Töten von Terrorgruppen-Führern sinnlos ✼

Robert Wright:

So maybe the question to ask is whether Americans should be convinced of that — whether assassinating terrorists really helps keep us safe.

There’s no way of answering this question with complete confidence, but it turns out there are some relevant and little-known data. They were compiled by Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago, who published her findings last year in the journal Security Studies. She studied 298 attempts, from 1945 through 2004, to weaken or eliminate terrorist groups through “leadership decapitation” — eliminating people in senior positions.

Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect.

Die Kommentare zu dem Artikel sind auch lesenswert. Interessant der Vergleich zu den Kommentaren beim heutigen Artikel der Zeit, Taliban in Kundus führerlos. Zudem wird sich zeigen, ob die Aktion dann auch das gewünschte Ziel erbracht hat, oder ob Frau Jordan recht behalten soll.