ctim dies too quickly to grasp the act and its meaning. Moreover, assasination may be purely communicative, the motive being to send a message to the victim's associates or superiors. Terrorist assassinations of diplomats or of military or intelligence officers typically fall into this class (Cooper, 1984, p. 4).
Likewise, even genocide may be a form of communication, if it is motivated not simply at eliminating the victim population but at sending a message of "exemplary terror" to other populations. Numerous conquerors, from Roman times up to the present, have used genocidal violence in this way. The Mongols, for example, used genocide in both ways, for simply elimination of unwanted populations and as exempla (Jones, 1989, pp. 142 43).
The element of communication is found in conventional, "regular" operations of war; indeed, it is a major goal of such operations. When one army attacks and inflicts a defeat upon another, one consequence of the outcome is physical. The defeated army usually suffers loss
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