The fact that the Moslem fundamentalist terrorists have these odd beliefs doesn’t mean that they are stupid.
CREEP in the Nixon Campaign
A nation of citizens who will not panic. That’s what the terrorists fear.
Terrorist groups always want to believe that they represent a general aggrieved group far larger than they really do.
Suicidal terrorists may have short shelf lives.
Terrorists are not 100 feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.
The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime.
I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor. I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind.
Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom.
Terrorists are people, too - they are given to error. Naipaul and then DeLillo do a good job in their novels of drawing this out: I'm thinking of DeLillo's contention in 'Mao II' that terrorists have replaced writers as the people who 'alter the inner-life of the culture.' I thought that was marvellous!
What our leaders and pundits never let slip is that the terrorists-whatever else they might be-might also be rational human beings ; which is to say that in their own minds they have a rational justification for their actions. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.
The terrorists exist, and I think we must speak to them, not to establish a dialogue-since for serious terrorists that is unfortunately out of the question - but to learn how their brains work, to be better able to fight them.
Are terrorists going to be deterred - are terrorists going to be scared if we react violently? No. They love it. That's what they dote on. They dote on violence. They dote on having more reasons to commit more terrorism.
There are personal reasons, psychological reasons, but there could also be political reasons for becoming a terrorist.
Terrorists have goals beyond their supposed pacts with God. They are authors, too.
