Exploring Terrorist Targeting Preferences

📖 The Scoop

Each year, federal, state, and local governments spend billions of dollars protecting the United States against acts of terrorism, with human, military, and capital resources allocated in ways that reflect the value and vulnerability of each potential target. Yet those buildings, institutions, and icons perceived as being of utmost value to the United States may not be perceived as such to its potential attackers. That one potential attack may hurt the United States more than another does not mean terrorists believe the first would advance their goals any more than would the second. It may thus be helpful to understand what the targeting priorities of terrorists are. This monograph focuses on al Qaeda as an entity, which is presumed to have an overarching goal, a predominant method (i.e., terrorism), and one or more objectives that further the goal and that, in turn, can be advanced through terrorism. We define al Qaeda as the residual network imbued with the ideological outlook of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri and acting according to their strategic direction. All others associated with al Qaeda can be said to have degrees of membership with certain operatives relatively close to the leadership, and other operatives pledging their a liation but having only tangential links to al Qaeda's leadership. Al Qaeda's stated overarching goal appears to be the re-establishment of an Islamic caliphate, which would eventually govern the umma (the entire Muslim community). Its rhetoric, though, also points to a companion goal: driving Western militaries and influences out of the umma. Although the monograph presumes that al Qaeda's targeting decisions are taken solely to further its overarching goals, its rhetoric often justifies attacks in juridical terms (i.e., pain is imposed on the West to balance out the pain that the West has imposed on the Muslim world) and the possibility that terrorism has become an end in itself cannot be entirely ruled out.

Genre: POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General (fancy, right?)