Political Science - terrorism - Essay Example

Some states do not like to fight terrorism at all, but prefer to focus on more clearly defined international crimes. Finally, there is an argument which says that approaches to terrorism which include the terrorist are more effective in stopping such terror-related violence. One of the things that makes terrorism so hard to combat is that it is hard to define what exactly counts as terrorism and what counts as a legitimate mode of attacking an enemy. This issue is made more confusing when one tries to examine the historical definitions of similar attacks.

One other major problem is that the word is heavily colored by the point of view of the person using it. For instance, many considered the Tamil Tigers to be terrorists because they used car bombs and other attacks on civilians. On the other hand, there were also many people who considered themselves freedom fighters, because they were fighting against an oppressive nationalist regime. This example should make the problematic nature of the term “terrorism” fairly obvious. Despite some confusion over how to define terrorism, few people deny that it is a current international problem.

Attacks like those of Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center on 9/11 are clearly terrorism, and clearly should not be allowed to happen in order to make the world a safer place for everybody living in it. However, not everyone agrees that the consequences of fighting terrorism outweigh the benefits in terms of stopping terrorists from striking again. These consequences and benefits mostly stem from the same reality: that of dealing with an extremist group who is willing to take any action necessary to fight for their cause.

Acts of terrorism usually are engaged by extremist movements who have little to no benefit in seeing the other sides point of view. Unfortunately, this situation is only made worse by fighting the