Cruelty Is All They Have Left; For many terrorist groups, violence has now become an end in and of itself.(Cover Story)

Publication: Newsweek

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Byline: Fareed Zakaria, Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.

Does it matter whether the carnage in Madrid last week was the act of the Basque terrorist organization ETA or of Al Qaeda? Of course there are important differences between the two. ETA is a local organization, Al Qaeda a global one. The former is secular, the latter religious. But they have something in common that is revealing about the nature of terrorism. Both groups had a political agenda, but as their political cause has lost steam, they are increasingly defined almost exclusively by a macabre culture of violence.

"The purpose of terrorism," Vladimir Lenin once said, "is to terrorize." Like much of what he said, this is wrong. Terrorism has traditionally...

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