Note: These days War and Terrorism are often spoken of in the same breath. Example: The War on Terrorism. But doing so is a big mistake. They are quite different, so I will be covering War in a separate section. That said, here's what I have to say about terrorism.
Terrorism is advertising. The goal of the terrorist is to promote a cause. The terrorist engages in violence because it's spectacular and cost effective when you have a community with little money but lots of enthusiasm for a cause. When other forms of advertising work more effectively, then terrorism is not used. (Keep this in mind, it becomes important later in this essay.)
Because advertising is at the heart of terrorism, media people are symbiotes with terrorists -- the more media coverage a terrorist event gets, the more bang-per-buck both groups experience. Yes, the community has a right to know what's happening, but the media people of the communities reporting on terrorism need to be acutely aware that when they are reporting on terrorism they are supporting an advertising campaign.
Terrorism is not war-making. One thing that distinguishes terrorism from war-making is it's not a national activity. It is the work of a small group of disgruntled people who don't have access to any better method of promoting their cause. War is a nation-against-nation activity... unless what is happening is a violent conflict between two groups in the same community, in which case the war becomes a civil war. But neither of these are terrorism.
Terrorism is conducted by a much smaller group, and this makes a difference. Terrorism is a criminal activity and should be handled by local authorities who deal with crime -- family, police and lawyers. Dealing with terrorists is not a war-time activity to be handled by soldiers and spies. When soldiers and spies hunt for terrorists, they seriously disenfranchise the communities they hunt in, which totally defeats their purpose because their activities radicalize the communities they hunt in, which makes them even more fertile spawning grounds for terrorists.
My personal experience on this radicalizing effect of soldiers and spies dates from a time when there was an anti-war riot at MIT in 1972. While the anti-Vietnam War movement was white-hot that spring in the Boston area because Nixon had authorized more bombings in North Vietnam, MIT was not a place where big demonstrations happened. But one day close to the end of the school year riot police came to the campus and set themselves up in front of the main building at 77 Massachusetts Avenue. This was such a strange event that the dorms emptied for the afternoon and students formed a huge, curious crowd in the park across the street... wondering what would happen?
Nothing much did, until the police got ready to go home at sunset. Then, for reasons that were inexplicable to the students watching, the police charged them and caught and beat up twenty or thirty of the slow ones -- the worst injury was a broken arm. The rest of the crowd scattered quickly, and it was over as far as the police were concerned. They went home.
But for us students it was far from over! There was huge outrage! That night as I was walking on campus I had to yell at a couple of students to stop tipping over parking meters. "Hey!" I yelled, "Don't do that! I have to live here tomorrow." They stopped and wandered off.
The next day the students started a strike. And if the riot police had come back the next day, and tried that same stunt of chasing down students, the students would have been much better prepared to enact some of their own violence. Fortunately, they didn't.
The point of this story is that treating the MIT student community to a dose of riot police radicalized the community, and that made it a more fertile place for terrorism. It was the opposite of solving the problem.
There are two effective ways to combat terrorism:
First, enfranchise the community where the terrorists are spawned. Terrorist thrive in communities that don't care if a person is a terrorist or not. These are communities where, "Meh... I don't care." is the motto of the day -- the community members are disenfranchised. When these community members are reenfranchised, they will start caring, and the terrorists lose their safe haven -- they will be discouraged by friends and family, reported by their neighbors, and the authorities will arrest them when they are reported. In a disenfranchised community, the authorities won't arrest because they don't want to bother, they've been bribed, or they are afraid the community will attack them.
Second, reduce the advertising value of terrorist events. If terrorist acts are not seen as cost-effectively promoting a cause, they won't be engaged in.
In sum, Terrorism is advertising, and it's something very different from war, and treating it like a war is an expensive blunder. It should be treated as a criminal activity and it will be reduced by enfranchising the communities that offer safe haven to the terrorists.