Terrorism Essay -- essays research papers

TerrorismJUNE 1914 a young man in Sarajevo steps up to a carriage and fires his pistol.The Archduke Ferdinand dies. Within weeks, the first realness war has begun. The1940s the French resistance kill occupying troops when and how they can. June1944 at Oradour-sur-Glane, in central France, German SS troops take revenge,massacring 642 villagers. August 1945 the United States picnic Force drops theworlds first nuclear weapons. Some 190,000 Japanese die, nearly all of themcivilians. Within days the second world war has ended.Which of these four events was an act of terrorist act? Which achieved anything?Which, if any, will history judge as justified? And whose history? Terrorism isnot the simple, sharp-edged, bad-guy phenomenon we all love to condemn. No clearline marks tally politics from the threat of force, threat from use, use fromcovert or open war. Who is or is not a terrorist? The suicide bomber, the rebelguerrilla, the liberation front, the armed forces of the call down?Ter rorism is fundamentally a policy-making act. Terrorists act to advance a causethey mean to create tyranny, either directly or indirectly, so that thepolitical order that they prefer can take the place of the current one.Terrorists can be either rebels want to overthrow a state or states seekingto overthrow the international order or states seeking to maintain privilege forrulers and stifle dissent among the people. In every case the motivation forterrorism is explicitly without an exceptio...