More to the point, adopting the tactics of terror hardly serves the interests of the state, whose long-term primary goal must be to demonstrate that terrorism is illegitimate and wrong. Engaging in terror tactics strengthens the perception that states have no more right to a monopoly on the use of force, no more legitimacy in how they employ it, than do international and substate entities. As Brian Jenkins observes, if terrorism is always wrong, how can a government’s use of terror be right?38
