Does Terrorism Work?

Early last year, during the height of the Mo Toons eruption, in a post documenting a remarkably Neville Chamberlain-like response to the cartoons from the State Department, Glenn Reynolds wrote:

I’m sorry, but the lesson here is that if you want to be listened to, you should blow things up. That’s a very bad incentive structure, but it’s the one the allegedly responsible parties have created.

Political asssassination, which posits that merely killing one man can cause enormous ripples in society if he’s powerful enough (see War, Great), is very much a form of terrorism. That’s one of the reasons why James Piereson