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Notes -
Ashamed to say I haven't read Pierce's comments yet, that book report project is on hold for a bit. I'm guessing he said that it was done too soon, against a target that wasn't strategically important (unlike the surveillance center targeted in the book), nor aimed at destabilizing the regime?
The amazing part to me was that the protagonist of the book even second-guessed their bombing because in retrospect it focused the attention of the regime too early, when the resistance didn't have anything lined up to exploit the brief opening it gave them. The surveillance system was rebuilt with better hardening by the time the war got going, and it was only total economic and social collapse that stopped the regime wiping them out.
I said "read any other book", but honestly reading past the first hundred pages of the book he did read should have made him think twice about bombing symbolic targets without a strategic plan.
That's actually the reason I found the book fascinating enough to write about. It avoids so much of the wish-fulfillment you see in other rebellion stories: most of the characters' ideas don't work, most of their plans go awry or backfire, many of their successes are ultimately irrelevant or sideshows in the larger picture. Pierce ended up writing such a realistic story he had to pull a cabal of hooded supermen out his ass to have it end in any kind of victory.
I don't think he mentioned the importance of the target, but yes, from what I've heard he said that terrorism's only worthwhile if sustainable.
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