"Another complicating factor is that people, misled by the word’s suffix, tend to mistake the core nature of terrorism. Terrorism is not an ideology and does not exist as a specific worldview, a system of thought, or a political program. In this regard, it is not comparable to liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, or any of the other myriad “isms” that populate our history books, despite terrorism’s existence as one of the defining phenomena of the modern era. Looked at another way, terrorists are always something else, be they communists, nationalists, or fascists (among other possibilities). Terrorism is a strategy that makes use of certain tactics; in other words, terrorism is a means to an end – although often one that eventually overshadows the positive goals which its users ostensibly strive. I begin with two core assertions well founded in the broad literature on the topic. The first is that individuals or groups choose to commit terrorist acts as part of a process of rational and conscious decision-making within particular political and social contexts. Thus, terrorism is not, as it is often colloquially described, a kind of madness – although individual terrorists have certainly been known to exhibit the various signs of mental illness. My second basic assertion is that terrorism is a communicative act intended to influence the behavior of one or more audiences."