Don't give Charlie Hebdo gunmen what they want

A DECADE or so ago, in his book Terror and Liberalism, the social critic Paul Berman derided the West for repeatedly making the conceptual error of refusing to understand "that, from time to time, mass political movements do get drunk on the idea of slaughter".

Our mistake, he wrote, is "expecting the world to act in sensible ways" - that is, "without mystery, self-contradiction, murk or madness". But terrorism isn't madness. That's the true lesson that the West keeps refusing to learn. The terrorist isn't irrational. Evil, yes; irrational, no. So although most of the world surely agrees with US President Barack Obama's condemnation of the fatal shooting at the offices of Charlie Hebdo as "senseless attacks against innocent civilians", it's useful to remember that to the terrorist, the attacks aren't senseless, and the civilians aren't innocent.

There is a logic to terrorism, a coldly calculated ends-means rationality. The armamentum of terror is chosen by radical groups not because they are madmen but because they consider it efficacious. In short, they believe that it will get them what they want.