savita rao wrote: [ on 12:06 PM 9/14/2007 ]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article2409790.ece
From the article:
And the fifth clue was where I started: my suspicion that terrorist movements do not act rationally in the targets they choose, and governments do not always respond rationally, instead playing things up rather than down and reinforcing defences of what terrorists nominate as targets. Were al-Qaeda to strike next by reintroducing foot-and-mouth disease into Britain, I have a suspicion that both sides including violent Islamists would have the uneasy feeling that this was cheating: unsporting, like dynamiting fish.
My view is that most terrorist acts are not optimising for maximum damage inflicted, but rather maximum political/media mileage achieved. With this assumption, the selection of targets becomes easier to understand.
Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
