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Suicide Terrorism War

Understanding the Enemy: A Response to Suicide Terrorism

The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he comes from, and if he really was evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home, and would he not rather have stayed there... in peace? War will make corpses of us all.

History’s most revered and celebrated warriors earned their legacies of success by recognizing that war is ever-changing, it is dynamic and unpredictable. The best strategy is the strategy with the highest shock-value and the most ingenuity. George Washington knew that crossing the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1776, would ensure a victory against the unprepared Hessian troops gathered in Trenton.

Francis Marion successfully utilized cutting-edge guerilla tactics to kill British soldiers in the swamps and foothills of South Carolina (hence the moniker, the “Swamp Fox”) during the same war. Coincidental with the progression of technology over time, warfare is perpetually evolving.

Suicide terrorism, the latest and deadliest strategy of war, stems from a combination of ideological fervor and political discontent. In fact, much of the effectiveness of this type of warfare extends from the blurring of the lines of morality and social and political justice.

As a recent development of combat, martyrdom is a complex issue whose causes and solutions are clouded by much misconception, anger, and fear. Although suicide terrorism is not solely confined to the Middle East, the tactic claims the region as its place of birth and maturation; therefore, most studies of martyrdom focus on the Middle East.

Investigation into the history and psychology of Islamic martyrdom, the evolution of warfare to include new war tactics, as well as suicide terrorism’s implications for the future transfiguration of warfare will provide a better understanding of the ways to respond to the phenomenon.

The Evolution Of War

First Phase: Historical

The changing nature of war constitutes a serious liability to the safety and security of the burgeoning world population, and it forces conflicting groups to engineer new countermeasures constantly. Eventually a strain on the endless measure-countermeasure system must occur. In the case of historical warfare, that strain surfaced in the form of suicide terrorism.

Each stage of the evolution of warfare has become increasingly violent and decreasingly ethical. Dr. Robert Lifton, a professor at Harvard University, cites the erosion of restraint, boundaries, and limits as the precursors to unlimited destruction. With each passing phase of war strategy and psychology, man comes one step closer to unlimited destruction.

Suicide terrorism belongs to a long history of war strategy. According to one expert, “suicide attacks are in actuality a very old modus operandi.” He draws attention to the Jewish Sicairis and the Islamic Hashishiyun (or more popularly known as “The Assassins”) as prominent examples of the use of suicide as a combat strategy. From the 18^th to the 20^th centuries, suicide attacks were consistently used as weapons in battle. During WWII, Japanese Kamikaze pilots successfully flew over 5,000 suicide missions which nearly cost the United States the war in the Pacific arena.

Second Phase: Ayatollah Khomeini, Islamic Radicalization, and Lebanon

In order to examine the newly prevalent “martyr culture,” we must necessarily look at the role of Grand Ayotollah Seyyed Ruhollah Mosavi Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution in turning religious fanaticism into strategy of war. The Iranian Revolution was the advent of the modern era of martyrdom: the instigation of fundamentalist Ayotollah Khomeini as Iran’s supreme leader and the penetrating culture of revolution combined to react dangerously to the Iran/Iraq war that raged throughout the 1980’s.

From the outset of the eight-year-long war, Iran’s only defense mechanism against the superiority of the Iraqi weapons seemed to be its large population, as well as a fanatical commitment to the cause of independence. The result was the Bassiji, “The Mobilized,” thousands of young men willing to die for the sake of Iran, a pan-Islamic Middle East, and the radicalization of Shiism. Waves of Bassiji cleared battlefields ahead of regular infantry to make a path for the traditional soldiers.

One member of the Bassiji recalls, “human waves walked straight into Iraqi bullets,” and the “exploits were filmed and glorified to recruit others.” Another former Bassiji member told the story of an Iranian call for 1,000 volunteers to clear a mine field. Three thousand young men volunteered, and a fight almost ensued over who would have the honor of clearing the field. Finally, a competitive race to determine the first 1,000 men served to decide who was given the opportunity to die for his country.

Ayatollah Khomeini remains to this day the single most influential inciter of modern martyrdom. “Fight through martyrdom because the martyr is the essence of history,” he said. His dangerous rhetoric encouraged suicide as a sacrifice for Islam, offering promises of Paradise to young martyrs. The phenomenon of martyrdom has roots in jihad, or Holy War, which not only transforms the act into a religious issue, but a political one as well (a fatwa must be issuedto declare jihad).

However, Islam strictly forbids suicide, declaring that a man who kills himself will never enter Paradise. Ayatollah Khomeini circumvented this by creating “altruistic suicide,” issuing a fatwa calling for martyrdom, and using certain areas of the Qu’ran which are open to interpretation as scope to justify martyrdom.

The Lebanese organization known as Hizbollah could better be called an Iranian organization, since it was established in Lebanon by Iranian Islamic fundamentalists. Second to Khomeini, Hizbollah served as the primary instrument to usher in altruistic suicide. Islamic fundamentalists performed suicide attacks for the first time in Lebanon in 1983 with the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Two more suicide attacks followed within months, most prominently the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 240 Marines. Khomeini provided the justification, and Hizbollah began to provide the means.

Third Phase: Sri Lanka

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or the Tamil Tigers, in Sri Lanka carried out the third phase in the evolution of modern warfare with deadly efficiency. By 1987, an elite “suicide squad” of the Tamil Tigers (fighting against the Sri Lankan army in a brutal civil war) called the Black Tigers had mastered the technique of suicide bombing. Hizbollah brought suicide terrorism to the forefront of revolutionary war tactics, but the Black Tigers perfected it as a political weapon.

For the last two decades, suicide bombings have struck fear into the hearts of millions and achieved the political goals of countless organizations, thanks in large part to the efforts of Hizbollah and the Black Tigers. The latest, and most terrifying, phase of modern martyrdom, is still taking shape.

Extant Phase: Indiscriminant Suicide Attacks

Targeting civilians in time of war is not a new development in military history. But modern warfare is unlike any ever before undertaken. A far-reaching consensus exists among experts that in this new phase in the evolution of war, “no one will be spared.” Five months after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, a discontented Israeli named Baruch Goldstein slaughtered twenty-seven Muslims at a mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.

The mosque held holy ties to both Jews and Muslims, and the occurrence of the attack during Ramadan broke a dam in the Palestinian reservoir of anger. Two months after Goldstein’s attack, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, retaliated with the first suicide bombing in Palestine. Mohamed M.A. Marzouk, a Hamas political leader, said, “Suicide missions came as a reaction to the number of Palestinians killed during Ramadan in Hebron at the Ibrahimi Mosque.”

A new era of suicide terrorism is rising in which civilians and the military are synonymous: the enemy is one. Perhaps the most poignant examples of this concept are the attacks of September 11, 2001. In the minds of the nineteen martyrs who gave up their lives on 9/11, the U.S. economy (i.e. private sector) was the tool which gave U.S. officials power to make policy-policy which interfered with and destroyed Middle Eastern society.

A strong majority of Islamic scholars, clerics, and leaders condone martyrdom as a legitimate form of weaponry, and recently, some clerics have even issued fatwas condoning the targeting of civilians. Here lies the crux of the issue: altruistic suicide still resides within the rational realm of war, and even within the boundaries of just forms of combat (when considered a rational measure); however, the purposeful targeting of civilians through suicide attacks clearly violates an internationally accepted just war doctrine.

Much controversy still remains within Islamic society over the use and practice of jihad, the difference between suicide and martyrdom, and the targeting of civilians; however, one thing is clear: a large portion of Middle Eastern society views martyrdom as legitimate, and even necessary, in this globally emerging concept of modern, revolutionary warfare.

The Rationalization of Martyrdom

The first major incident involving suicide terrorism in Lebanon, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, literally baffled investigators. Use of human bodies as walking, driving, or flying bombs had been a relatively scarce occurrence until this time, and officials simply did not know how to respond to the new threat. Then CIA agent Robert Baer was assigned to investigate the case. Baer was “fascinated” at the complete nature of the bombing.

Truck bombs were familiar territory for the agent, but upon the first arrival of suicide terrorism in Beirut, Baer admitted that he “had no idea what Islamic jihad [was].” According to Baer, the whole embassy could have been destroyed by a truck bomb in front of the building, but the added factor of suicide sent a message to the United States not to underestimate the terrorists’ capabilities: they were not conspirators or cowards, but were astoundingly professional-professional, organized, relentless killers. Robert Baer had just been given an introduction to the highly-effective, highly-irrational world of psychological warfare.

Causes of Martyrdom

Militants utilize psychological warfare to demoralize the enemy in order to win the war. The causes of martyrdom, however, cannot be explained so easily. Reasons for choosing martyrdom are as various and multitudinous as the number of people walking the earth. With this in consideration, several major factors may contribute to a person’s willingness to commit altruistic suicide: rage, the existing desire to commit suicide, “natural selection,” foreign policies, and religion.

In a lecture presented at the International Conference on Countering Suicide Terrorism at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Yoram Schweitzer said:

Modern suicide terrorism is aimed at causing devastating physical damage, through which it inflicts profound fear and anxiety. Its goal is to produce a negative psychological effect on an entire population rather than just the victims of the actual attack.

Schweitzer’s analysis of the new phenomenon of suicide terrorism recognizes that martyrdom is not simply a tactic, but, more accurately, a lifestyle. This must be taken into account when discussing the possible causes behind suicide attacks.

Many experts attribute the desire to commit suicide to a deep-seated rage driven by hatred for the West and Israel. Dr. Robert Lieber, professor at Georgetown University and a former presidential advisor, claims that threats from suicide missions and jihad stem less from Western policy or policy mistakes, and more on the hatred many Middle Easterners hold for the West. According to Lieber, part of the rage driving terrorism extends from the failure of traditional Middle Eastern societies to adapt efficiently to globalization and modernization.

Robert A. Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago, disagrees with Lieber. “…what nearly all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland,” Pape wrote in 2003. He bases this conclusion on three things: nearly all suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of organized campaigns, liberal democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists, and suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic objective.

Passionate attacks usually lack planning and organization, a fact which Pape points to as evidence of a deeper underlying cause to martyrdom. While experts may disagree on the role rage plays in suicide terrorism, the existence of Middle Eastern anger toward the West is rarely disputed. Whether or not this anger specifically motivates a terrorist must be studied on a case by case basis.

Another factor in the decision to become a martyr could be a pre-existing desire to commit suicide. In this instance, a person may use martyrdom as a guise for suicide. Most data, however, show that the overwhelming majority of martyrs are the model of perfect mental health. Professor Ariel Merari, director of the Political Violence Unit at Tel Aviv University, began his studies of suicide terrorism after looking into a case in Ireland in which ten resistance fighters starved themselves to death in jail. “One can assume in any society that there are people willing to commit suicide for personal reasons.”

Until studying the Irish case, Merari operated under the impression that martyrs already wanted to die, and therefore allowed themselves to be recruited for suicide missions. However, he admitted that it was highly unlikely that, as in the case of the hunger strike in Ireland, ten different men met in jail and all previously possessed the desire to die. “The pact cannot be solely explained through individual psychology,” Merari determined.

From this point, Professor Merari developed an organizational theory behind martyrdom which discounted the assumption that the mentally unhealthy primarily participated in this activity. According to his theory, the power of the commitment or contract with a group is stronger than the will to live. “Terrorist suicide is not a personal phenomenon, but an organizational one,” he said. Instead of individual personality, “the key is in the psychological preparation by the organization of suicide candidates.” Hizbollah has mastered this art, and the unpredictable nature of suicide candidates has become apart of the effectiveness of the weapon of martyrdom.

A third cause for altruistic suicide is “natural selection,” as defined by one relative of a martyr in Lebanon. According to this individual, man naturally becomes willing to die for those with whom he identifies. In a community, man has an “unconscious knowledge” of his family and is willing to do anything to ensure the survival of his genes. Individuals associate a larger cause with the survival of their immediate gene pools, such as access to the government or having a place to live.

This transforms into a willingness to sacrifice lives for a cause which will achieve these objectives, and this widens the “gene pool” to include many others with whom the individuals identify. Between the desire to protect the family and the larger need to promote the community goals, altruistic suicide becomes a viable option to achieve a goal.

Fourthly, foreign policies incite suicide terrorism. Terrorist organizations and their leaders strongly defend suicide attacks as a legitimate form of waging war against foreign enemies. Not only does this dismiss the issue of suicide as a tactic of war, but it also provides legitimacy to the cause. Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadhlallah, a spiritual leader of Hizbollah, said:

The martyrdom operations are a part of the war movement, since the issue of war differs from the issue of suicide. Suicide is the killing of oneself for personal reasons. On the other hand, the martyrdom operation means that a person dies for a greater cause.

Clerics and leaders of terrorist organizations point to the invasion of their lands by foreign governments as that larger cause. Suicide bombers are noted as martyrs for Islam, just as soldiers in Middle Eastern armies have been for centuries.

Professor Merari calls this the “socialization of terrorism.” Passion characterizes the early stages of terrorism, serving as a way to immortalize the project. But then organizers form structures and institutions which are rationally planned. According to Merari and his organizational terrorism theory, “all large scale killing has depended upon both [passion and rationalization].”

The tangible results of the foreign policies of the West in the Middle East provide countless marginalized citizens with an object of blame for the harrowing conditions in which they live, allowing them to rationalize their hatred and justify their actions. Sheik Malek Wehbe, head of Hizbollah’s Political Department claims that their weapons had to be “suicide bombs, not Kalishnakovs,” that suicide attacks were “born out of extreme necessity because we didn’t have conventional weapons” like Israel. Robert Pape cites suicide attacks as “far and way the most efficient form of terrorism” due to their institutionalized natures. Terrorist organizations target the weaknesses of their enemies, and the tactic works. After the introduction of major suicide attacks in Lebanon in the early 1980’s, the United States left Beirut. Furthermore, a 2003 New York Times report states:

It is our actions that they don’t like: as long ago as 1997, a Defense Department report (in response to the 1996 suicide bombing of Air Force housing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia) noted that “historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.

Foreign policy can also be cited as a cause not only for suicide terrorism, but of terrorist organizations themselves. Hizbollah is partly a creation of Israeli, as well as Iranian, actions. Israel targeted civilians to turn locals against resistance in Lebanon in the 1980’s, but newly created, professional Hizbollah reconstruction teams quickly went in to rebuild.

Israel provided Lebanese citizens with a reason for hatred by bombing their homes and at the same time encouraged allegiance to Hizbollah and its cause (including suicide missions) by providing the opportunity for the organization to help improve the social welfare of the Shia. “We are suffering. We are dying while we are still alive,” said a Palestinian woman called “Suha,” operating under a pseudonym for protection. The oppressive actions of foreign governments incite a response which many feel is the only option to bring about change. On this issue, one should note that, interestingly, a large number of martyrs are not the most marginalized in society.

Finally, religion plays a major role in the practice of altruistic suicide. Sheikh Dr. Yousouf Al- Qaradhawi, a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, said in an interview on Al-Jazeera TV in 2004:

There are clerics who oppose martyrdom operations in Palestine. By these operations Allah has compensated the Palestinians for their lack of strength. They do not, as the Zionists do, have Apache helicopters, warplanes, tanks, missiles. Allah has compensated them for this with these human bombs. This is divine justice.

The nature of Middle Eastern politics, in which church and state function as a single entity, bring both political and religious legitimacy to suicide terrorism. In an interview later that year on New TV (Lebanon), the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi was asked, “Will you issue a fatwa about the resistance and especially what is happening in Iraq?” He responded:

I was very clear: Anyone defending his right, his land, his money, and his religion and gets killed is a martyr. Anyone who blows himself up amongst the enemy that wants to kill him and he can find no means of defending himself except blowing himself up amongst theses soldiers who are occupying his land and destroying his home, and so he blows himself up amongst these aggressive soldiers, is a Shahid, Shahid, Shahid.

In addition to the existence of jihad and fatwas, a second aspect of Islam perpetuates suicide terrorism: the promise of an afterlife. “What do you expect? What are you going to lose? Living this life or dying,” Dr. Vivian Khamis, a professor of psychology at Bethlehem University, explains the suicide bomber’s perspective. The term “martyr” or shahid means “one who will witness.” One mother of a martyr said that “having a son as a martyr guarantees your entrance to heaven.” He acts as an arbiter, and intercedes with God on the behalf of his family. Even neighbors fight to live close to families of martyrs for this reason.

Ayatollah Khomeini expertly created a culture of martyrdom in Iran during his reign using this strategy, describing altruistic suicide as “drinking from the sweet drink of martyrdom.” One dissident said, “Khomeini promised them in paradise what he couldn’t deliver on this earth.” A point of disagreement arises on this issue: the Qu’ran is open to interpretation on some topics like suicide and the afterlife.

Many claim that leaders such as Khomeini blatantly take advantage of Islam, twisting Allah’s promises in order to justify a means to an end. Despite the controversy over the realities of the afterlife, this single point of justification provides the most martyrs with motivation for sacrificing their lives. This sentiment, echoed from the halls of Israeli prisons (where dozens of failed martyrs reside) to the halls of parliaments, was communicated effectively by Sheikh Muhammad Al- Bajirmi, a member of the Palestine Religious Scholars Association:

The Jews or the Zionists are the people who preserve life the most. The Koran uses the word ‘life’ negatively, meaning ‘any life.’ This, while our Islamic principle, as the Prophet Muhammad has taught us, yearn for death and you will be given life. As much as the Muslim yearns for death for Allah, he will be awarded life. Not any life, but a life of dignity.

A different perception of the value of life exists among different peoples and religions which must be taken into account when trying to understand the rationality behind martyrdom. This life holds no value for Muslims; only eternal life after death is of any consequence.

Who Becomes a Martyr?

We have examined the causes of martyrdom, now we must explore the psychology of those who willingly choose to commit suicide for a cause. The recruitment and propaganda mechanisms of organizations like Hizbollah are the most sophisticated in the world. Recruiters of martyrs insist that those who choose to be martyrs find the organizations, and that the institutions do not seek out suicide bombers themselves.

No need exists to personally recruit bombers when such a wide and complex network of terrorist participants exists to suggest martyrdom to the discontented. Those who wish to take action know exactly who to contact to begin training for a suicide mission.

Dr. Eyad El Saraj, Director of the Gaza Mental Health Center, focuses much of his attention on the psychological qualities of suicide bombers. In most cases, El Saraj finds that a “deep traumatic event happened to this person as a child, such as the beating of their fathers in the first Intifada.” These martyrs experienced humiliation “in all forms as children-in their homes, at checkpoints.

Beating, shooting, wounding, TV images-these have a deep impact on the mind of a child.” Suicide terrorism is perceived “as the only answer to Israel’s military superiority.” In the case of Mohammed Daragmeh, a young martyr in Israel, his family saw absolutely no sign that he was about to commit suicide. On the morning of his attack, he asked his mother to wash his clothes for him. “Had he told us, we would have prevented him from doing it.

We don’t like this sort of thing. We would have stopped him, we would have tied him down. We don’t like killing,” his family said later in an interview. Referring to the recruiters of martyrs, Mohammed’s brother said that he was a “little bird. They caught him and put him in a cage. Then he died.”

According to El Saraj, radicalization leads to paranoia, which produces a perception of “the enemy and us” (two parts of the world). The enemy becomes one, and retaliation is imperative. He continued:

I cannot talk about war without understanding the psychology of the Palestinian people, not only the Israeli psychology-there is no feeling of moral victory in peace or a war and that state is very difficult. If you do not feel that moral victory, you’re bound to have a community that will defeat itself by violence, and interestingly, Palestinians and Israelis are mirror images of each other.

Six days after Mohammed Daragmeh’s suicide attack, the Israelis harshly retaliated against the Palestinians.

As Daragmeh’s case indicates, martyrs come from all walks of life and usually show no signs of the distress usually associated with suicide. After interviewing almost 250 Palestinian suicide bombers-in training and their recruiters in 2001, Nasra Hassan, a Pakistani relief worker said, “None were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded or depressed. They all seemed to be entirely normal members of their families.”

According to Nada Banjak, producer of Nour Radio, a martyr’s life shows his devotion. “Martrydom is the reward for following the path of holy war.” She also says that martyrs are “not different from other human beings-they see war as a duty, a way to achieve a specific goal. It takes special qualities for a man to blow himself up at a time of his choosing.” The human qualities necessary to become a martyr are confined simply to a dedication to the Islamic way of life.

Why is Martyrdom Effective?

Why are so many willing to sacrifice their lives? According to the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism knowledge database, between 1980 and 2005, suicide bombings rose from zero percent of all terrorist attacks to eight percent, with the War in Iraq accounting for a sharp increase after 2003.

Furthermore, bombings in general account for over fifty percent of all terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2005. Among assassinations, barricades/hostage situations, armed attacks and other terrorist tactics, targeted bombings and suicide bombings are the most effective due to the amount of media exposure, the risks to the group, the impact on the target, and the effect on recruitment.

Organizations also choose suicide attacks as a medium for expression because they are easily justified and institutionalized. By striking at the weaknesses of the West, those organizations gain favor with future recruits. In the case of Hizbollah, the institution established a Martyr’s Association to care for the families of martyrs, in particular the children (who are cultured in martyrdom and desire to grow up and follow in the footsteps of their fathers).

The Martyr’s Association “lies at the heart of Hizbollah’s mission.” Kassem Aleyk, Head of Hizbollah’s Martyr’s Institute, said, “the foundation is important for the community of resistance” The foundation sends a message to the fighters that they will take care of their families so that they can be at their moral and faith high. It builds up fighters and their families, as well as their faith. Also, it sends a message to the enemy that the resistance will not be affected by negative results, that Hizbollah is able to solve problems, and that martyrdom is a way of life.

Perhaps most importantly, these institutions gain historical and religious legitimacy in the eyes of the world for their actions, and therefore continue to use altruistic suicide as an effective tactic with an endless supply of human bombs. Martyrdom is based in Middle Eastern history: Hussein, descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, was the first martyr, and he serves as a symbol for the struggle against all contemporary tyrants. Secretary General of Hizbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, said, “He lived for the sake of all people, and for the sake of all Islam, and for the sake of dealing with corruption in society.”

What the Future Holds

This legitimacy provides strong resistance to deterrence of suicide terrorism, especially in an age where martyrdom has become a proposed vehicle for equality as well: female suicide bombers (of which there have been about fifty) are emerging as a new, and deadly, trend of suicide terrorism. Women like Leila Khalid set precedents for a new era of frightful terrorism.

Alan Dershowitz, professor at Harvard Law School, believes deterrence will not work. “Deterrence” suggests threats of pain to reduce the frequency of an action, but threats of pain only work when the enemy behaves rationally (he is here operating under the assessment of suicide terrorism as irrational thought). Instead, Dershowitz claims that traditional deterrence, or “disincentivizing,” has only served to fuel suicide bombings.

Those opposed to the military approach, according to Dershowitz, wish to understand and eliminate the root causes of terrorism. But this, too, promotes terrorism, because terrorists see that their demands are being met:

We must take precisely the opposite approach to terrorism. We must commit ourselves never to try to understand or eliminate its alleged root causes, but rather to place it beyond the pale of dialogue and negotiation. Our message must be this: even if you have legitimate grievances, if you resort to terrorism as a means toward eliminating them we will simply not listen to you…instead, we will hunt you down and destroy your capacity to engage in terror…

Dershowitz supports a military response to shut down suicide terrorism. Right now, this occurs case by case, such as Israeli bombings of Palestinians after each suicide attack. However, the comprehensive organizational structures behind martyrdom operations easily recuperate after each retaliatory attack. Dr. Robert Lifton concludes, “It was combating evil with evil that brought us into evil…attempting to plunge into that in the effort to destroy it or combat it in a way resembles it-that’s a real danger.”

Robert Pape advances the idea that strong military offensives and negotiating concessions with terrorists will not work:

In the end, the best approach for the states under fire is probably to focus on their own domestic security while doing what they can to see that the least militant forces on the terrorists’ side build a viable state on their own.

On this same topic, Scott Atran writes:

Shows of military strength don’t seem to dissuade terrorists…Rather, we need to show the Muslim world the side of our culture that they most respect. Our engagement needs to involve interfaith initiatives, not ethnic profiling. America must address grievances, such as the conflict in the Palestinian territories, whose daily images of violence engender global Muslim resentment.

In order to address the horrors of terrorism in general, we need initially to address the fundamental societal norms present in the Middle East which encourage it. We must first acknowledge the legitimacy of such actions, and then formulate a mixed response consisting of military force, an attempt to understand Middle Eastern society, and an elemental change in Western foreign policy. War strategy will continue to evolve, and we must continue to adapt to the changing tactics both militarily and culturally. In the process, we must remember that we cannot plunge into evil in an effort to eradicate it.

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