I'm going to make this short and sweet but I just want to sum up a viewpoint that I have personally developed on the issue of terrorism, particularly Islamic terrorism, which is an opinion that I have not heard expressed elsewhere.
What is written below applies to all kinds of terrorism and I do not mean to single out Islamic extremism, but obviously with the Taliban and ISIS featuring on the news in recent times it is reasonable to use Islamic extremism/terrorism as an example.
I just want to say right off the bat that I do not claim to be an expert when it comes to religious fundamentalism or terrorism of any kind. I am also aware that religious fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism are multi-faceted problems with no simple solution.
A simple question: Why would terrorist organisations attack the general public as oppose to government targets?
What? Because they're unhappy with the civilian casualties in Iraq and/or Afghanistan?
But literally hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of western civilians protested (and continue to protest to this day) against wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.
In short, the general public largely are against these wars.
So why attack the public?
Not only that, but any intelligent self-respecting terrorist who has spent even a small amount of time living in the USA or UK will be well aware of the divide between the public and the government.
It is blatantly obvious even to outsiders that many western governments simply do not represent the views of the people (a perfect example being the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc!).
So why would anybody take out their frustration with the west on civilians?
I am absolutely NOT endorsing violence against anybody as anybody who uses violence tends to loose the right to a platform and rightly so, but if somebody is going to launch some kind of attack, why in the name of all that's holy would it be an attack on the general public when you consider everything above?
Not really a viewpoint, more of a question I guess.
Yes we can talk all day about how violence is not the answer (I agree as I said above) and all that, but it literally doesn't make sense to attack random members of the public if you're trying to make a serious statement.