Four decades of US terror attacks listed and detailed by Simon Rogers.
I was disappointed to read:
The horrors of the Boston Marathon explosions have focussed attention on terror attacks in the United States. But how common are they?
The Global Terrorism Database has recorded terror attacks across the world – with data from 1970 covering up to the end of 2011. It’s a huge dataset: over 104,000 attacks, including around 2,600 in the US – and its collection is funded by an agency of the US government: the Science and Technology Directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security through a Center of Excellence program based at the University of Maryland.
There’s a lot of methodology detailed on the site and several definitions of what is terrorism. At its root, the GTD says that terrorism is:
The threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation
I thought from the headlines that there would be a listing of four decades of US terror attacks against other peoples, countries and other groups.
A ponderous list that the US has labored long and hard over the past several decades.
A data set that contrasts “terror” attacks in the US with US terrorist attacks against others would make a better data set.
Starting just after WWII.