The Five Causes Of Terrorism

Terrorism continues devastatingly in the United States to this day and has increasingly become a more major concern. Starting in 1886 with the Haymarket Affair, a bombing that killed 12 in Chicago, there has been an exponential increase in the amount of terrorist attacks since then. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was a preface to many other terrorist attacks to follow, for example, 9/11. The destruction of this attack gave the United States a reason to fear more massacres and allowed us to increase security and protection of our nation. The biggest terrorist attack in the United States to this day is the 9/11 plane attack on the World Trade Center Towers that killed close to three thousand innocent citizens. What many people do

The word ‘terrorism’ can be traced back to the French Revolution and the reign of terror committed against the population of France in the 1790s. During this time, thousands of people were killed and the general population was severely oppressed. Also, some of the first instances of terrorist tactics, such as assassination and intimidation, were witnessed in the killing of prominent officials and other opponents of the Revolution. In general, terrorists aim to incite fear in the population through pre-meditated violent acts and gain publicity as a medium in achieving their goals. Such acts include taking hostages, bombings and assassinations, all of which create fear and compliance in a victim or audience. Terrorism can be distinguished from other types of political violence through its disregard for and intentional harming of innocent civilians. Also, terrorists usually adopt a state of mind where one side is always good and any opposition is bad and deserves to be punished. As a result, terrorists will always have some supporters who share the same radical thoughts as them and thus terrorism, as a whole, will always be accepted as a legitimate use of violence. This is the reasoning behind the famous phrase by Gerald Seymour, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”(QUOTE

Terrorism is something that has been going on since the dawn of mankind, and it will be with us until the very end. Most people know terrorism only as a horrific, inhumane process that is used to inflict harm and fear towards specific ethnic and religious groups. In reality, however, terrorism was actually used in our very own revolution, the American Revolution. You will see that the Boston Tea Party is a superb example of terrorism. American settlers dressed up like Native Americans, parading and shouting down the streets of Boston late at night, all the way down to the docks, boarded the tea ships, and dumped every parcel of tea down the Charles river. This was the start of American terrorism in the American revolution, and it continued through the war as the Americans started using guerilla warfare and attacking major centers for the British military and the British economy.

Terrorism is often used in asymmetric power struggles. In this source it said terrorism is, “When a weaker person, or group, is fighting against a powerful nation-state.” Terrorist groups have begun using the internet and media to spread fear. Also, to impact public opinion with their political or social message. Terrorism has been around for a very long time. Resources of the United States and other countries have been directed toward ending terrorism in American and around the world. Two major attacks that most individuals will remember is the 9/11 attack and the Boston Marathon Bombing.

Although the threat posed by foreign terrorist organizations is often foremost in the public consciousness as a result of al-Qaeda's attack on September 11th, 2001, the threat from domestic terror groups remains a central concern of those responsible for homeland security. In fact, while the United States has not suffered from another foreign attack in the decade since 9/11, research by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, along with non-governmental organizations, has found that the number of domestic terror groups has increased, a trend only exacerbated by the economic recession (U.S. Department of Justice, 2009, Domestic Terrorism). While there are a wide variety of individual groups and ideologies, most domestic terror groups falls into one of three broad categories: religious extremism, white supremacy, and anti-government and separatists movements, including the militia movement. Examining these domestic terror groups in greater detail will aid in better understanding the full spectrum of threats considered by homeland security personnel.

Terrorism has been around since at least the First Century. Terrorism is a crime in which people or groups of people use, or say they will use, violence in order to get what they want from the government or society. A terrorist is a person who uses violence and fear to achieve political

What is terrorism, the dictionary defines it as: The use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal. The first organization that showed signs of modern terrorism were the Zealots of Judea. they were called sicarii, or “dagger-men”, they made a plan to assassinate Romans, and any Jews that were helping the Romans. Their thought was the romans could not be faithful to Judaism. The Zealot’s were found out, and they committed mass suicide at Masada.

Terrorism is not new, and even though it has been used since the beginning of recorded history it can be relatively hard to define. Terrorism has been described variously as both a tactic and strategy; a crime and a holy duty; a justified reaction to oppression and an unforgivable disgrace. Clearly, a lot depends on whose point of view is being represented. Terrorism has often been an effective tactic for the weaker side in a conflict. As an unequal form of conflict, it confers coercive power with many of the benefits of military force at a fraction of the cost. Due to the secretive nature and small size of terrorist groups; they often offer opponents no clear organization to defend against or to deter.

Terrorism is all over the current headlines, but some of the very worst attacks happened 15 years ago in the United States; this occurrence brought around many changes of policies inside the U.S. but also policies in the U.S. regarding other foreign countries. It brings fear and terror to many of its victims and is an extremely dangerous national threat.

Terrorism is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aim. The United States Department of Defense defines terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”(1) Terrorism has been around around since the first century BCE. The Sicarii were the first jewish group who murdered enemies and collaborators in their campaign to oust their Roman rulers from Judea. The Sicarii would hide daggers in their cloaks and then they would murder innocent victims. One of their most successful kills was that of a high priest named Jonathan. Terrorism doesn’t stop there, during the late 1700’s the Reign of Terror was that of horrible violence during the French Revolution. During the ruling of Jacobin Club thousands were killed including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Over 100 scholarly or diplomatic definitions exist. The range of things that can be included under the umbrella of ‘terrorism’ using these definitions is impractically large. On top of this, the use of the word ‘terrorism’ has changed over time. When it was first used politically in the French Revolution, it was a word reserved for labeling those who used violence in the name of the state. In 1798 the word was first recorded in English dictionaries as meaning "systematic use of terror as a policy”. While there is still no internationally unified definition of terrorism, there are comprehensive definitions. One such definition is that used by the US State Department since 1983:

According to Chomsky terrorism can be defined as “the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.” (220). The terms terrorist or terrorism are relatively new, even though it has been going on for centuries. In early years (1st-14th century) there was what we would refer to today as a terrorist group called Assassins made up of different Muslim groups and a Jewish group known as the Zealots. Our history is filled with many acts of terrorism so, why is it much more prevalent today than it was back then? Well, for an act to be considered terrorism it must involve extraordinary violence, be intended to create mass fear, involve a planned attack, and have an audience. The key factor to keep in mind here is how an act of terrorism must have an audience and what do we have now that we didn't have years ago that's great at gathering audiences? The answer to this is abundant sources of media from the radio, TV, Newspapers, and social media it is basically a holy grail for terrorists. Not only do terrorist enjoy media attention, but also many of our political figures do as well.

Terrorism can be defined as an aggressive form of action mainly to cause havoc, fear in any given ways intended by the perpetrator or perpetrators to get what they want, usually in vengeance to political or socioeconomic needs not met in their societies or in one’s life. These violent acts comes in many forms that includes killings of innocent citizens, plotting attacks on public gatherings using explosive devices to kill in mass scale. Terrorist also incite fear and hate in people by embarking on an endless propaganda in order to attract attention mainly for recruitment purposes. Terrorist have come in many shaped and from many backgrounds. They have no specific unique traditional origin, they come from almost all walks of life since human beings are human and can address situations in different ways from person to person. Individuals get depressed, sometimes mentally challenged and also sometimes hateful towards things and groups they don’t identify with or do not simply like and they will resort to violent to satisfy their ego. The severity of the actions they embark on results terror and can be severe than one another, but the intention mainly is to satisfy one’s soul or to just go out there and kill as many as one can imagine because one is mentally challenged or one is a pure terrorist whose only solutions to problems he cannot help is vengeance by any means necessary. Terrorist also want to make sure their political or economic needs are met by any means, and if this

Terrorism, which has been around for as long as people can remember, has been on the rise for the past ten years. Terrorists usually use murdering, kidnapping, hi-jacking and bombings to achieve their political purpose. For instance, according to Wikipedia.com (2006), in 1985 816 deaths, then in 2003, more than 1,000 people died by terorist acts around the world. In recent years, terrorism seems to be at a new height and attacks are much more violent than in the past. Unfortunately, in spite of many anti-terror campaigns, projects and organizations are being created for prevention (to prevent) terrorism, the number of terrorists only is increasing. These days terrorism is all over the world.

Before terrorism can be discussed in this paper, it must first be explained. Terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. In other words, terrorism is the reason for such events like 9/11. You may think to yourself, why would the events of 9/11 happen in the first place? Well the answer may be a little tricky. First, the 9/11 attacks were a series of four coordinated attacks by the Islamic group Al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks involved suicide attacks used to target symbolic United States landmarks. Four airplanes, were hijacked by 19 Al-Qaeda members to be flown into buildings. Two of the planes were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.