Terrorism

Abstract

            From a meeting held in 2010 by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, it emerged that the nature of terrorist attacks has changed. It was expected that in future, attacks would move from large scale levels which require a long time to plan, financing, and logistics to smaller, drastic and simultaneous attacks across the United States. Such will be will be easier to plan and evade notice from law enforcement.  The paper explores the work of White especially the evolution of terrorism to arrive that the modern forms. It takes into account scholars articles on attack methods of groups like Islamic State that are directly related to the findings of 2010 meeting.

            Jonathan White has gone to great lengths to look at the reasons why terrorism exists both from the political point of view to the psychological state of beliefs which has been used as the basis for the argument on radicalization as well as the interagency efforts (White, 2013). The paper concludes its research and analysis with insight on the current state of affairs and what can be expected from both the government side and the terror side in order to offer an analytical conclusion.

Introduction

Terrorism has become so common that even children can offer some definition. Many forms of terrorism have been discussed over the years in different mediums of communication but the paper focus on the analysis of white in the eighth edition. It will focus on how the history of terrorism has evolved to modern forms and the countermeasures implemented by governments to curb this. A major focus will be on the impact of terrorism as well as of homeland security on the terror cells and safety of the people.

            Scholars have been trying to define terrorism, but there has not been any specific definition offered. It is because terrorism is not an entity that takes a given shape while at the same time it has changed form. In the last few decades, terrorism was more contained in freedom fights within nations and violence based on natural resources in the same regions. Over the years, the activists of these groups have gone beyond borders to set up international organizations that plan and execute their terror plans in foreign nations based on their beliefs and other affiliations. What has been described above points in one single direction that is; violence and extremism against non-combatants hence a consensus definition has been adopted that terrorism is the acts of violence or any threat that is aimed at civilians for political reasons  (Berntzen & Sveinung, 2014). 

            White views the origin of terrorism in the western nations to have been during the French revolution but most people only can to be away from it in the 1993 world trade center bombing. Following the many acts that have been there, governments have been adjusting their policies and intelligence in order to be in the best position to combat the ever changing form of terrorism. It is why White focuses on both the terrorism and homeland security which is the counter measure that the paper will insist on (White, 2013).

History and Revolution

            Whites start his arguments with the enlightenment stage connecting the need for freedom from monarchies and authoritarian leadership that existed in the middle ages. Most of the world were under such leadership, but migrations to America and colonization of many of African states by European powers may have triggered the birth of terrorism. As in the argument, every revolution, for instance, the French Revolution, the American civil war and the world wars themselves brought about the birth of a new system of governance.  The birth of the United States itself provided that the Americans were to be ruled under a system that was in many ways similar to the great Britain’s form only that they had no monarchy. It thus offered new freedoms that did not exist before.  Freedom of expression, for instance, allowed people to challenge the direction openly that government was taking which has been painstaking as one of the avenues that terrorism works. Statistics show that there are more terrorist attacks in democratic nations than there are in other forms of governments (Freilich, 2014).

            Radical democrats, socialists, communists, and anarchists have been described to have in one way or the other been offended by the way governments were running the affairs of the state. None of them seem to be happy with the distribution of resources among the different classes in the nations and thus a rise in boycotts, strikes, and eventually revolutionary civil conflicts. The results of this were labeling of the activists as terrorists. In different scenarios, it was the people that observed the oppression from governments, for instance, executions of civilians and labeled the players in governments as terrorist or participants in acts of terror. The question remains how these events defined terrorism today and the nature of intelligence and war against terror (Dai & Hyun, 2010).

International Terrorism and Religious Movements

            There are some international groups today that have been launching attacks on nations in the worlds, for instance, the al-Qaida, Taliban and the Islamic State. The number of casualties and hostages that they have affected in the last decade runs to thousands. Other smaller affiliate groups like Al-Shabab have been raining terror in other parts of the world. Just recently, Bokoharam, a terror unit associated with ISIS and Al-Qaida kidnapped over two hundred girls from a school in Nigeria, and none of them have been seen again since (Hollander, 2014).

            There is no doubt that the war against terror has been ongoing and will continue for some years to come. In order to combat such a large scale threat, some measures have been put in place. In the twentieth century, most attacks were domestic but in the twentieth century, they have moved from small targets to larger and broader attacks like the recent attack in Brussels Airport. There have been new forms of terrorism mainly on infrastructures like the internet. Cyber terrorism has risen whereby malware have been sent to government servers to corrupt the information used by law enforcement agents to combat these terrorists (Giroux, 2016).

MergingCrime and Terror

            Criminals set up infrastructure aimed at utilizing the current government setting to make gains, for instance, corrupting officials at the borders to allow them to import illegal substances while terrors target the government infrastructure with the aim of destroying them to make statements and undermine the very authority that gives the government power over them. There is a need to differentiate the two though their similarities are more than their differences. By doing so, organizations like the FBI have been able to analyzes patterns to determine terror groups (Kumar, 2010).

            Some of the major differences include how terrorists enjoy fame in the work they carry out for instance they use the media to send threats and take responsibility for attacks but even with the differences, the policies and laws that are in place charge both similarly. Scholars have argued that these factors may have aggravated the criminal activities to engage in terrorism while criminals and terrorists are offering their infrastructures for use (John, 2014). In order for a terrorist to thrive, they need the criminals to access information, sell the illegal weapon and offer logistics. Statistics from DEA show that terrorists in most cases enter United States through the smuggling routes of traffickers which mean that interagency unit have to be formulated to create a comprehensive system of fighting the war (Powell, 2011). 

Conclusive Analysis

            New initiatives are coming into place. Cryptology and other enhanced software have come up to help in analyzing potential threats that may be at the planning stage. Using the Homeland security resources such as the FBI and the NSA, the government will be in a position to fight terror in a better position. All these offer a better vantage point, but they do not offer a lasting solution given that radicalization of youths and the rise of domestic terrorism have been on the rise in the 21st century (Papacharissi & Oliveira, 2011). 

            A major effect that has not been looked into by White is the need to educate the masses against radicalization and the use of other means to fight for rights. It thus dictates that initiatives must be put in place to make it possible to curb terrorism before it takes roots. Otherwise, the war will continue evolving as it has done in the last three centuries without end.

References

Berntzen, L., & Sveinung, S. (2014). The collective nature of lone wolf terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic social movement. Terrorism and Political Violence 26.5, 759-779.

Dai, J., & Hyun, K. (2010). Global risk, domestic framing: coverage of the North Korean nuclear test by US, Chinese, and South Korean news agencies. Asian Journal of Communication 20.3, 299-317.

Freilich, J. D. (2014). Introducing the United States extremist crime database (ECDB). Terrorism and Political Violence 26.2: 372-384.

Giroux, H. A. (2016). Beyond the spectacle of terrorism: Global uncertainty and the challenge of the new media. London: Routledge.

Hollander, N. (2014). Uprooted Minds: Surviving the politics of terror in the Americas. London: Routledge.

John, M. (2014). America unhinged. The National Interest 129, 9-30.

Kumar, D. (2010). Framing Islam: The resurgence of Orientalism during the Bush II era. Journal of Communication Inquiry.

Papacharissi, Z., & Oliveira, M. (2011). The rhythms of news storytelling on Twitter: Coverage of the January 25th Egyptian uprising on Twitter. World Association for Public Opinion Research Conference.

Powell, K. A. (2011). Framing Islam: An analysis of US media coverage of terrorism since 9/11. Communication Studies 62.1, 90-112.

White, J. R. (2013). Terrorism and Homeland Security. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing.