In our article How Terrorism Works, we explain that the goal of
terrorists is to create fear in their victims and to use that
fear as a weapon. While there are some known terrorist
organizations around the world, many terrorists act alone or in
small groups. In the U.S. alone, terrorists have ranged from
mail bombers to school shooters to people parking trucks full of
explosives in front of buildings. A foreign group that had been
operating inside the country for some time orchestrated the
terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001. That fact,
combined with the magnitude of damage and lives lost that day,
achieved the goal of creating fear throughout the U.S. Nine days
after the attacks, President George W. Bush delivered an address
to a joint session of Congress and the American people,
declaring a war on terrorism. Most of that ongoing war targets
known terrorist organizations in the Middle East. Unlike an open
war, though, a war on terrorism isn't as straightforward as
meeting the enemy on a battl