I agree that the initial primary goal of terrorism is fear. There's also anger, because fear and anger are connected. But I'm not so sure that nonviolent resistance is all about fostering guilt/shame/empathy. I think that guilt etc and anger are also connected. And so both can lead to overreaction. And once you've goaded an opponent into overreacting, they will be hurting innocents. And that will foster sympathy, and build general support for your cause.

Sure, I'm just saying that nonviolent resistance only works at all if the enemy is unwilling to just kill you and your supporters.

I'm saying that nonviolence operates on your enemies willingness to harm others, rather than focusing on harming the enemy, and that makes it fundamentally different from other forms of warfare.

Now, there is a connection in that both terror and nonviolence are fundamentally psychological warfare; both rely on giving the enemy feelings rather than just killing the enemy in the most efficient way possible, but I think that nonviolence is interesting and different because it is a new form of warfare that only works against modern societies that are able but not willing to just kill a bunch of the opposing group.

Yes. And yet, I think it useful to distinguish the immediate enemy that you're facing from the group that they're acting for. Consider Ghandi. I'm guessing that many of the British his people were facing in India would rather have killed him and his followers. They certainly did hurt a lot of protesters. But they knew that the British public would have been outraged. And eventually, it was public support in Britain that led to Indian independence. It's not that the colonial managers were converted. Maybe some were. But mostly they were overruled.

Certainly. and I agree that terror and nonviolence both target the civilian population's feelings on the matter. Also note, that has a direct effect on how front line soldiers act; if the boss says he'll demote me if I do X, well, I'm a lot less likely to want to do X, regardless of my feelings on the matter. (And while I've never been in such a position myself, I read that killing people who are not fighting back is harder for most people than it sounds.)

but I think that the genius of Gandhi was that he saw that he couldn't win through conventional military means, so he found another way; ethics aside, I think he should be remembered as a great general; a great strategic thinker who won a war that seemed impossible to win because he considered options that were not obvious to the military leaders who tried for Indian independence before him. (and may not have been available to those leaders... but still, it was a great innovation in strategy and tactics, really, that you could fight a war by.. not fighting.)

That's the thing that seems weird about the current wave of middle-eastern terror; if the goal is to get the US out of the middle east, terror has been woefully ineffective. It's possible that there is some deep game, someone trying to get the US to attack some countries and not others... but it's also just as likely that this current wave of terror has no real strategic planning, that it's just a howl of undirected, incoherent rage; like a man putting his fist through the drywall in his own house.

The latter explanation of terror actually seems more plausible to me than any grand strategic plan.

I totally agree about Ghandi. It was an amazing strategy. And nonviolent resistance has been so successful for so many.

Maybe you're right about radical Wahhabi terrorism. There is a lot of incoherent rage. But I do think that, at least for the rational planners, the goal is to draw the Christians into battle in the Middle East. Look at how they played the US into attacking Iraq, ruled by their former pocket anti-Communist strongman, and creating chaos that ISIS could later exploit. It's beyond amusing how both the radical Christian new right and the radical Wahhabis see conflict in the Middle East in the context of Armageddon. They just disagree about which side Christ will favor.