Maybe it is the elites that become the counted terrorists, because they have experience dealing with differences in society/culture; and aren't noticed as easily.  Richard Reed stood out like a beacon on an international flight.

Instead of a mindset, maybe it points to an essential skillset. 

What Makes a Terrorist? I'm sure you meant to title your book What Makes a Freedom Fighter. You did, didn't you?

Darn you, Don!  Sneaked in there a minute before me. 

The idea that poverty breeds terrorism . . . has been definitively debunked for a long time.  BradtheDad

I beg to differ.

Humiliation breeds terrorists. That humiliation stems from their recognition that their societies are failures. And economic poverty is the evidence of that failure. Take away the poverty and you take away the humiliation.

I made a series of posts here and at Daily Kos on the Power Problem at the dawn of 2007.

Adjusted to fit this model is that terrorism grows out of a sense of powerlessness leading to frustration until you have to do something, ANYTHING to assert a measure of control. That sense of powerless can come in many forms, from a nation manipulating yours, to against your own government's restrictions, to a culture you feel crushing your own beliefs, to your own economic powerlessness. In mayn ways the more educated a person is the more helpless they feel because they are then able to SEE all the ways in which they are powerless.

The US (and the west) become a major target because of their unprecedented power. Which led into an argument of how and when to practice power (always try not to, wait until there is no choice and people see there is no choice and work through institutions so people feel like they have a say) to achieve maximum results with a minimum of making the other guy feel powerless.

Uh so I guess you basically need to acknowledge me in your next edition ;)

Through many of the posts here, there seems to be an assumption that Terrorism = Islamic Terrorism. If you want to restrict the definition to things that use suicide as a weapon, that restricts the list, but there are still multiple examples with different motivations.

For that matter, what is a uniformed, conventional military that uses suicide, or very high risk, as a technique against (mostly) military targets. No, there's more than one involved here. The kamikaze (or, more generally, tokko) were only one example.

Can we agree on what defines a freedom fighter, terrorist, or whatever, before explaining motivations? Especially with a historical view, but even considering non-Islamic groups now operating, the motivations differ.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

The Young Foundation report, Parties for the Public Good, noted that old-time political parties have degenerated into "permanent campaigns" by perpetual incumbents, palace guards, and government concession-tenders:

Missing is a rich civic infrastructure or, for that matter, mercantile or industrial activity not sustained by government preferences and private application of public credit -- the blurring of "crony" and "mafiya" capitalism in our post-Soviet era.

Rising are organized crime and politicized gangs.

The political/media establishment actually minimize political competition to a very few, high-dollar races and, largely, entrust government to "boffins" and "tsars" they profess to have no influence over and take no responsbility for.

This creates a lot of money in non-governmental organizations, from "multinational corporations", through shadowy "syndicates" and "charities", to, now, "sovereign wealth funds".

These entities can "invest" either in "government" or "anti-government" as suits them. Either way, they provide the model for de-legitimating the state and organizing warfare well outside of the state using everything from suicide bombers to mercenaries but also many, many sorts of voluntary or involuntary agents and intermediaries.

I do not think that terrorists are even close to capable of creating or maintaining a state. But, until there are "populist" political parties that can organize patriotic and progressive political activity around a strong state with a limited government, I see maggoty "terrorists" -- especially piratical "transaction lawyers" -- recruiting, training, and deploying whatever talent they need to tear down legitimate institutions and, then, protect the spoils from each other.

Here is a question: For all the chest-thumping by self-aggrandizing politicians, who actually kills the most terrorists? Is it other terrorists?

::JRBehrman

::JRBehrman

Does any discussion of "terrorists" include those who are sent by an organized military to wreak terror on innocent civilians? And obvious example is the terrorism the British military used against Germany by doing night time carpet bombing of German cities. Another is the terrorism the American military used against Japan by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.

To further muddy the waters, where "suiciders" are concerned, how do the soldiers who charge massed machine guns suffering massive casualties fit in?

A word that has earned an early grave is "terrorism". Discussions would be far more productive if that word was eliminated from our vocabularies.

Hoppy in Sacramento

The history of terrorism didn't start with the Israeli/Palestinian situation. You neglect to mention the acts of terrorism used by the Israelis to wrest control from the British, of the Leninists to overthrow the autocratic Czar, or the terrorism of the nazis, or Stalin's use of terrorism to put down the Ukhraine. or the French terror of the revolution.

To claim that Islam as a religion makes it more likely that Muslims would be terrorists, I fail to see how that would explain terrorism as a weapon throughout history.

The goal of the Palestinians in the use of terrorism isn't just turning the clock back to 1967 - it's about pumping water out from under them, about the daily humiliation and harrassment of checkpoints, of withholding services such as electricity and water, and controlling their money and their land and forced evacuations and the favouring of West Bank Jewish settlers over the Palestinians.

So yes, the goal of the Palestinians to one extent is the removal of Israelis to pre 1967 borders, but it isn't just that, which is why when Israel thinks it is close to a settlement, the Palestinians see more degradation and humiliation.

Perhaps a better definition of terrorism would be the the will to inflict great suffering and harm to those innocents because of a real, perceived, or manufactured grievance or affront.

For clarification, do you see situations where "innocents" could be regular military personnel, on duty, even armed?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

2) Technology. Technology empowers everyone...

That's more what makes terrorism work, rather than what makes a terrorist.

You are correct - I got my logic backwards.  Given the extremely large worldwide Muslim population, simply being Muslim is not a good predictor of who is a terrorist.  However, the opposite is certainly true - being a terrorist is a pretty good predictor of who is Muslim.  In other words, when you hear about terrorism these days, it is a pretty good bet that the terrorists are Muslim.

What I originally said might be true if you add a couple of other factors into the mix.  Being a Muslim in the West who is a regular attendee at certain mosques is probably a pretty good predictor of terrorism, except that the number of actual terrorist acts is too small to say that definitively.

Perhaps the safest thing to say is that Islam predicts sympathy for terorrism, especially in the West.  Given polling data showing large percentages of Muslims, especially in Europe, who view terrorism sympathetically, I would think this is indisputable.  And while sympathy for terrorism is not as serious as terrorism itself (and many people who proclaim sympathy would no doubt recoil at the actual horror of terrorism itself) it is still a cause of immense concern.

A simple question that any historian can answer without the aid of sophisticated statistical analysis:
How many revolutions -and revolutionary organizations- have NOT been led by disaffected members of the educated class?

The logic does parallel Lenin's somewhat, doesn't it? I hadn't noticed that, since I have been trying to understand what thought processes are uniquely human (complex symbolic speech, the ability to recognize past/present/future, the in-built desire to find patterns in all types of data, the communication of narratives between people (and the fact that human memory patterns seem to be narrative in nature,) the ability to visualize alternative possible futures and the recognition that building a cause-and-effect (which is a characteristic of language syntax - each verb is a small theory of cause and effect between its objects), chain of narratives back from those alternative future images can allow us to act today in ways that make one or another of those alternatives more or less likely.)

The desire to learn these things is something every human is born with, language being the first and most obvious example. But the language we learn depends on the language(s) in the culture we grow up around, as are the makings of the various possible images we each assemble to plan for the future. Literacy and education provide massive quantities of data to plan and act from. So while each individual is born motivated to learn a language, to hear and tell stories, etc., the details they learn come from the culture around them. The individual is thus limited to what is provided by the culture, together the (relatively few) things that he or she can create on his or her own. Education greatly expands this intellectual universe.

Without literacy and broader education, you will never learn anything you did not personally observe or were told about by a family member or friend in the form of a narrative story. The entire social structure is built on such shared narratives. A person is not going to begin a long-term project to accomplish something that cannot be imagined. ["Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance" before there was a motorcycle, there was a dream of a motorcycle.]

I guess Lenin would agree with me and Robert Parsig.

Yes, but not all acts of terrorism are political. The VTech shooter is a case in point - his goal wasn't political, the Columbine shooters weren't furthering a political goal. Any definition would have to account for random acts of terrorism.

Sherman was operating against civilians, not military.

I was thinking of such things as

1. kamikaze attacks on warships
2. 
   
3. a suicide bomber in a military mess hall in Iraq


4. Japanese troops overrunning a hospital on Saipan until Ben Salomon held rear guard


5. Irgun (pre-Israel) blowing up King David Hotel, used as British headquarters


6. SS machine-gunning POWs at Malmedy


7. American soldiers (individual) shooting SS guards after liberating concentration camp


8. German or Soviet penal battalions (military and political prisoners) sent marching through a minefield to clear it


9. Use of land mines or equivalent cluster munitions in populated areas


10. Soviet scorched-earth policy while retreating troops, leaving nothing for advancing Nazis. Civilians were not always executed


11. North Korean soldiers, wearing civilian clothes, firing on the enemy from inside refugee columns


12. US pilots ordered to attack mixed refugee and North Koreans troops moving toward Allied lines

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Irgun (pre-Israel) blowing up King David Hotel, used as British headquarters

Use of land mines or equivalent cluster munitions in populated areas

Well exactly - it's the act of inflicting suffering and pain on civilians because of a grievance. That was Sherman's goal.

I think that what you're describing could be categorized as violations of conventional warfare whereas concentration camps and the horrors of Nanking (just as two examples) would be acts of terrorism.

Were either chimpanzee group wearing distinctive insignia? Let's see...they are clearly under a chain of command, and carry arms openly (wave arms and grin). Whether or not they act according to the customary laws of war might determine if they are lawful combatants.

Are responses by one troop onto the territory of another self-defense under Article 51 of the UN charter? :-)

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

What about them? Acts of terrorism are acts of terrorism, even in the context of war/rebellion.

To see it simply as a matter of poverty is too narrow. It is the failure to keep up with other nations, the failure of those who elsewhere would be successful have little economic prospects but also little satifaction.

The Egyptian Brotherhood, the group that assinated Sadat, and who has supplied Bin Laden his two top luitenants, preach not just another economic model but a purer Islam and a better way of life.

Think about the fanatics who kill doctors who perform abortions. It is not an economic motive that drives them but a complex of motives including religion.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

At first glance, I wondered if the title of your book was a pun of sorts. Is the book a declarative thesis on the circumstances that cause people to become terrorists, or is it a thesis on how people come to be defined as terrorists?

I take it from this piece that you are angling toward the former, though perhaps in due course you will cover the latter as well...

So part of me is against posting this possibly pre-emptive argument. But what the heck.

Let me begin with this statement: "What makes a terrorist thus depends on the political grievances that terrorists and their organizations are pursuing and the alternatives for pursing those grievances".

So let's assume we have organization XYZ that concludes it has exhausted all lawful means to address a perceived injustice. So it decides to break the law in order further a particular cause. Washington, Gandhi, Mandela and Gerry Adams were all past terrorists of this type. Opposition leaders from Turkey to Colombia to Russia to Myanmar to Uzbekistan to Zimbabwe are currently designated terrorists of this type.

My point: that terrorists come into existance because a government decides, usually through legislation or decree, to label them as such. This is the very basic, very dangerous reality when it comes to the term "terrorist" - that being that it is a term solely defined by a law passed by a government that is predisposed to stop, at all costs, the organization it defines as a terrorist organization.

That does not mean that labelling is wrong per se - when groups are going around plotting to kill civilians, they should be targets of the law. But what good comes from describing an organization as "terrorist"? All that seems to do is proscribe an organization for how it makes us feel, as opposed to what it does. Or worse, it confirms - as per your thesis - and acknowledges that the group has an underlying political grievance.

In other words, it can give a fanatical organization the legitimacy it craves.

To my mind, the word "terrorist" is almost purely emotive. We should refer to homicidal jihadis as murderers and conspirators, because that is what they do, and existing laws are quite adequate to mete out the punishment such people deserve.

The odd thing is, I can agree with you about the indirect, even tangental, role poverty plays in inspiring people to commit the violent acts that result in them being labelled terrorists. I can also agree with your analysis that most "terrorist" conflicts are local in nature. (And I will be interested to see if your "civil liberties" piece includes reference to Sayid Qtub's radicalization and embrace of violence after he was tortured by Sadat's henchmen.)

But you lose me because a basis of your analysis is an assumption that there is an objective definition of a terrorist.

There isn't.

It is not simply the case that one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter - "terrorist" is, and always has been, a politically loaded and emotive term, that places, literally, those that cause fear into a unique legal bucket because it is politically expedient to put them there.

Where "terrorists" come from and how they canvass their support is both interesting and important, but so is understanding who is labelling the terrorists and what their motive is for doing so. I hope you will cover this as well.

Lenin's brother was executed by the Czarist regime and Lenin's entire education was coloured by that fact. Begging hat in hand for admittance to schools and universities would be considered a personal rejection in my book, not to mention personally humiliating.

I don't know about the insignia, but they were using sticks, which doesn't seem to portend good news for us in the future of evolution...

Violence conducted to cow another person is not the same thing as what we call "terrorism" today. Neither is group conflict, which is what your chimpanzee example involves.

As far as I know, there is no strong evidence that Chimps have a clear sense of past, present and future, and they obviously do not have a symbolic language in which the sounds are used as symbols to which are assigned arbitrary meanings. Lacking complex language, they also lack the syntax that is required to use it. Without syntax, complex ideas of cause-and-effect are not easily built up.

Without the form of complex symbolic language and the narrative ability humans have, they have to be trained to do planning for the future. They can do it, but only in a few instances (tool use, when they make then use a tool) and they have no way to communicate what they did beyond learning by observation.

Violence has existed among animals since there were animals. But terrorism is the use of violence as a tool - a symbolic tool, in fact - to create fear in large groups and thereby to modify the behavior those groups consider legitimate - a very uniquely human thing.

Terrorists don't use violence in order to simply kill others. They use it as a symbol that will force people to modify the set of shared narratives that make society up, usually in a specific manner that the terrorist organizations broadcast separately.

At least, that is my speculation.

By the way, my descriptions of the unique neurological activities of the human brain are based on writings by the Neurologist William H. Calvin. He has a lot of books out, two of which I particularly like - "How brains think" and "A brief history of the Mind." Dr. Calvin says he came from Kansas originally, but learned of Evolution shortly after leaving that state.

I think that we might correctly assume that if the US shared its Apache gunships and F-16 fighters equally with Palestinians and Israelis, instead of giving them exclusively to the Israelis, there would be fewer Palestinian suicide bombers.

Brazzaville Beach is a good novel in which chimp
violence plays a central role . I think William Boyd wrote it. Don't mean to get off the thread
but it's really an excellent book.

Actually, Jane Goodall said she observed groups terrorizing other groups, for no particular reason that she could discern other than the fact that they seemed to derive some satisfaction in the act.

As to what makes humans, human, I wasn't in any way criticizing your definition and in fact, pretty much agree with it. My point, which was ill made, was that every year we find less and less differences between us and other species which would define us as peculiarly human. It used to be our ability to make tools and it has evolved to our consciousness of mortality as the differential, but even that isn't a surety anymore.

No matter what it is, it is in my opinion, the most fascinating question I can think of.

Correct, Do you believe that Bin Laden is terrorists but American Hirosima, Dresden or Hanoi bombers aren't terrorists because that's what you hear. Apparently you do believe only what you hear.

True. But not fewer deaths.

Really?

No itinerant Chinese intellectuals unable to find a political post? There was a long tradition of them, going back to before Confucius. He, in fact was one who could not find a post during the period of the Warring States. I think the Chinese civil service lasted until the creation of the Chinese Republic in 1911. There were always a lot of students unable to pass the tests or to acquire a political position.

I admit to very little knowledge of the Boxer Rebellion, however.

I think the problem is in the term "predictor," which assumes a statistical perspective. 

The Times magazine article the Prof referenced from this past weekend is about a town in Morocco that has produced, curiously, a significant number of "terrorists."

But you wouldn't conclude from that fact that simply living in this town is a predictor of who will be a terrorist -- obviously there are other factors at play. (The thesis in this article is that there are social factors -- it's all who you know.)

So I think using prediction factors isn't the correct approach when you're talking about something as broad and general as "Islam" or "Muslims." That's way too general of a category to use in this sense.

I think any discussion on terror, terrorism,
war on terrorism, and so forth, needs to
involve an in-depth discussion of the effect
of religion and OIL money on the course of the
old human events.

I think the ONLY reason that anyone really
cares about the middle east is because of the
OIL. There's this black stuff in the ground,
you pump it out, you load it on a boat, and
you take it back out of the boat, and you
make other stuff out of it, and sell that stuff
and make money. You do enough of that, and
you can like, buy your own island, and stuff.
Only catch: There's these people that live
where you pump the stuff out of the ground
to begin with. They'd like money for their stuff.
You don't want to pay them, because then it
takes you longer to buy the island and stuff.
So, they get angry, and you pay the local
tribal chieftain lots of money to use his thugs
to keep the rest of the peasants at bay.
The peasants turn violent. They get guns.
They shoot at you. You call them dirty names.
You shoot back. Tired petro-soap opera goes
into its' 5th decade. People write books about
it all, calling lots of people dirty names.
Other people show up, and start shooting.
Tired soap opera goes on into its' next season.
Policy people keep making the same stupid
decisions. Now the peasants have machine guns.
That you gave them. Whole thing gets really
stupid, Hitler-era fortunes run thin, Congress
gets mugged, american public gets mugged,
all so some rich asshole can drill oil wells.
Hmmm...no, I think instead of letting people
like you run around the world labeling people
as terrorists, maybe the more enlightened
answer here is impeachment and a full-bore
congressional rethink of our national energy
policy. This IS the 21st century, and all,
progress and stuff, so, for my nickel's worth,
party's over, time to start firing people,
and whatnot.

One of the commenters above mentioned the
viewpoint aspect of this. The british army
likely viewed our own revolutionaries as
terrorists, hiding behind trees and rocks
and stuff. Fast-forward to the 21st century,
and you see that now OUR country is basically
in the role vacated by the now-bankrupt
and defunct british empire. The sun now never
sets on the american empire, so to speak.
Hmmm. Time to go back to the founding documents
and find out if our practices still match the
preaching, or if it's all been kind of distorted
into something highly lucrative yet basically
unethical and not in keeping with our stated
principles etc.

I think, if they're going to start harping about
who's terrifying who, then they need to look
at who's trying to form up private armies and
all this other stuff.

The oil is the 'prize', here. If we spend oh,
100 billion of those dollars on leaving
the oil dependency behind, and achieve it,
then there's no more reason to keep having what
we see on TV every day.

I support impeachment, as I think it will start
to provide some ground-up reform-type leadership
that's long overdue in Washington. Paradigm
shifts bring with them innovation and
other 'ways forward' that don't include
occupying other people's countries for decades
and bankrupting the US economy and putting
people out in the street etc. If you support
impeachment too, then add your name on this
or one of many other lists floating around out
there, or just contact your congresscritter
directly in that regard.
http://www.impeachbush.org

It kind of boils down to the individual, I think,
would you rather be a consumer, a la Bernanke,
or a citizen, a la Jefferson etc? There are
some things a little more fundamentally
important than money and the Con Me, or Con
Game. Globalizationer is a really crappy idea,
and the more people that (peacefully) speak
up against the perpetuation of all these
invasion things and the abuse of our military
and the undue influence of certain parties over
our government and the trillions in debt and
and and and and, well if all those people start
speaking and thinking instead of just being
paycheck-cashing yepyeps, then maybe we'll
end up getting back over towards democracyerer
instead of being ignorant and unquestioning 'shareholders' in ExxonGlobalAmeriWorldCorp etc. As far as I'm
concerned, they can start by 'right-sizing'
the Pentascam. How do you LOSE 9 billion dollars?
I recommend drug-testing...for EVERYBODY.
Somebody's smoking The Big Dope, there...

I still think that the green-tech approach will
take us further down the road towards ending
all of this stuff than billions' more worth
of tanks and bombs and stuff. When you don't
have to buy their stuff no more, well, then
they have to find honest work, and you don't
have to pay rent to some guy who really doesn't
need the money...

And as long as the Israelis maintain the checkpoints, they will foster terrorism. A very sad cycle, isn't it?

Yes, really. The boxers were a gong. Are most revolutions powered by an intellectual elite? Yes, I believe so.

I agree with you on labels. What is the difference between a Guerrilla, Partisan, violent Marxist or union organizer, Anarchist, or terrorist?

All are in one way or another fighting what they perceive as injustice committed by the established powers. When violence occurs it is usually in the form of asymmetric warfare against a much more powerful agency. Unions (when illegal), partisans and drug smuggling organizations also use violence to enforce organization cohesion, since there is no contract law or justice system available to them to enforce personal commitments made to the organization.

According to Professor Adam Robert (published by BBC), the UN issued a draft definition of terrorism:

Reiterates that criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstances unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be used to justify them.

The distinction is degree, not kind.

The reason the chimps attacked might simply be to see who's going to win. Human males are defined by that. 

but the arab terrorist didn't get the Soviet weapons that went to Arab governments

Arab governments does not equal Palistinian people or terrorist.

Jack

You appear to be using the term "a gong" in a technical Chinese sense, and I would assume that the name Falun Gong has some connection. But I don't know the term and can't find it on google. Can you provide a definition?

But that wasn't the original point. also, citation please

Jack

Oh, I don't know about that - some species have no mechanism for information transferrence, not all species can make tools, some species are reflexive instead of instinctive, so while the distinction might be degree it is also kind.

I'm also not so sure human males are defined by their competitiveness. That may well be a social construct.

Terrorism is a tactic used against civilizations that might always come with civilization. As I see it, what has become new, big trouble in the recent past is the subset of suicide terrorism. The latter is much more difficult for civilization to deal with--if one doesn't care much about this current life, it sort of interferes with civilization and it's very difficult to defend against or fight. Does your book get into summarizing the recent research on suicide terrorism?

Also, I very much look forward to your comments on the New York Times piece. It suggested, but did not delve much into, the "gang culture" aspects of Islamic terrorism, a topic which interests me.

Pacepa: The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the “Palestinian territories” occupied by Israel, and the “Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia,” created by the KGB in 1975, which organized numerous bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe.

Agree, mainly. Speech is the huge distinction, although that is also somewhere between degree and kind. But when people raise the argument that consciousness seems to come from nowhere, it can be shown that most of the observable functions are found in other species, some rather lowly, like bees with dead reckoning.

A clue that those talents don't automatically confer our brand of awareness is the Caledonian female crow, for example, that can make a tool by bending wire. The rub is she first has to try performing the task with the straight wire. This fails so she bends it. But if presented with a fresh version of the setup she goes through the same motions of trying and failing. The crow has the mental hardware for the task but no memory available to hold a model of a previous attempt. That's where our advantage lies, in the hugely enhanced memory available.

When successful males stop being popular mating choices they'll become less competitive.

Terrorism is a tactic used against civilizations that might always come with civilization.

Baloney. There is little or no terrorism in Switzerland--one of the most advanced civilizations on earth.

In America, more than half of the people now believe that the Iraqi war has made the U.S. less safe, more open to terrorist acts. Could they be right? Could there be such a thing as blow-back? Could it be that people don't hate us for our freedom, but for our behavior?

Yeah. Sadly, your point is well taken.

It's not clear cut, and you can reference this wiki article for more.

But there's no doubt we sold Stinger missiles and provided other support to Afghanistan, which, in fact, turned out to be a concern (that they'd be used against us...) when we invaded Afghanistan later. 

Perhaps "they" don't even hate us at all. Maybe we have become so paranoid as a result of Bush playing games with the 9/11 events that we no longer have a way to determine either who "they" are or if "they" hate us.

Just because "they" flew a few aircraft into some of our buildings doesn't signify a hatred for us. Do we hate Iraqis? Well we certainly have killed a lot of them, so don't we hate them?

Hoppy in Sacramento

On the issue of consciousness, I forget where I read it, but one study (one of those PET scan or MRI studies) demonstrated that when a person makes a decision to act, he only becomes aware of making the decision a few (significant) parts of a second later.

That suggests that consciousness is merely a memory of what has already happened in the brain. Sort of like the difference in a computer between the main processor and the memory that contains what is displayed on the monitor. To someone not familiar with computer architecture, it could look like the screen was doing the computations.

Now the will to decide is another issue. It is not part of consciousness. But something has to set off both the decision and the display of the decision in the consciousness. :}

I think it has more to do with accidents of geography and history than religion. It happens that a good percentage of Muslims live in autocratic states with no civil liberties.

If Germany had defeated America in WWII, I'm fairly certain that today Germans would be saying "Not all Americans are terrorists but most terrorists are Americans."

I've never put my boys through the sort of competitive rituals that generates aggressiveness, yet they are both aggressive and competitive. I think it's in their genes, which creates their social construct. Not only do they want to fight, they love to fight, even when fighting gets them in ten kinds of trouble ten times a day.

The Peasants' War

Absolutely.

But they got to write the history books.

It means that religion isn't an indicator of who is or who is not prone to terrorism.

I agree, that's what I conceded upthread.  Given the very large population of Muslims, and the relatively small number of actual terrorist incidents, you cannot say Muslims are more likely to be terrorists than followers of other religions.  You can, however, say that terrorists are more likely to be Muslim than any other religion. 

It could well be that terrorism nurtures strong religious beliefs, instead of vice versa.

This makes no sense whatsoever.  How does someone get to be a suicide bomber without strong religious belief?  Why do you deny what they themselves say?

There isn't any question that Muslim terrorists are motivated by religion.  It's not a controversial point.  What isn't clear is what turns a devout yet peaceful Muslim into a devout murderer.  I'm not sure we'll ever know with enough precision to do anything about it without persecuting a lot of innocent people.

No doubt it is our ability to symbol that is the main differential, don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with you in the least. I was remarking that with every year, we make new discoveries about other species (and our own) that changes the parameters of what is and isn't "human" behavior.

The only thing I'm almost sure of is that evolution ain't over 'til it's over.

Best discussion of free will I've read is Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves". Yes, consciousness is mostly after the fact, the edited tape of the previous moment's activities. It's never realtime because it's too slow. Our expert systems are fantastically fast (read Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink"). But our state modeling is a bit behind.

Will need not have an executive to instigate--it can also be like a thermostat, which "acts" when circumstances cause it to.

we can know the correlation

Before the Oslo Accords there were no suicide bombers, after there were more than 56.

A narrative is the most robust form of storage, since few data substitutions will work---they'll be obviously in contradiction to the meaning of the story or its elements.

LeDoux sounds pretty good. My view is that emotion is just a weight attached to a memory. It's a value assigned, and when we are involved in something very important to us we will feel strongly about it, thus our memories will be sharply etched. Best way to remember something is to make it important.

Emotions get attached to memories and then get called up in similar circumstances, often calling forth that memory. Pretty useful way to set priorities in the file system. But we don't have discrete files, of course. It's "neurons that fire together wire together" and strong emotion probably alters the sensitivity of synapses to that firing-together learning process.

So what might take many repetitions to set in memory (arithmetic tables) because it seems unimportant, is contrasted with PTSD flashbacks, scenes playing out like a movie, with feelings present also, because survival is pretty much the most important thing.

"This makes no sense whatsoever. How does someone get to be a suicide bomber without strong religious belief? Why do you deny what they themselves say?"

Yet, if you google 'suicide bomber , profile you get a number of studies that say the opposite. The studies say the individuals are usually not strongly religious. They do seem to get caught up in groups that behave like cults or gangs, with a charismatic leader and a strong bonding amoung the group.

Jack

Reading Krueger and many of the posts, "terrorism" has been defined as something violent done mostly by Muslims. It's the same definition that the MSM uses. The corollary is that if it's violence done by non-Muslims it probably isn't terrorism. Seems to be part of the New Crusades.

The issue isn't "high tech" but just "tech". Cell phones detonate IEDs. Modern explosives pack much more punch than gunpowder. Passenger airliners are pretty high tech compared to the Wright Flyer and look what use homicidal maniacs made of them.

Apropos of bad weed, did you ever hear Bob Newhart's routine about the transatlantic phone call between Sir Walter Raleigh and his agent, heard from the agent's perspective? Raleigh is explaining that he's found this salable new plant called tow-back-oh, or something like that.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

We know from polling that Muslims dislike the US--the extent of their hate for Americans is more difficult to judge.

The Iraq war has included the destruction of cities, along with the death and injury of many people, along with kidnapping and torture. (Afghanistan and Somalia also.) There is also the 'terrorizing' (there's a word) of the population with widespread night-time house raids, zip-tying the men and dragging them off, etc. Many of these victims are probably not inclined to forgive and forget, any more than you or I would be.

Looking at the Muslim world, they have seen these acts and many more through the miracle of modern communications--al Jazeerah TV for example. We do know from polls that the US, as a result of these activities, is extremely unpopular. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that some people would be motivated to perform violent acts against the US as a result.

And, of course, according to the popular taxonomy, these would be labeled as terrorist acts.

But it's far-fetched to think that detonating IEDs with cell phones or flying planes with no intention of landing them are the incentives for terrorism.

Again, when making a political statement, the big splash does not come from the technology they use, it comes from the news cycle.

...the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers

I recently read a biography of Vera Atkins, the model for Miss Moneypenney. She was actually an important section chief of the Special Operations Executive for WW II sabotage efforts on the continent. It was with a certain unwanted resonance that I read of one Brit or another worrying that what they were teaching locals about sabotage, such as explosives skill, would eventually turn around and bite them in the colonies when the knowledge percolated throughout.

Prescient, but to no avail.

More of a war crime, I'd say, holding civilian population hostage to government policies. But also kind of terroristic, yeah.

One more reason to not worship the dude.

They can be suicide bombers because it isn't religion that motivates them. It is humiliation and degradation of the spirit that motivates them.

You are suggesting the two are mutually exclusive i.e. that someone is motivated either by religion or by some sense of humiliation.  In reality, it is almost certainly a combination of factors, those two among them.

You seem unable to concede the fact that the Palestinian cause is political, not religious, religion has nothing to do with it.

You are simply distorting my words.  Please point to where I claimed the Palestinian cause is exclusively a religious one.  Of course the Palestinian cause is political.  But the TACTIC of suicide bombing, in the Palestinian context, almost always has a religious component.

Furthermore, if you actually take the time to listen to the words of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it is plainly obvious that the cause of driving out Israel and the cause of jihad against the West have become conflated.  That is to say, for the Islamist terrorists of Hamas, the struggle against Israel is also a holy war.  This is what they themselves say.  Here is the Hamas Charter, Chapter 7:

"Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief."

How hard is that to understand?  Now of course Hamas doesn't represent the entirety of the Palestinian cause.  So obviously the secular Fatah types are motivated differently.  But then again, they are not typically the ones doing the suicide bombing.