Brutal counterterrorism retaliation backfires by generating recruits and public sympathy

Evidence

A comprehensive analysis of terrorism must address how targeted nations grapple with terrorist violence. Extreme retaliatory attacks that cause widespread death and destruction may advance the terrorists’ political cause by arousing a backlash of sympathy for innocent victims and moral condemnation of brutal attacks. Fighting terrorism with morally undisciplined force can also generate a ready supply of recruits prepared to die for their cause, even by suicidal actions. In addition, brutal means also provide new justifications for violence that escalate terrorism rather than diminish it. Indeed, some terrorist activities are strategically designed to win worldwide support and to provoke governments by breeding public disaffection with the system. In these various ways, extreme countermeasures can play into the hands of terrorists. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2276

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s vault interest in how elites’ escalating punitive policies produce backlash and radicalization rather than deterrence — parallels mechanisms behind coercive control producing resistance. — connects to: Recruiters convert expressed emotional pain into a gateway into radical groups — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 288
• SEED: An article angle: the rational self-defeating logic of revenge-driven public policy across counterterrorism, policing, and foreign sanctions — severe punishment as a recruitment engine.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2276