Affiliation Between Counter-Terrorism and Terrorism: Analysis of Whittaker's Case Study

On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The attack under McVeigh left 168 people dead and more than 650 people injured. More than 300 buildings surrounding the area were damaged due to the explosion. “Until September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil” (http://www.history.com/topics/oklahoma-city-bombing). This bombing was a major eye opener to the US.

On September 11, 2001, the worst attack on the United States took place from the extremist group called al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda had 19 members hijack four U.S. airplanes and used them to strike various targets on the East Coast. This attack of terrorism killed nearly 3,000 people. Osama Bin Laden took responsibility for being the mastermind behind this attack. Americans were scared and

The Oklahoma City Bombing would be considered the worst terrorist attack on America prior to the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. Just outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, on April 19th, 1995 a truck exploded, killing 168 people. 19 of those 168 being children. The explosion caused damage to 300 surrounding buildings. Oklahoma City was going through a tragedy and needed guidance from a leader.

Foreign and domestic policies are not linear, rather the policies are connected in a circle, with each policy reinforcing the values of another. Domestic American terrorism in the prison and detention systems and governmental reforms are influenced by the mobilization and ethnocentrism abroad. The militarization internationally is justified by the domestic handling of the same cultural issues within the United State borders. The United States has strangely used a near Catch-22 to handle dilemmas. The United States has allowed perspective to become reality, whether with oneself or regarding issues abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Terrorism is the use or threat of fear for political or economical gain. An internal characteristic of terrorism is how dependent it is of perspective, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To understand “terrorism,” a focus must be applied to the history, what drove an organization to commit such acts. Respectively, the Middle East has been a hotbed for the key word “terrorism,” especially because of 9/11. Subsequently, Muslims have been stigmatized by the United States as terrorists. The consequences spawned because of 9/11 require a look to the past to understand the present.

On April 19th 1995 the worst terrorist attack on US soil took place in the heartland of America. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was targeted and almost completely blown to pieces by one enormous homemade bomb. The unthinkable had happened at the beginning of an average day at the office. This day would be remembered for the rest of America's history, unlike any other day, as a blatant attack on the United States government.

For our purposes, we will use the Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d), to define terrorism. It defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents” (Central Intelligence Agency, 2013). Examples of terrorism persist on a near daily basis around the world. Unstable countries, such as Afghanistan and Syria, deal with terrorist attacks on a constant basis. The common thread of these attacks is deliberate targeting of civilian populations in order to achieve political objectives. The best known and largest example are

Another element of the strategy is untwisting the “spiral of violence”. The classic mechanism, which assume the existence of cycles of suicide terrorism activity in a “action-repression-reaction” it is aimed at lowering the public support for the government, and increase it for the terrorists. By curried out the suicide terrorism attacks, the intension and aim of the terrorists is to hit the repressive actions of the authorities not only in themselves but also in the group indentified with them and/or their supporters (a specified ethnic group, religious, social or the entire society). As a result, this process has lead to massive social explosion directed against the government. Such a model of strategy for terrorism has been used by most of the leftist groups in Europe in the nineteenth century, and in the

The Oklahoma City Bombing was a significant event in the history of terrorism in the United States. On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful vehicle-borne explosive device in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children, and hundreds of people were injured. Roughly one third of the federal building was destroyed, and many neighboring buildings were also destroyed or damaged. The bombing was considered the deadliest domestic terror attack in U.S. history (FBI, "Terror"). As a result, the way people viewed bombings and terrorism in general greatly changed.

The dilemma facing state leaders for the past decades has been whether to respond to terrorism through a criminal justice approach or a more involved military approach. The criminal justice approach treats terrorism as a law-and-order problem in which the main burden is placed on the judiciary and police. In contrast, the military approach treats terrorism as a perilous threat to the national security of the state, which can only be countered with military force and wartime procedures. The argument of this paper is that military procedures are not warranted in dealing with terrorism because the terror threat is not lethal or influential enough to threaten our democracy, and even if it was, military action has proven itself to be so fraught with problems and costly risks in past interventions that continued use of such a tactic would not only harm our national security, but also could precipitate the fall of the American Empire. Instead, law-enforcement has proven itself to be an efficient counter-terrorism tool that results in the capturing of terrorists, acquisition of intelligence, and spurring of cooperation with allied countries.

On April 19th, 1995 a horrific terrorist attack on U.S. soil took place in the heartland of Oklahoma. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was targeted and was completely blown to pieces by one gigantic homemade bomb. The unimaginable had happened at the starting of a typical day at work. This day would be forever commemorated for the rest of America's history, unlike any other day until 9/11, as a prominent attack on the government of the United States.

April 19, 1995 marked the worst terrorist attack on United States soil until the fatal September 11, attack. The truck-bomb explosion outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City , Oklahoma left 168 people dead, which included 19 children that were in the buildings daycare center at the time, more than 500 injured along with the damage of 300 buildings in the surrounding area. The attack was spearheaded by Timothy McVeigh, along with his co-partner Terry Nichols and to a lesser degree, Michael and Lori Fortier. The attack was in retaliation to other incidents, one at Ruby Ridge Idaho, and the other at Waco Texas. Both were raids by the government on militia or religious fanatics. Civilians were killed in both these actions

of American life on our soil since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. This terrorist attack

The September 11 attacks are the worst terrorist attacks ever committed on U.S. soil. On September 11 there were four passenger planes that were hijacked by terrorist. The first plane to be hijacked that morning was American airlines flight 11. This passenger plane was crashed into the north tower of the world trade center. About fifteen minutes later a second plane appeared in the skies it was united airlines flight 175 and it crashed into the south tower of the world trade center. Forty five minutes later the third hijacked flight American airlines flight 77 was crashed into the pentagon. The fourth and last hijacked plane was united airlines flight 98 this plane was crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after the passengers tried to stop the terrorist.

Studying counter-terrorism as a form of social control and, more specifically, a component of criminal justice, criminological research can bring out the security dimensions of social control that are not of a military or political character. Much of the contemporary public discourse on terrorism, especially in the popular media, typically focuses on counter-terrorism in the world of politics and in relation to war, but criminologists can reveal the manner in which institutions of social control, particularly law enforcement agencies, conceive of and respond to terrorism as a criminal matter. The targets of counter-terrorism are thereby treated as suspects, who are given certain rights of due process on the basis of publicly presented evidence

Over the years there have been significant changes in how terrorism is carried out. With the changes in how terrorism is carried out there have also been dramatic changes in how countries counter terrorist attacks. The modifications in the way a country counters these terrorist attacks affects international relations of these countries. These issues bring about the question of how have counter terrorism methods affected international relations. To answer this question several things must be addressed which are, methodology, history of terrorism, and a literature review of multiple authors that have discussed this subject.