ABSTRACT
A terrorist group has no natural lifespan. Some researchers have tried to calculate the average life years for terror groups, but the gures yielded serve neither the citizen nor police science. e willpower of the terrorist leader, chance, and the role of government intervention may throw out any mathematical prospects for how long a terrorist group will thrive. us, in social science it is misleading, if not a blunder, to write that terrorist groups have an average lifespan-although several scholars have. We should understand the lessons of terrorism’s history unprejudiced, not seeking either optimism or pessimism in statistics. ese brutish organizations are human, and dynamic, and they may perish from at least a half-dozen very di erent causes, or a combination of them. As victims, enemies, and eventually victors, we American citizens must understand the contest, ght, and direct our energies well, with a strategy.
