Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
    Unavailable
    What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
    Unavailable
    What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
    Ebook488 pages6 hours

    What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat

    By Louise Richardson

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “This is at the top of my list for best books on terrorism.”–Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill

    How can the most powerful country in the world feel so threatened by an enemy infinitely weaker than we are? How can loving parents and otherwise responsible citizens join terrorist movements? How can anyone possibly believe that the cause of Islam can be advanced by murdering passengers on a bus or an airplane? In this important new book, groundbreaking scholar Louise Richardson answers these questions and more, providing an indispensable guide to the greatest challenge of our age.

    After defining–once and for all–what terrorism is, Richardson explores its origins, its goals, what’s to come, and what is to be done about it. Having grown up in rural Ireland and watched her friends join the Irish Republican Army, Richardson knows from firsthand experience how terrorism can both unite and destroy a community. As a professor at Harvard, she has devoted her career to explaining terrorist movements throughout history and around the globe. From the biblical Zealots to the medieval Islamic Assassins to the anarchists who infiltrated the cities of Europe and North America at the turn of the last century, terrorists have struck at enemies far more powerful than themselves with targeted acts of violence. Yet Richardson understands that terrorists are neither insane nor immoral. Rather, they are rational political actors who often deploy carefully calibrated tactics in a measured and reasoned way. What is more, they invariably go to great lengths to justify their actions to themselves, their followers, and, often, the world.

    Richardson shows that the nature of terrorism did not change after the attacks of September 11, 2001; what changed was our response. She argues that the Bush administration’ s “global war on terror” was doomed to fail because of an ignorance of history, a refusal to learn from the experience of other governments, and a fundamental misconception about how and why terrorists act. As an alternative, Richardson offers a feasible strategy for containing the terrorist threat and cutting off its grassroots support.

    The most comprehensive and intellectually rigorous account of terrorism yet, What Terrorists Want is a daring intellectual tour de force that allows us, at last, to reckon fully with this major threat to today’s global order.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 5, 2006
    ISBN9781588365545
    Unavailable
    What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat
    Author

    Louise Richardson

    I retired in 2012 from the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality--Web Administrator for the Water Quality Division. I'm a native Texan and I have a 1971 Bachelor of Arts Degree from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) where I majored in History and minored in Biology. I also have a Texas Elementary Teaching Certificate and a California Standard Teaching Credential, neither of which I have ever used. I've never been married and I currently have three cats: Mocha Cappuccino and two of her sons Giancarlo and Salvatore. My short novel "Primitive Life" is available at Smashwords. It. and four other books can also be found at Amazon.Com. I have written several plays, three of which have been produced locally, including my musical "Chanteuse" which has received two productions and whose music won a 2011 ASCAPlus Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. I currently frequent local open mics singing my songs as well as reading my poetry and excerpts from my prose.

    Read more from Louise Richardson

    Related to What Terrorists Want

    Related ebooks

    Politics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Muslims You Cannot See

      Jun 2, 2017

      The Muslims You Cannot See
      8 min read

    • Article

      Preaching The ‘Quiet No’ Of Nonviolence

      Mar 29, 2022

      The Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. is a Methodist minister whose theories and strategies of nonviolence were used in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. His new book – “Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom,” a collection of his

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reporting On The Troubles

      Oct 31, 2019

      Reporting On The Troubles
      8 min read

    • Article

      Same Delaney Is At Home

      Nov 27, 2023

      I’ve lived in London my whole life and experienced a wide array of public disturbances along the way. I was 15 in 1990 when the poll tax riots kicked off and recall a couple of teachers and pupils coming into school on the Monday morning with a few b

      2 min read

    • Article

      Making Sense Of Conspiracy Theorists As The World Gets More Bizarre

      Apr 11, 2021

      In 1999 I sat in a Vancouver café with a group of anti-capitalist activists. They’d just returned from protesting the WTO in Seattle to find a new, far stranger foe in town – David Icke. He was there to lecture about how the ruling elite are actually

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Conversation

      Oct 10, 2017

      The Conversation
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Young Ones

      Aug 23, 2021

      The Young Ones
      3 min read

    • Article

      Enduring Message Of Nonviolence Reaches New Audiences

      Feb 29, 2024

      Clarence B. Jones is preaching nonviolence.  At 93, this civil rights pioneer, who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. write his “I Have a Dream” speech, is still combating hate. But these days, instead of leading protest meetings, Mr. Jones is re

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Conversion Of Paul

      Mar 30, 2023

      The Conversion Of Paul
      8 min read

    • Article

      I’m Still Saying Her Name

      Sep 15, 2020

      I’m Still Saying Her Name
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lynchings Past And Present

      Apr 12, 2018

      When history is looked at in its complexity, it plays havoc with the present moment. "This wasn't done by the Klan, or people who had to wear a mask. This was done by teachers and clergy and law enforcement officers." This is Bryan Stevenson of the E

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘Call yourself English?’

      Aug 21, 2019

      ‘Call yourself English?’
      19 min read

    • Article

      Fallen idols

      Jun 11, 2021

      Fallen idols
      15 min read

    • Article

      Speaking Freely

      Jul 14, 2019

      wins a wonderfully warm unisex Weka Woo hat and a Wyld Hug scarf, together valued at $160, from Naturally Wyld. Both use Pilana yarn that comes from organically and ethically farmed sheep. Pilana’s lightweight blend encapsulates the best attributes o

      9 min read

    Reviews for What Terrorists Want

    4/5

    22 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This amazingly brief compendium of what we know about terrorists and terrorism ends with a to my mind very accurate critique of U.S. policies and actions to address terrorism since September 2001 and then a set of six rules and suggestions to more effectively handle terrorism. Dr. Richardson writes in a fluent style, has been researching and analyzing terrorism for a long time, and is clear about her biases. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      "What Terrorists Want" provides a valuable academic perspective on the history and anatomy of terrorism as a social, political and military phenomenon. Relatively free of ideological posturing, Louise Richardson's analysis cites examples of terrorists movements from the middle ages through the Iraq War, across a variety of religious (and secular) traditions, and draws thereby a host of salient conclusions about the prominent motivations behind terrorist action. Along the way, she handily refutes the most common (and durable) misconceptions about terrorism generally; i.e., that it is a symptom of psychological disfunction, religious indoctrination, or the verities of disaffection, poverty or naïveté.The latter part of the book tends to get sidetracked by the political issues and controversies of the Iraq War and the policies of George W. Bush. As the first edition was published in 2006, this is perhaps excusable to some degree, but it tends to diminish the timelessness of her central points. (It can be reasonably argued that U.S. foreign policy is subject to a cornucopia of non-counterterrorism-related influences, and any serious critique of same should at least make an attempt to acknowledge this.) The essential correctness, however, of her central thesis about terrorism is well able to withstand scrutiny. In the final analysis, Richardson gives a clear, focused and infuriating account of why terrorism is adopted as a tactic of psychological warfare and how the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge its underlying social mechanics threatens us all.