As terrorist media coverage levels spike in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack, there seems to a sizeable difference between the innate strength of terrorists and the fear they manage to invoke.In traditional warfare, fear is a by-product of material and human loss. It is often proportional to the side inflicting that loss. Conversely, terrorist attacks only kill a handful of people, yet they yield a heightened sense of fear amongst the masses.
The terrorist mindset is like that of a theatre producer. Knowing deep down they’ll never be equipped for warfare, terrorist cells instead opt for display. The terrorists themselves cannot envisage what the end result will be, but they have a far better chance in chaos than in calm. As confusion sets in amongst that chaos, the worldwide media amplifies that fear which in turn yields irrational choices amongst domestic populations that would have otherwise taken years to engineer using pre-declared warfare. Ask anyone where they were during the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria on August 21st, 2013, and they’ll probably scratch their heads. Ask anyone where they were on 9/11, and they are likely to offer a pretty specific answer.
We gauge terrorism by its emotional impact. Employing theatrics, the terrorist mindset succeeds in unsettling the social and political balance despite having almost no military capabilities. My heart goes out to the victims of this week’s Charlie Hebdo attacks. It pains me to think that terrorism is a strategy of those weak of mind, adopted by theatricians without the courage to seek real power.
