ABSTRACT
ALTHOUGH SOME PERSONS ARE PSYCHOLOGICALLY MORE PRONE to become terrorists than others, it would be a mistake to dismiss terrorists and their deeds as crazy or capricious. Instead, as Bruce Hoffman has noted, a terrorist group’s course of action-the selection of targets and tactics-is shaped by a variety of factors, among them the organization’s ideology.1 Indeed, there is little doubt that the ideology of a group, whether well or ill defined, determines the goals, the targets or victims, and, to some degree, the tactics or methods of terror as well.
