed from traditional kidnapping, hostage-taking and assassinations to explosions, chemical and biological weapons and cyber terrorism. Third, the purpose of terrorism is not the targets of violence, but the atmosphere of terror after the attacks. Terrorist organizations want to create an atmosphere of terror to threaten a country, a government or public, then force them to make concessions in order to achieve political …show more content…
Typical terrorism is often manifested in the mass killing of civilian, so people may mistakenly believe that as long as the performance of the massacre of civilians, it is terrorism. This is actually a misunderstanding. Throughout the ages, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been massacred, but only a handful of those who died in terrorism. Terrorism is only a kind of the political violence, the most significant difference between terrorism and other types of political violence is that terrorism is unpredictable and terrorism’s targets are usually unarmed civilians. In other words, terrorism’s methods break the rule of
John Horgan in “The Psychology of Terrorism,"(1) Walter Reich in " Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind,"(2) and John C. Rock in “The Geographic Nature of Terrorism”(3), all demonstrates that terror attacks are politically motivated even though the perpetrator may use religious symbolism to justify their acts. ISIS wants to control the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe within 5 years (4), Al-Qaida aims to attack America and establish an emirate and Taliban wants to establish a most stringent Islamic law country. All of those behaviours show that terrorist organizations use extreme means to gain their own political interests. Second, terrorism is an act of violence. Since “9.11” event, more and more terrorist attacks happened in Europe and America, means of attacks also changed from traditional kidnapping, hostage-taking and assassinations to explosions, chemical and biological weapons and cyber terrorism. Third, the purpose of terrorism is not the targets of violence, but the atmosphere of terror after the attacks. Terrorist organizations want to create an atmosphere of terror to threaten a country, a government or public, then force them to make concessions in order to achieve political …show more content…
Typical terrorism is often manifested in the mass killing of civilian, so people may mistakenly believe that as long as the performance of the massacre of civilians, it is terrorism. This is actually a misunderstanding. Throughout the ages, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been massacred, but only a handful of those who died in terrorism. Terrorism is only a kind of the political violence, the most significant difference between terrorism and other types of political violence is that terrorism is unpredictable and terrorism’s targets are usually unarmed civilians. In other words, terrorism’s methods break the rule of