The logic of the state...and the logic of the terrorist organization

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Some analysts confuse a state that is waging a war according to complex political, military, and legal calculations, with a terrorist organization that is not governed by obligations or ethics themselves. They have suspiciously missed that the state bears responsibility for the decision of war and its results, and even for victory and its consequences, while the organization may be content with marketing its mere survival as a victory!

Some analyzes treat the organization's ability to carry out an attack here or there as evidence of the state's weakness, but experiences reveal the flaw of these comparisons. The United States, with all its military and intelligence power and international alliances, fought a war that lasted for nearly a quarter of a century against Al-Qaeda, and killed its leader and most of its prominent leaders. However, it was not able to completely eliminate the organization and its branches. And Israel, despite its military superiority and its intelligence penetrations that reached Hezbollah’s leadership and agencies, was unable to end its existence.

Regular armies can inflict massive blows on the capabilities of another country and its command centers within a short period, as we witnessed in the American-Israeli war on Iran, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Larijani, and a number of senior regime leaders were killed, including the Minister of Defense, the Chief of Staff, and the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards. But confronting a regular army that possesses well-known bases, facilities, and command centers is radically different from pursuing an armed organization that can disappear, redeploy, and operate among civilian gatherings. A state may lose an army, a base, a city, or a strategic capability, and find itself forced to review its political and military calculations, while an organization can lose land, leaders, and weapons, and cause the death of large numbers of innocent people, and then return to work with small cells and declare that it still exists. Indeed, some of these organizations do not need victory over their opponents as much as they need to prevent them from declaring the end of the war, and turn the continuation of the confrontation into a means of attrition, propaganda, and recruitment.

Self-control and wisdom do not always mean inability. The state has calculations that do not appear in enthusiastic pictures and clips. It is responsible for its economy, the security of its population, its international relations, and the stability that will come the next day. It may realize the nature of the threat and have the ability to respond, but it chooses the timing and size of the confrontation according to a broader assessment of the consequences, while the organization can provoke it into a long war and then try to exploit its results politically and in the media. The difference is that the state is responsible for what will happen after the war, while the continuation of the war may be all that the terrorist organization and the relevant “parties” want!