NCJ Number
101514
Date Published
1986
Length
7 pages
Annotation
Terrorism is the cancer of the modern world -- a dynamic organism that attacks the healthy flesh of the surrounding society and grows inexorably unless drastically treated.
Abstract
In the 1960's, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) formally adopted terrorism and drew on the immense financial resources of the Arab States and the military training resources of the Soviet bloc. The physical growth of this terrorist cancer was accompanied with growth in its moral legitimacy and military capability. With the expansion of terrorist arsenals came the arrival of the first terrorist States, Iran and Libya, who go unrepentant and unpunished and spread the cancer within the very framework of world order. Given that treatment of this cancer requires drastic measures and that there are, morally, no good terrorists, it follows that civilized States must act collectively against all terrorists. This will require a coordinated, well-financed, informal, and secret effort by civilized nations to discover and exchange information on terrorist movements, identities, and methods. With this information, it will be possible to take the sorts of offensive police actions necessary to arrest the growth of this cancer.