Redelijk objectief boek. Bedenkelijk is wel dat deze schrijver zich voor 95% op Engelstalige bronnen baseert en dat voor een boek dat een wereldwijde problematiek behandelt! Bovendien is de schrijver duidelijk een aanhanger van het negentiendeeeuwse staatsnationalisme. Hij geeft nergens een duidelijke definitie van wat volgens hem terrorisme is. Je kan de vraag stellen of het verzet in WO II terrorisme was. Nee, zullen velen zeggen. Waarom dan het verzet van Basken en Ieren terrorisme noemen? Hij beschouwt natuurlijk de gevestigde staat als legitieme bezetter van land dat aan anderen behoort. Zo lang het gaat om land van kleinere volkeren zoals Ieren, Basken, Bretoenen, Catalanen en zovele anderen levert dat terrorisme op zoals hij dat noemt. Gaat het om land dat bij een grotere natie hoort zoals de Elzas dan krijg je oorlog. Een zekere vorm van minachting voor kleinere volkeren is duidelijk aanwezig in dit boek. Hij heeft het bijvoorbeeld over 'Vlaams' als de taal in Vlaanderen. Wie dit nog schrijft in 2007 doet dit opzettelijk en/of heeft dit van kwaadwillige Franstalige bronnen overgenomen.
Een andere zaak is het ideologische en islamitische terrorisme wat inderdaad zuiver terrorisme is dat niet te verantwoorden valt. Zijn boek is wat dit betreft zeer interessant. ( )

Not a subject area I find fascinating, so it was a struggle to wade into this very dense book. The author barely wastes a word by stuffing each sentence so full of information. In fact, there is so much information, it is hard to pan out and make sense of it all. However, as I soldered on, the book became more and more relevant and interesting. I ended up enjoying it more than I expected to, but was nevertheless glad to finish it. ( )

Readable but Lacking, 28 April 2008


Overall, I was disappointed with book. It is a potted history of several terrorist conflicts, unsurprisingly focusing on the most recents ones within the last 40 years. It gives very little insight into common themes between conflicts, why and how they occur, what sustains them and why they end. It touches on, but doesn't really explore the link and crossover between terrorism and criminality.

The only theme that comes through consistently is Burleigh's total contempt for terrorists and their idealology. This is done through acid one liners which show the moral bankcruptcy and double standards of the terrorist whenever they try and justify their actions. This is fine (though this does get tedious towrds the end) and I can't disagree with him, but it doesn't explain why terrorists will maintain community support (however passive) for their actions and so that they campaign for decades with a constant stream of recruits and funds.

Where Burleigh gets himself worked up into a ferment of rage and loathing is the last section on Islamic terrorism. In some ways it's one the better sections as it's more than just a quick run through of characters and terrorist atrocities (perhaps because the number of incidents has been smaller, although each has been on a much larger scale). Here for Burleigh the liberal lawmaking elite of the Western democracies (shameful left leaning lawyers, worthless asylum laws and benefit handouts for all, are consisted derided) and the poorly co-ordinated security services are almost as much to blame as radical islamic clerics. I feel that Burleigh really just wanted to write about this subject, but for whatever reason thought to expand it to a more general work on terrorism. One final gripe, tying into this, is his constant references to "Londonistan" all through the book. It's as though the final section was on his mind all the time he was writing.

To be fair though it is a good read that keeps up a decent pace, and can serve as good introduction to the terrorist conflicts it covers. For me, I found the part on the Red Brigades and the RAF particularly interesting having little knowledge about these conflicts prior to reading the book.

Overall, you won't be bored reading the book, and it might even get you thinking a little, but if you're expecting deep insight and analysis, you're best looking elsewhere.

Also posted on www.amazon.co.uk ( )

Burleigh kiest zonder blikken of blozen een moralistisch uitgangspunt. “Wat ik met dit boek op glasheldere wijze duidelijk wil maken (…) is dat het terroristische milieu zonder uitzondering blijk geeft van morele ranzigheid, als het al niet puur crimineel is.” Terroristen zijn ‘in moreel opzicht gestoord,’ als ze al niet compleet psychopathisch zijn. Zo zitten we in de inleiding van dit dikke boek al op een duidelijk spoor. Burleigh wil in deze 500 pagina’s ook zijn eigen woede luchten.
Lees verder.... ( )

Too bad this windbag didn't start where I did when I wrote a paper freshman year in college on terrorism: define terrorism*. Later, I wrote a newspaper article on suicide bombers, interviewing social scientists. There's an intersection there of psychology with ideology. That would be another way to go.

This guy's writing resembles a freshman's or a high school kid's in a lot of ways. Kids don't know how to summarize and can't see larger themes and parallels. Windbag goes into often excruciating detail re acts of the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof gang and Black September and throws in odd personal details about the perpetrators. But the historical context and the philosophical tenets are nil.

It's never crossed windbag's that there might be a distinction to be made between violent acts in an occupied country with a common enemy--a colony, let's say--that can't raise an army to conduct conventional or even guerrilla warfare--and the Italian or German Marxists of the 1970's (tho many younger readers won't pick up that they were Marxists and many more won't guess the theory or the goal behind violent acts. OK, I don't.)

*A safe definition of terrorism requires ... innocent, random, civilian deaths or injury. These deaths aren't regrettable collateral effects that you try not to repeat ... they're part of the strategy to win, to get (or scare) a majority to your side. Good example: The Vietnamese communists, who started out in the 1940's assassinating rivals, quickly graduated to pitching grenades at restaurants and movie theaters; by the 1960's they would blow up an orphanage receiving US aid Oddly, Vietnam doesn't appear here. Nor does any colonial struggle unless you count late IRA (which windbag wouldn't, I think.) Nor does he ever attempt to distinguish between war and terrorism.

The Italians in particular and maybe the Germans weren't really terrorists by most definitions because they targeted specific rich people (for ransom money) or high-level political or business figures (sometimes to make a political point. I think). The vast majority of the population was not in terror and not won over to the cause of the Red Brigades. BTW, didn't the Italians have a hell of a lot of members and sympathizers than Baader Meinhof? Well, you won't find out in this huge book.

Communists, Islamic Jihadists and maybe the IRA are going to provide different rationales to their followers on why the deaths of innocent bystanders, children, civilians are acceptable: They're a means to an end, they're expendable infidels anyway, it's in the Koran, Ayatollah said it. *That's* part of culture, windbag.

There's a little, characteristically confusing coverage re the birth of Israel (as usual with this guy, you'll never get the parties and the movements and the history straight). Then some recent recounting of Middle East atrocities. But he probably wouldn't think of Israel or the current Palestinian plight in colonial terms.

Of course, assassinating colonial officials and brutal employers was a constant in England's and other European colonies. Windbag doesn't seem to know that. Odd that he doesn't cover such recent conflicts as the communist independence fighters in Malaya ("CT's" to the British) or the Mau Mau independence struggle in Kenya because in both cases, a prime tactic was to label the "natives" terrorists--"CT's" in Malaya. I don't know enough about the Malaysian Communist Party's tactics (though they definitely targeted Brits more often than Malays, Indians or Chinese) but it was especially absurd in the case of Mau Mau where the assassinations were very much targeted and, of course, a minute number in contrast to the terror launched by the Brits (read Imperial Reckoning).

Anyone writing a book on this subject also needs to discuss effectiveness of terrorist tactics. It worked for the Vietnamese communists, in conjunction with other tactics and circumstances. Maybe arguably more so, or at least to great effect, for Algerian independence fighters because they were able to plant bombs in France itself. Of course, the effectiveness of IRA tactics and not just in the past few decades also is in glaring need of discussion.

We also need a history of the very word "terrorism." The first suicide bombers, of course, were Indian nationalist students in the 1920's. But they didn't take others with them, not intentionally at any rate. Were they labeled terrorists by the whites?

Finally, I looked up Deobandism in the index. Offhandedly described as an Indian Muslim response to the Hindus. Well, as we all learned after 9-11, it was an anti-colonial movement that was a precursor to some of the Muslim groups in Pakistan as well as the Taliban. I swear, the book was published just a few years ago.

Well, enough windbaggery. ( )