Other People's Wars - Caledonia Wake Up Call

Other Peoples’ Wars – Chapter Onevery difficult for governments which are constrained by the rule of law toestablish a strategy of deterrence against terrorism, and it tends to push theauthorities onto the defensive. For terrorists, success sometimes invitesvulnerability, for as they grow in power, they tend to accumulate resources andsites that finally do offer targets for response.• Authorities within nations that subject themselves to the rule of law arepolitically and legally accountable. Terrorists are not. The latter make theirown justifications, reject the law and conventional morality. Nevertheless, tosatisfy their supporters, they might set their own flexible codes of “legitimatetargets.”• To enable a covert group to propagate its political message, terrorists oftenestablish front organizations that operate within the law. Some terrorists maybelong to overt fronts, as well as the covert “military” wing. Such a partnershipis characterized by the relationship between the Provisional Wing of the IRAand Sinn Fein.• In the course of spreading fear beyond the actual victims, terrorists often selectsymbolic targets like cultural sites or high ranking individuals (such as LordLouis Mountbatten, murdered along with several family members in 1979 by theIRA), or a representative asset such as the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.Indeed, a target’s symbolic worth to the terrorist may be far greater than its realpolitical or material value.• Terrorists typically use the media to portray themselves as “Robin Hood” heroesor their modern day incarnations such as Pretty Boy Floyd or John Dillinger, tomagnify the impact of their operations, to demonstrate their invincibility, and tospread a “climate of collapse” in society. Consequently, operations are oftenplanned for their news value. This is not a cynical exercise, as terrorists usuallysee themselves as heroic figures armed with a vision and courage which islacking among the poor plodding masses. Many of them are acting out a heroicfantasy.These characteristics provide only a general guide. Confusion over what is and what isnot terrorism continues. 10 Insurgent groups often have formed standing bodies ofguerrillas, and thus can sometimes have their rights defined under the 1949 GenevaConventions, and other portions of contemporary Western Military Law. However, ifsuch a group still practices small group terrorism, it is – for the purposes of this study –still considered to be a terrorist group. The US State Department, in its annual report“Patterns of Global Terrorism” includes several groups that maintain guerrilla forces butalso practice terrorism.10. These characteristics of terrorism were first published by John C. Thompson and Maurice Tugwell in“The Character of Terrorism”, Mackenzie Institute, 1996.8