Okay, so lets preface this with: This is an opinion piece, don't take it as anything more or less. It is simply my opinion and nothing more.
That said, lets jump right in. This morning in Paris the satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo was attacked by gunmen ( tonight in Paris the manhunt is still on), Three weeks ago a school in Pakistan was attacked and 145 died mostly children and the same week a gunman took a cafe in Australia hostage for almost a full day. What do these three events in very different areas of the world have in common? They inspired terror and they were (as far as we can tell) carried out by terrorists.
But why is terrorism so very terrifying? I have a theory. Lets see if I can articulate it.
I think it is appropriate to start out my analysis with a personal metaphor. I like control. I like to be in control. It freaks me out to be out of control and not know what is going on in a new experience. As a result of this, whenever I head into a new situation I know absolutely nothing about I read everything I can on the topic. I research, I ask questions. In fact there are several times where people have been so upset with my questions they've basically told me to go sit in the corner and calm the heck down because it'll be okay if I go into a situation a little bit blind.
This is the way the world works. Our world governments are simply terrified of the unknown, the uncontrollable, and the unpredictable. And that, my friends, is exactly what a good terrorist organization is. Unpredictable, uncontrollable and the attacks are more often than not, Unknown.
I mean, why else do we have intelligence agencies? To find stuff out so that we know what the heck is going on in the world. I mean, the more you know, the less you don't, right? That's what education is for, and why you never stop learning. I go to school so I'm not stupid because stupid people are what the world needs less of, and to a larger extent we cannot afford stupid governments, so they need to research and never, ever stop learning. yeah we make stupid decisions now and then, everyone does, and so will governments, but the point is we are learning.
Intelligence agencies, then, take a little away from the nervousness governments get about the unpredictable and the unknown. Because we know more, and we can sometimes predict things. We're getting better at the whole prediction thing. Did you know that before 9/11 Terrorism analysts in the intelligence agencies knew that a big attack was going to happen on US soil? they couldn't pin down the who, the when, and the where, but they had an idea that it was going to happen. So we're getting there.
And Afghanistan and Iraq are proof that we try to control. World wide we try to control these terrorist organizations to halt their progress and hopeful wipe them out, but when that doesn't work we always go for the other 'C', containment and keep them to a smaller area, like we do with ISIS. We stop them from advancing forward.
Why is Terrorism terrifying? because it's uncontrollable, unpredictable and unknown. and like me, the governments of the world have a really hard time handling that, and rightly so, that's why they are trying to fix their ignorance. (Thank you intelligence agencies)
*Once again this was an opinion piece, do not take it as anything else
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/14/world/asia/australia-operation/index.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/16/world/asia/pakistan-peshawar-school-attack/
