Yuval Noah Harari book excerpt. Concise informative, articulate
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As the literal meaning of the word indicates. Terrorism is a military strategy that hopes to change the political situation by spreading fear rather than by causing material damage. This strategy is almost always adopted by very weak parties who cannot inflict much material damage on their enemies. Of course, every military action spreads fear. But in conventional warfare, fear is just a byproduct of the material losses and is usually proportional to the force inflicting the losses in terrorism. Fear is the main story and there is an astounding disproportion between the actual strength of the terrorists and the fear they managed to inspire. It's not always easy to change the political situation through violence on the first day of the battle of Somme 1st July 1916, 19,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 wounded. By the time the battle ended in November, both sides together had suffered more than a million casualties including 300,000 dead. Yet this horrific carnage hardly altered the political balance of power in Europe. It took another two years and millions of additional casualties for something to finally snap compared to the somme offensive. Terrorism is a puny matter. The Paris attacks of November 2015 killed 130 people. The Brussels bombings of March 2016 killed 32 people. And the Manchester Arena bombing in May 2017 killed 22 people in 2002 at the height of the Palestinian terror campaign against Israel when buses and restaurants were bombed on a daily basis. The yearly toll reached 451 dead Israelis. In the same year, 542 Israelis were killed in car accidents. A few terrorist attacks such as the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 killed hundreds. The 9 11 attacks set a new record killing almost 3000 people. Yet even this is dwarfed by the price of conventional warfare. If you add all the people killed and wounded in Europe by terrorist attacks since 1945 including victims of nationalist, religious leftist and rightist groups alike, the total will still fall far short of the casualties in any number of obscure first world war battles. How then can terrorists hope to achieve much following an act of terrorism? The enemy continues to have the same number of soldiers, tanks and ships as before the enemy's communication network, roads and railways are largely intact. His factories, ports and bases are hardly touched. However, the terrorists hope that even though they can barely dent the enemy's material power fear and confusion will cause the enemy to misuse his intact strength and overreact. Terrorists calculate that when the enraged enemy uses his massive power against them, he will raise a much more violent military and political storm than the terrorists themselves could ever create during every storm. Many unforeseen things happen, mistakes are made. Atrocities are committed. Public opinion, waivers, neutrals change their stance and the balance of power shifts. Hence, terrorists resemble a fly that tries to destroy a China shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot move even a single teacup. So how does a fly destroy a China shop? It finds a bull gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild with fear and anger and destroys the China shop. This is what happened after 9 11. As Islamic fundamentalists incited the American bull to destroy the Middle Eastern China shop. Now they flourish in the wreckage and there's no shortage of short tempered bulls in the world.