If one was to compile a list of current phenomenon that are common in market place but hardly understood, chances are that 'Terrorism' would be the first one to come to mind. Suicide bombing, hijacking planes and putting innocent civilians' lives in danger are supposed to be acts of terrorism: fair enough. But before you define terrorism, how do you define innocent people? Apparently, different forces have different perspectives of innocent people and eventually, terrorism. Noam Chomsky, an eminent dissent intellectual at MIT, describes terrorism: "If they do it, it's terrorism. If we do it, it's counter-terrorism." (Chomsky 1). In other words, people don't view themselves as evil no matter how evil they're considered by others. And in a combat, both sides believe they're innocent and fighting for good while their opponents are aggressors and evil.
             Consider Nazis for example: the most extreme mass murderers ever. They did not consider themselves terrorists. In fact, they claimed that they are defending the populations and the legitimate European governments from the terrorists partisans directed from London. Evil has different meanings from perspectives.
             One fact about terrorism is that terrorism works. It doesn't fail. Violence usually works as world history would tell you. Secondly, it's a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it's primarily a weapon of the strong, overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror doesn't count as terror.
             A brief statement taken from a US army manual is "Terror is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to attain political or religious ideological goals through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear". This definition is a little...