NCJ Number
203261
Date Published
2003
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This paper provides observations regarding terrorism focusing on the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, international terrorism and its objectives, terrorism and its connection with organized crime, and the use of politics to resolve terrorism.
Abstract
In this chapter, four observations are presented and discussed. It begins with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. The international community and the national security organizations were not expecting such an attack on the United States which led to an immediate measured and political response of the international community and specifically, the United States. After the attack proposals were prepared for the creation of an international body within the United Nations to coordinate a world effort against terrorism. It is observed that terrorism is a political phenomenon that rarely achieves its aims but produces the opposite effects with the most effective alternative to terrorism being the normal political process. It becomes difficult for terrorism to achieve its objectives in the long term because it has no power of expansion. It is observed that international terrorist groups have connections to organized crime and the involvement of organized crime in illicit traffic. This causes concern because it makes the problem of terrorism complicated with support being received from outside the organized group’s own country. Many of these groups have an extremely decentralized and financially autonomous component making it difficult to identify or infiltrate them. The winning strategy or solution seen to the problem of international terrorism is seen as a political one because it is the only one that attacks the cause of the problem.