Shameless and Ineffectual

Moscow's magnificent metro system was hit by two terrorist bomb blasts today.  The attacks killed 38 people in a needless tragedy.

Terrorism is a shameless act.  Anonymous agents, often deluded to think that they act on behalf of a higher power or cause, attack randomly.  Innocent people are killed as a result and the daily life is made more difficult only temporarily.

I am not aware of any positive and long-lasting change brought by any act of terror.  This stands in direct contrast with courageous non-violent movements like those led by Dr. Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi that brought lasting, positive effects precisely because they shamed the existing system into change.

This makes terrorism ineffectual, if not counterproductive.  Bin Laden's 9/11 acts, as spectacular as they were, brought forth negative net effects for Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and almost everyone else.  Shining Path of Peru, FARC of Colombia, and multiple other and older Middle East-rooted terror groups have not had a better record.

One only hopes that would-be-terrorists would be smart enough to learn, but sheer lunacy seems to have no limit.