ABSTRACT
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, spawned efforts that remain the major elements of the present and immediate future in Afghanistan and Iraq. The modern practice of terror, from which the term terrorism is derived, is generally considered an artifact of the French Revolution, associated most closely with the French extremist revolutionary Robespierre and the infamous “Reign of Terror” that was one phase of the French Revolution. The Islamic State burst onto the world stage in 2014 as one of the most effective groups fighting the Syrian regime in the Syrian civil war. The nature of potential targets provides some inherent difficulties for those opposing terrorists. Noise is compounded by a kind of “levels of analysis” problem that can be expressed as a strategic versus tactical definition of objectives. A campaign with this emphasis seeks to demonstrate that terrorism is always an inappropriate, self-defeating method to achieve the political goals for which it is contemplated.
