1) V killed ‘policemen’ and those who had wronged him, etc. Action = medium
2) V acted alone. Organization = none
3) V certainly thought state actions were terriorism
4) V definitedly had goals – wanted the public to wake up
5) V limited his attacks to government agents.

I wouldn’t label ‘V’ a terriorist

Regarding roland’s comment #6: I think the reasons for terrorism are as various as the groups that perform the acts and the interpretation by the victims. Chomsky believes there are certain reasons, the Bush administration argues an entirely different set of reasons. I posted here

http://www.philosophicponderings.com/2006/03/30/finally-its-starting-to-make-sense/

some thoughts regarding Islamism and the U.S. response.

I’m not saying your endeavor isn’t useful. It just won’t mean anything until you have sufficient political, military, and economic heft to impose the definition on other participants in terror (either as perpetrators or targets-past or -future).

Undefined, it’s a literal gold mine.

X

That may be a definition of low intensity conflict or of unconventional warfare or of assymetric warfare or of….ad nauseum. But lets face it, terrorism IS a value laden term. That value is not good. I believe that there are applications where guerrilla warfare is appropriate. However, I personally draw the line, morally, at terrorism.

It is interesting how many of us “specialists” in this limited fora don’t come to a consensus definition of terrorism. I think this is probably the point (not to put words in your mouth) that David was trying to make with this post. Everyone should decide on their own definition of terrorism. As long as you can reasonably justify and defend the definition, I have no problem. Indeed, I see that as one of my basic functions as a professor (to get students to actually think for themselves).

Of these, the best is, I think, Crenshaw 1980, although it needs the addition of ‘state government via its domestic populace’ provided by Pape (moreso as he develops his ideas in the article). This gets at the structure of the enterprise: weak groups using terrorism as a strategy to coerce a stronger actor (a state) by either actually inflicting, or convincingly threatening, that it will do harm. I prefer the symbolic element because I think that arguments that terrorism must be directed at civilians are something of a canard (sorry Craig) because civilians do not necessarily make this judgment. I would argue, for instance, that the effects on the British population of killing soldiers were no different from killing non-soliders in NI. Certainly, the fact that the Pentagon was perceived by some as a military target–which it objectively was–did not mean that the intended audience percieved some separation from pain or risk because they are not wearing uniforms. Additionally, I favor a symbolic rather than a civil-military distinction because the message of the attack is almost always wrapped up in the targetting–it was by attacking transit in London and Madrid which not only acted as a coercive act (and threat for the future, Pape makes an excellent point that actual terrorist acts are most powerful for what they threaten to do next rather than the pain they actually inflict, in terms of the game theoretic literature on bargaining they ‘reveal information’ about their relative power) by making Spaniards and Londoners more uneasy about their transport but by hitting Sp and UK specifically, trying to coerce all of the Europeans against supporting the US in Iraq (there was a reason, after all, that they didn’t hit France or Germany…).

Last, I’m opposed from separating terrorism from ‘political violece’ more generally by arguing that it is special because it seeks to generate fear. A couple of reasons…First, I think terrorism is coercive, and works through pain or expectation of pain, rather than fear. Expectation of pain can also be aversion (familiar situation + belief of possibility of harm), as well as fear (_extremely_ novel situation + belief of possibility of harm). These emotions are different, all the way down to their physiology, cognitive effects, and associated behavioral strategies. Second, lots of other kinds of violence strategies give rise to fear–Rosen suggests in War and Human Nature (2005) that fear is one of the key things that gives rise to termination decisions in conventional war, for instance (though I disagree with his work on a whole host of levels). Guerilla strategies give rise to fear. MAD worked via fear. All sorts of political violence strategies involve fear as a key component. Terrorism is not different in that way…

PS My ‘bona fides’: I’m a 5th year PS grad student (political psych minor) at The Ohio State University working on a security studies dissertation.