oduce results, however, seems to be the exception rather than the rule for Middle Eastern terrorist operations aimed at the United States in the 1980s.
In this chapter, several of these terrorist operations will be viewed as operations of war intended to communicate particular messages. We will first analyse war as a form of communication, and terrorism as a form of war, drawing on the Marine bombing and the kidnappings in Beirut as instances of terrorist operations proceeding by quite different tactics. In the case of the Marine bombing in particular we will examine the messages communicated by the operation, and the various audiences to whom these messages were transmitted. We will then discuss the Tehran embassy takeover, the TWA hijacking of 1985, and (again) the Beirut hostage takings as variations on the theme of hostage taking, examining the factors that make hostage taking a particularly effective form of communication through terror. We will conclude with an evaluation of the factors that determine the effectiveness of terrorism as a means of political communication.
Almost every act of political violence is at least in part a form of communication. That is, most acts of political violence include among their motivations that of sending a message, either to the victim or victims, those whom the victim represents or who are in some way responsible for the victim's safety, or to a third party who is witness to the act of political violence.
Only a relatively few acts of political violence are entirely free of this element of communication. One example of non communicative political violence might be assassination, since the target is no longer alive to respond to any communication. Even assassination, however, is non communicative only if the motive were simply to eliminate the victim from the political scene. If the motive is to punish the victim, this is a form of communication even if the vi...