Friday is here and it’s early; the sky is still black and I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet. And I have been reading some details of yesterday’s terrorist attack on the London subways. There are now close to 50 people killed.
So, why terrorism? It is not a new phenomenon. It has been around as long as man. And terrorism has no borders; it is used by all, the civilized and the savage. And it’s almost always used as a political tool. And finally, it’s almost always a failure. So why use it?
Terrorism: An apparent random act of extreme violence rendered against a nominally innocent population. It is always used in the hope that the fear induced by the random aspect of the attack will lead to political change as the population demands some guarantee of safety from their leaders.
My first thought was that terrorism is a tool of the primitive societies, those who practice tribalism. But there are more than enough instances of terrorism committed by so-called civilized societies to prove that thought was wrong.
But I do think that the success rate is higher among primitive societies. And considerably lower when used against a highly civilized society. I would compare it to poking a sleeping bear with a stick…you don’t want to do that too often!
In the final analysis; it’s all about power. Even if the illusion of power is fleeting, there will always be someone who wants to experience it. Take a sleeping bear and a stick and someone will always want to pick up the stick…
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