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What are the criteria for it being called a "terrorist attack"? I'm just curious.
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On December 14 2010 03:15 stenole wrote:
What are the criteria for it being called a "terrorist attack"? I'm just curious.
Yeah, me too. Where's the line between a terrorist attack and a normal day at some base in Afghanistan with some shooting? Does it also involve taking hostages? And what is the scientific relevant definitions of a "terrorist" in contrast to a normal criminal or maybe organized crime?
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On December 14 2010 03:15 stenole wrote:
What are the criteria for it being called a "terrorist attack"? I'm just curious.
It's data from reported bombings, mortar bombardment (not all that many instances here), assassination attempts and outright armed assaults performed by members of terrorist organizations. Over 90% of the data is from bombings though.
There are no kidnapping, hostage situations, plane/car hijack attempts or cyber terrorism instances included.
Some failed attempts are also included.
There isn't all that much comprehensive data to work with on this matter. The subject is huge and spread all over the place (Internet, books, articles) and it's pretty hard to compile it reasonably since the amount of raw data is overwhelming.
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Any such list not including US attacks is a joke.
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I'd like to know what percentage of these attacks can be related to or have been directly claimed by Islamist extremist groups. They get the lion's share of the blame for terrorism in American media, so I want to know if this is really true.
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Interesting statistic, but:
Bomings isn't always = terrorism. (At least as I see it):
Terrorism is an attempt to cause fear in a society, which is succesfully accomplished by many of the World's leaders among others. A good example of terrorism with bombings was Al-Qaeda's attempt to shut down the voting process in Iraq by making people fear puplic gatherings because of the risk of a bomb going off. They of course do this because they are "against democracy"... (I'm not quite sure how they agreed to that).
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On December 14 2010 03:08 Manit0u wrote:
Seeing how we have this "How real is the terrorist threat?" topic popping from time to time, I thought it could be a good idea to put down some of the results I got.
You can't use attacks by insurgents in unstable countries to predict the threat of terrorist attacks in developed countries (US, EU members, etc.)
Note that I'm not saying these attacks don't constitute terrorism. Many do.
But the interesting question is how much danger do these people pose to us. This is what tells us what steps are reasonable to avert this danger.
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On December 14 2010 03:38 XsebT wrote:
Interesting statistic, but:
Bomings isn't always = terrorism. (At least as I see it):
Terrorism is an attempt to cause fear in a society, which is succesfully accomplished by many of the World's leaders among others. A good example of terrorism with bombings was Al-Qaeda's attempt to shut down the voting process in Iraq by making people fear puplic gatherings because of the risk of a bomb going off. They of course do this because they are "against democracy"... (I'm not quite sure how they agreed to that).
Depends what definition of terrorism are you using (what kind of terrorism?).
Here's what WikiPedia tells you:
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. No universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism currently exists. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians), and are committed by non-government agencies.
Here's my take on it:
War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.
That's your classic Clausewitz right there, but we need to go further:
Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.
"Asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the "weaker" combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality. Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized. This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.
That's more or less what I'm using in my paper (I'm writing on counter-terrorism but have to provide basic terrorism info for that) and I'm counting terrorism as asymmetric warfare.
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On December 14 2010 04:00 Manit0u wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 03:38 XsebT wrote:
Interesting statistic, but:
Bomings isn't always = terrorism. (At least as I see it):
Terrorism is an attempt to cause fear in a society, which is succesfully accomplished by many of the World's leaders among others. A good example of terrorism with bombings was Al-Qaeda's attempt to shut down the voting process in Iraq by making people fear puplic gatherings because of the risk of a bomb going off. They of course do this because they are "against democracy"... (I'm not quite sure how they agreed to that). Depends what definition of terrorism are you using (what kind of terrorism?). Here's what WikiPedia tells you: Show nested quote +
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. No universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism currently exists. Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians), and are committed by non-government agencies.
Here's my take on it: That's your classic Clausewitz right there, but we need to go further: Show nested quote +
Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.
"Asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the "weaker" combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality. Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized. This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.
That's more or less what I'm using in my paper (I'm writing on counter-terrorism but have to provide basic terrorism info for that).
I said it was "as I see it". There are lots of delicate definition with complex wording, but let's agree that "terror" means fear.
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Actually, terrorism has changed in the past years. It is now targeted more for media publicity to gather support for your organization more than actually instilling fear (that's a byproduct now, not the object, of terrorism for most organizations).
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this is one sided communication in the end, aka propaganda. we got this whole movement of liberals on the internet nowadays who act like know it alls yet they still believe theres a "good guy" in war. as far as im concerned hezbollah is as much as a terrorist organization as any other militarized country.
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I'm moving to canada.
That aside this is interesting, but probably not terribly accurate.
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I just dropped by to say Happy Birthday.
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The greatest casualty is from Bali Bombing 2002. 202 died and 200 more injured, mostly australian.
In case you're wondering, Bali is in Indonesia.
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United States1681 Posts
The definition of terrorism is too subjective for me to be able to process information like this. The word itself is so loaded with bias and propaganda that the moment I see it I start to take things with a grain of salt. We really should get rid of that word in my opinion, it just breeds fear and hatred and sometimes it's completely unwarranted.
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Interesting, would like to see the numbers of 2010. and what are your main sources?
And wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin (hope thats spelled right  love your posts in the Random pics thread)
On December 14 2010 07:13 Shana wrote:
The greatest casualty is from Bali Bombing 2002. 202 died and 200 more injured, mostly australian.
In case you're wondering, Bali is in Indonesia.
That may be the highest number of dead people, but with over 500 injured people the attack in Baghdad is worse. Both very sad things.
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I somehow missed the injured numbers from baghdad bombing, wtf hundreds killed and injured 500.
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whats wrong with a simple definition that terrorist attacks target civilians and insurgent attacks target occupying forces?
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Nice research there, Manit0u, and happy birthday! Hopefully you don't waste too much of it arguing with the discriminating liquidian intelligentsia 
It's quite shocking to see these high numbers. You don't get a good idea of the anual casualties from the daily reports. 12 dead, 32 injured DAILY? Damn!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Number_of_terrorist_incidents_2009.png)
