What Is Terrorism Case

Nicholas Yoakum

CJUS253-1302A-04: Homeland Security

5/24/2013

"Resubmittal originally submitted 4/12/13"

Individual 1

What is terrorism? Def. Terrorism is a technique for inducing fear. Terrorists attempt, by the nature of indiscriminate acts of violence, to use fear to achieve a variety of tactical and political objectives. This is saying unlike nation warfare that adheres to rules and focuses on only military targets, terrorists do not discriminate between civilian and military targets their focus is on fear spread through nonmilitary targets. The warfare used by these radicals encompass a gamut of weapons from suicide bombings where bombs are placed on people or vehicles and exploded at the correct time to cause the most harm; to weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear weapons and dirty bombs. Dirty bombs are nuclear devices that spread radiation without the full power of an actual nuclear explosion.

Terrorist groups use fear against a population to achieve their political and religious views. There are three groups that pose the biggest threat against the U.S.A they all belong to a central group known as Al-Quid a, the other groups are the Al-Quida Islamic Maghreb, and the Al-Quid a Arabian Peninsula and Hezbollah. These groups are affiliated but carry out their own terrorists acts in different parts of the world with the common goal to remove the U.S. from the world scene and create a conservative Muslim world.

They try to accomplish this with guerrilla tactics such as they have done since Russia tried to invade Afghanistan. Other groups such as Hezbollah, agree with Al-Quida and their goals and network with these other terrorist groups giving them support such as arms and staging grounds to launch attacks.

Due to the threat these groups pose to the U.S. certain sites in the United States are thought of as high possibility targets such as military bases this has been seen in the bombing of the USS Cole and insurgent attacks on bases in Afghanistan. Other targets like rail and metro civilian transport, chemical plants, natural gas pipe lines, dams, and bio labs. These targets come to mind due to the ease of mass destruction with the least amount of force from attackers. With the guerrilla tactics used by these terrorist groups' attacks would be most likely done with car bombs, suicide bombers, shootings in major U.S. cities. The bio and chemical labs would be targets for explosions to spread disease and toxic fumes into the surrounding areas. The goal of these targets is to spread the most fear and chaos as possible with the least amount of personnel and supplies.

Unlike our nation's past where we started with terrorist acts against the British to ensure our Independence as a nation through guerilla