Bruce Hoffman > Quotes

“One of the problems with the kill-or-capture metric is that it has often been to the exclusion of having a deeper, richer understanding of the movement, its origins, and our adversaries' mindset. The nuances are absolutely critical. Our adversaries are wedded to the ideology that informs and fuels their struggle, and, by not paying attention, we risk not knowing our enemy.”
― Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

“Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was held hostage for almost seven years by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, relates a telling conversation he had with one of his guards. The guard had objected to a newspaper article that referred to Hezbollah as terrorists. “We are not terrorists,” he indignantly stated, “we are fighters.” Anderson replied, “Hajj, you are a terrorist, look it up in the dictionary. You are a terrorist, you may not like the word and if you do not like the word, do not do it.”84 The terrorist will always argue that it is society or the government or the socioeconomic “system” and its laws that are the real “terrorists,” and moreover that if it were not for this oppression, he would not have felt the need to defend either himself or the population he claims to represent.”
― Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism

“This imprecision has been abetted partly by the modern media, whose efforts to communicate an often complex and convoluted message in the briefest amount of airtime or print space possible have led to the promiscuous labeling of a range of violent acts as “terrorism.”
― Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism