Amidst the hysteria over the attempted bombing on Christmas Day, a form of misinformation has enjoyed wide acceptance with little pushback. In recent days, it has been said in many places, including Foreign Policy and the front page of this site.
[T]errorism by definition is only successful if it produces "terror"
Q: What's the goal of terrorists?
A: To terrify.
This is, simply put, factually untrue.
It may seem counterintuitive, but the goal of terrorists is not to inflict terror. Their means is not their end. Nor is terrorism successful merely by producing terror; such an idea lowers the bar for success for terrorists so low that it is all too easily attained.
Such a view is quite attractive to us, because it is easily reconciled with our emotional response to terrorism. We see terrorists as losers, crazy persons, and as nihilists without values or rationality. But this flies in the face of all of the available evidence, and what we can prove to be true: that terrorists are educated, rational actors who are employing a sound military strategy.
That strategy is coercion. Coercion in a military strategy that dates back to the post-World War I explosion in military thinking, and has a very simple premise: it is cheaper to convince nations that it is in their interest to do what you want them to do than it is to force them to do what you want them to do. Al Qaeda does not have the strength to force the United States to its will; their goal in sponsoring terrorism against us is not to frighten us for the sake of our being terrified, but to coerce us into doing things that will hurt us more than they can hurt us. They want to force us into destroying ourselves.
Understanding that, we can understand that the meaningful victories that terrorists have had over the United States have not been their successes in killing Americans or scaring Americans. Their successes have been in coercing us to enact policies which harm our long-term interests and help them on the path to achieving their true goals. Those policies have included our invasion of Iraq, our establishment of Camp X-Ray, our use of torture against suspected terrorists, and by creating a false divide between the United States and Muslims around the world.
In light of that reality, suggesting that the goal of the Ft. Hood attack or the attempted Christmas bombing was simply to cause terror is a simplistic answer that denies the greater threat. That threat is that we will, in our fear, distrust and underutilize the thousands of American Muslims who are among our most valuable members of our armed forces and whose service is essential to the success of our military missions in the Middle East, and that we will discriminate against Muslims in public places such as airports, creating widespread resentment among Muslims towards the American government and widespread suspicion of Muslims among the American people. These are the strategic goals of the enemy who uses terror as a weapon against us. And they will use them as weapons against us, weapons that are far more potent than however many underpants bombers they can recruit.