Targets Of Terror

The Oklahoma City bombing, intentional crashing of airliners on September 11, 2001, and anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 have made Americans acutely aware of the impacts of terrorism. These events and continued threats of terrorism have raised questions about the impact on the psychological health of the nation and how well the public health infrastructure is able to meet the psychological needs that will likely result. Preparing for the Psychological Consequences of Terrorism highlights some of the critical issues in responding to the psychological needs that result from terrorism and provides possible options for intervention. The committee offers an example for a public health strategy that may serve as a base from which plans to prevent and respond to the psychological consequences of a variety of terrorism events can be formulated. The report includes recommendations for the training and education of service providers, ensuring appropriate guidelines for the protection of service providers, and developing public health surveillance for preevent, event, and postevent factors related to psychological consequences.

Targets of Terror addresses the repercussions of assassination as a tactic of terrorism and delineates post-assassination political outcomes across target types. Assassination of heads of state, such as John F. Kennedy and Yitzhak Rabin, are rare events, but the political murders of police personnel, local government officials, politicians, and journalists occur frequently. These “softer” targets are often pursued during broader campaigns of terrorist violence, and the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) records a significant number of these assassination events—16,246 to be exact—between 1977 and 2017. Utilizing survival analysis and the Polity IV Index to examine the span of time from a terrorist assassination to potential shifts in state political institutions, Laura N. Bell compares changes in authoritarian, mixed, and tumultuous regimes with democratic governments. She argues that these cases illuminate the extent to which the type of assassination target may or may not be linked to significant institutional change. By establishing differences in post-assassination political outcomes across regimes and targets, Bell provides a baseline study upon which to build future examinations of the types and severity of risks to governmental institutions during terror campaigns.

This book examines the question of when terrorism works. Determining if political violence is effective and, if at all possible, when it is effective, is vital for both intellectual and practical reasons. The volume contains chapters from scholars who have been at the forefront of the efficaciousness debate and argues that terrorism can be effective in delivering tactical returns but is largely ineffective in realizing strategic goals. The book considers the pros and cons of choosing coercive intimidation to serve political ends from both a theoretical perspective and case study approach. It also outlines some of the methodological problems inherent in the academic debate that has taken place thus far on the subject, and suggests ways forward for making future scholarship in this area more inclusive, systematic and dialogically fruitful than it has been to date.

The full story of who declared a holy war against America and Canada . . . and why

This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.

"Is terrorism crime or war? Can there be a 'war against terrorism'? In this fully updated edition, Charles Townshend unravels the questions at the heart of the problem of terrorism - its causes, methods, effects, and limitations - suggesting that it must be understood as a political strategy whose threat can be rationally grasped and answered"--Publisher's description.

In compiling this annotated bibliography on the psychology of terrorism, the author has defined terrorism as "acts of violence intentionally perpetrated on civilian noncombatants with the goal of furthering some ideological, religious or political objective." The principal focus is on nonstate actors. The task was to identify and analyze the scientific and professional social science literature pertaining to the psychological and/or behavioral dimensions of terrorist behavior (not on victimization or effects). The objectives were to explore what questions pertaining to terrorist groups and behavior had been asked by social science researchers; to identify the main findings from that research; and attempt to distill and summarize them within a framework of operationally relevant questions. To identify the relevant social science literature, the author began by searching a series of major academic databases using a systematic, iterative keyword strategy, mapping, where possible, onto existing subject headings. The focus was on locating professional social science literature published in major books or in peer-reviewed journals. Searches were conducted of the following databases October 2003: Sociofile/Sociological Abstracts, Criminal Justice Abstracts (CJ Abstracts), Criminal Justice Periodical Index (CJPI), National Criminal Justice Reference Service Abstracts (NCJRS), PsycInfo, Medline, and Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS). Three types of annotations were provided for works in this bibliography: Author's Abstract -- this is the abstract of the work as provided (and often published) by the author; Editor's Annotation -- this is an annotation written by the editor of this bibliography; and Key Quote Summary -- this is an annotation composed of "key quotes" from the original work, edited to provide a cogent overview of its main points.

Terrorism is a psychological weapon; by definition its purpose is to spread terror or fear in order to achieve goals unattainable by more conventional means. It is a weapon of asymmetric warfare whose success or failure is entirely dependent on the psychological reactions of its targets. Despite this, interest in the effects of terrorism from a behavioral and psychological perspective is relatively recent, dating initially from the 1990s and boosted by the events of September 11th 2001. This book presents papers delivered at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) Risk Management of Terrorism Induced Stress – Guidelines for the Golden Hours (Who, What and When) held in Odesa, Ukraine, from 16-19 September 2018. The aim of the workshop was to bring together experts from the military, science and policy to revisit old guidelines and inform new research into novel approaches. The focus of the workshop was the so-called ‘Golden Hours’; the period immediately following a traumatic event in which therapeutic interventions are thought to have the most impact. What needs to be done in the immediate aftermath of terror, who is vulnerable and who is resilient, and when is intervention appropriate? The book is divided into sections covering the areas of biology, interventions, special populations, additional perspectives, policy, déjà-vu and future directions. Providing a comprehensive overview of the management of terror-related stress, the book will be of interest to planners and policy makers, as well as mental health professionals working with PTSD and other consequences of terror events.