Terrorist "Texas Tower"
Observation that those prone to terrorism use some sort of cause as a front to mask the actual fact that either they kill because they desire to or they are under the control of those who kill because they have the desire to.
There are variations of the
syndrome. The suicides; from the killer who "turns the gun on himself"
to the person who wants to die and take as many others with him or her as
possible.
If this is the factor, then on the most part, terrorists can be profiled in their
developmental stages, ages seven to fifteen, and even, in some cases, successfully treated.
The opposite of the terrorist is the normal combatant in military service or in a police force, for example, who only kills as a last resort in a martial action or to save
others or as self defense.
I began to notice this during the years of the conflict in former Yugoslavia. The amount of snipers that would fire from obscure and hidden positions on unarmed non-combatant civilians totally at random, including women,
children and the elderly would fit the percentage of individuals in a populous that would be prone to killing for no other reason than a desire to do so, what I call the "Texas Tower Syndrome".
In my travels I have met a few. They confided to me that they were very scared of the fact that, as one put it, they were "ticking time bombs". So it appears that most of these, under normal circumstances, would not want to kill. What sets them off is
apparently the appropriate threshold of traumatization which could be either a
personal extreme or a national extreme such as the one found in former Yugoslavia in the nineteen nineties.
Then there are the others who kill because they enjoy it. The terrorist so-called "cause", whatever it purports to be, is the veneer they hide behind. This type wants to watch the victim die. This is somewhat similar to those who, at the slightest opportunity, foment a riot. Once a riot is in progress, this type of person, uses the ensuing state of confusion, lawlessness and anarchy as a cover for looting.
The worst-case scenario for all this would be a United States nation-wide type of L.A. "King" riot fomented by potential looters, and followed up by the "Toweries", out on the streets firing anything they can get at any soft target they can find just for the amusement of killing. Actually, in a low-level way, this is already going on because the frequency of violent death in the U.S. is greater than one such fatality per month.
Nerveless there can be methods of suitable prevention for this, but it would by no means, be a simple matter: the profiling of individuals on a global scale, the
monitoring of traumatic events, publicly funded assistance for those who voluntarily seek it, and, most importantly, the removal of major soft targets by decentralizing the international city system and dispersing populations evenly throughout an entire national space.
Of course, none of this is likely to happen, so, ... what can I say? Get yourself a decent flack jacket. Business systems and political systems are always far to feeble to be able to deal effectively with these types of problems.
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Paul A. L. Hall
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