Terrorism

Terrorism has many definitions and this is what partially makes this topic so difficult to talk about. The one we used in class was "violence (committed by groups) in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands." Every single government organization has their own definition for this issue though and so it is difficult to hold someone responsible for these crimes. And just to add one more level of ambiguity to the mix, there is also state sponsored terrorism. If states have full sovereignty over their population then how can we label anything as "state terrorism" or "state-sponsored terrorism". I think that the definition of sovereignty has changed somewhat over the past few decades. Instead of the right to do whatever you want to your own people with no fear of a counterattack from the rest of the world, states now have a Responsibility to Protect (R2P), something we talked about in my International Conflict class. I understand state terrorism was not a main focus of our class, but I do think it is prevalent in our society and is not labeled enough. We now see many peace enforcement missions that go into sovereign states in order to help out the underrepresented or minority. It does cause problems, yes. Such as in Rwanda. But the idea behind, once fine-tuned, is a valiant effort.
On the other hand, your average terrorists will always exist. There will never come a time when a group of people will not try to force their ideals onto people through force and fear. It's common throughout history. But I do think the way we deal with them  needs to be, almost, simplified. Why don't we treat them as though they're just regular criminals? Why do we make them into the martyrs and huge icons that we do. This merely allows for their ideology to be spread at a faster and more efficient rate. If we merely tried them on regular charges, put them into high security prisons with no hope for release, something we would do should one person attempt the attacks a terrorist organizations might, it may help bring them down to the level of a common criminal. To be honest, it does not seem as though our War on Terror is doing much to help out cause. It has only made Americans look like a bunch of prejudiced snobs that butt their nose into the business of other countries. This is, in part, one of the reasons why the 9/11 attacks happened in the first place, the Western world cannot keep to itself.