NYT: Why Do Jihadist Terrorists Commit Terrorism? We May Never Know ...
06/15/2016
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From the NYT:

Why Do Terrorists Commit Terrorism?

After reviewing hundreds of cases, I’ve found that there might be no way to pinpoint an attacker’s motive.

By PETER BERGEN JUNE 14, 2016

Peter Bergen is a vice president of New America, a professor at Arizona State University and CNN’s national security analyst. He is the author, most recently, of “United States of Jihad.”

WASHINGTON — AFTER a terrorist attack like the one in Florida on Sunday, one of the first questions people always ask is: Why? Why would someone take the lives of innocent civilians who are total strangers? That is a question to which I have long sought an answer. But my search has led me instead to another question: Is an answer even possible?

To try to figure out why terrorists do what they do, researchers at the think tank New America and I reviewed court records in more than 300 cases of people charged with jihadist terrorism in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001 …

Let me venture a wild guess: a common denominator reason for why jihadist terrorists committed terrorism was because they were jihadists.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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