In 150 years no terrorist organization has achieved it’s goal.
Depends very strongly on our definition of terrorist, and your understanding of their immediate and long-term goals.
I am not wanting to detract from the deaths caused by these unnecessary atrocities, but all of these numbers are dwarfed by the civilian casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars that were started with the stated (false) goals of ending terrorism and oppressive regime…
Now do one of drone strikes by the Us and its’ Allies. Let’s see how it defers, or not.
see first comment
Why, thankyou kind Sir or Madam.
Bin Laden certainly achieved his goals, and we’re now doing the bidding of Daesh as well.
Wasn’t bin Laden planning to overthrow the Saudi government?
For what it’s worth, here are bin Laden’s fatwas…
1996:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011106100207/http://www.kimsoft.com/2001/binladenwar.htm
The Taliban did control Afghanistan for awhile. Wasn’t that their goal? Or were they not a terrorist org then?
The video would change very little if US drone strikes were included because very few US drone strikes kill more than 20 people.
I didn’t count the terror markers in the video, but according to the data sheets of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism between 2004 and today 13 drone strikes in Pakistan had at least 20 casualties (41 when using “maximum total people killed”).
The thing I find astounding about Randall Munroe is that he still uses the Fahrenheit scale.
It would be useful to know how the creator of this video defines terrorism. Does state sponsored terrorism get included? If so, does he also include that committed by Western governments? Or is his definition a narrow and familiar one?
“It’s close to a historical universal that the term “terror” is used for their terror against us and our clients, not our terror against them. Heads of states can qualify as “terrorists,” when they are official enemies.” Noam Chomsky
Didn’t BB post a link a while back to a similar time-lapse cartoon of every nuclear explosion ever? I recall seeing the video, with different colors for each perpetrating nation, and a running total for each nation.
Big difference being, only 2 of those were ever in war or to hurt others. Everything else was just testing/show of force.
The first application of the term terrorist was to Robespierre and friends (as in Reign of Terror), so control over a state has never been remotely disqualifying. Heads of state can qualify as terrorists when they rule by terror.
I wonder, what if you rule by fomenting fear of terrorism? Does that still count? Or is that like, metaterrorism?
