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talisman comments on Terrorism is not about Terror - Less Wrong
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Modeling terrorists as trying to kill as many people as possible strikes me as insufficient. In Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt models their aims as propagandistic, which feels more like the right angle---hence the focus on inefficient but spectacular killing.
This would, I think, fall afoul of Abrahm's point, '5) terrorist organizations generally carry out anonymous attacks, precluding target countries from making policy concessions;'. It's hard to be propagandistic if it's unclear what this deed is the propaganda of.
Hm. I'm far from an expert, and it could well be that there are ten times as many anonymous attacks, but off the top of my head I think of WTC '93, the Millenium plot, 9/11, London trains, Madrid trains, Israel suicide bombings, Munich massacre, Iraq beheadings, USS Cole, bombings of US embassies.
Not off the top of my head: Golden Mosque bombing, Tamil Tigers numerous bombings, IRA-related terrorism, etc. Scanning through this I find many more terrorist attacks that were done with a clear political or propaganda purpose.
No, it's not quite that bad! It's more like twice as many:
Abrahms references his analysis of a RAND dataset, and also Bruce Hoffman's "Why Terrorists Don't Claim Credit" (in Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol 9 #1 1997). I haven't read the latter, but his analysis seems enough for me.
I think there's definitely something of a mental bias here - it's vastly easier to remember the rare dramatic attack (which sooner or later someone will claim credit for) than the many anonymous ones.
A good heuristic I use when I'm tempted to write comments such as these: "The plural of anecdote is not data!"
Note also that attacks for a reason may well be more memorable than anonymous attacks.
Funny thing about your comment is that just yesterday I was reading about a large anonymous terrorist attacks that authorities were trying to figure out who was responsible for.
I'd tell you more, but I've forgotten how many people died and where it was.
Incidentally, I've expanded my above comment into an essay called 'Terrorism is not Effective' (http://www.gwern.net/Terrorism%20is%20not%20Effective).