Exploitable weaknesses in terrorist organizations

¶ … Terrorist Organizations

Exploitable Weakness in Terrorist Organizations

Terrorism and Counter Terrorism mirroring Criminology and Criminal Justice

In simple words, terrorism is a systematically organized act of violence that affects people, government, and the country overall while counter terrorism refers to tactics, strategies, or attacks carried out by the authoritative forces to counter terrorism. Criminology on the other hand is the subject that studies how crime is carried out. Terrorism is one of the topics within criminology, study of which enables people to attain a better understanding of how terrorism is carried out and why. Criminal Justice is a field of study that scrutinizes the policies, tactics and strategies carried out by law, to counter crime or in other words terrorism (Cohn, Farrington, & Wright, 1998).

Normalization of Counter Terror Practices- a Matter of Concern

Normalization of counter terror practices basically refers to standardization of counter practices for terrorism. While in some cases, standardization appears to be beneficial, in this case it becomes a matter of concern. Terrorism is not just one systematic act, it comprises of different systematic acts of violence where each act is completely different from the other. Also the impact of the terrorism act will also be different depending upon the factors how, where and why the attack was carried out. Thus normalizing the counter terror practices will give a limited and ineffective control over terrorism as the same practices will be carried out for different acts of terrorism (Bolz, Dudonis, & Schulz, 2001).

First Principle, Interest, and Passion Rationalities -- Approaches and Decisions

First principle approach towards rationality requires gathering evidence or proof before jumping to a conclusion. Interest approach to rationality refers to rationalization on the basis of collective interest of a nation while Passion approach to rationality refers to rationalizing on the basis of passion. In light of terrorism, counter terrorism, criminology, and criminal justice, the decision taken by law to punish the terrorists are taken through first principle approach of rationality while decisions taken by terrorists to carry out a terrorist act is based on passion approach of rationality while conciliations and mutual understanding between the authorities and violent groups are clear examples of decisions taken through interest approach of rationality.

2001 Patriot Act

While there are many controversial views about this act, it would not be wrong to state that it had a positive impact on prosecutorial and intelligence purposes of the FISA court. The purposes were altered by increasing the degree of severity of each purpose. Criminal information was quickly attainable due to severe intelligence standards and robust information was available as a linkage between the intelligence officials and the prosecutors. The most significant impacts are both positive and negative. The positive impacts are the volumes of application filed in the FISA court since the act's implementation has dramatically increased and therefore terrorism is more controlled. The negative impact is lack of individual privacy which was the main reason of controversial views (FBI, 2012).

While there is no doubt that lack of individual privacy increased after the implementation of the Act, the fact that the rate of terrorism has been largely controlled also remains its stance. It has been argued that during the times that terrorism needs to be controlled, the Act should be given more importance despite the rising lack of individual privacy however during the times that terrorism has been controlled, individual privacy should be given more importance.

NORTHCOM -- Comparative Views

NORTHCOM, an implication of the 2001 Patriot Act, is a unified combatant command of the U.S. military that provides military support to the civil authorities of U.S.. It is important to know that NORTHCOM has been a target of both positive and negative reactions. For instance, the U.S. war college is supportive of NORTHCOM as it believes to have enhanced the capabilities of the civil authorities while the Center for Defense gathering Information disagrees and believes that NORTHCOM has crippled the civil authorizes of the country.

Alien Absconder Apprehension Initiative

The goal of the alien absconder apprehension initiative was basically to increase intelligence opportunity by interrogating middle easterners. The goal was partially attained as many Arab descent people in the U.S. were detained and deported as an implication of the Alien Absconder Apprehension initiative. Within a time span of one to two years, almost 1300 fugitives were detained and deported due to which the likelihood of crime occurrence became low. However, the concentration was on the Arabs only, while it should have been on other descents as well (Miller, 2012).

Although the Alien Absconder Apprehension Initiative is well appreciated by most of the people, it has its drawbacks as well. Many innocent visitors were deported based on doubts of them being potential terrorists within the country.

About Point of Failure (POF)

A point of failure can be identified by certain conditions such as a loop of ineffectiveness i.e. If a process isn't carried out in the way it was intended to be despite the alterations that are made to make it work, if a process doesn't give the same result as expected, if the process isn't completed on time etc. Law enforcement and other agencies of the Department of Homeland Security need to learn one important thing about the processes, policies and tactics they design, before a POF occurs.

In every process there is a task that acts as a hub or gives multi-connectivity to other subtasks. If the hub works well, the POF is less likely to occur. If in case POF does occur, they should have a contingency plan. The contingency plan should comprise of a different strategy and should have multiple routes in order to avoid dependencies on a single hub. In this way, even if POF does occur, it would have a minimum negative effect on the actual implementation plan.

Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Geneva Convention