This is obviously a very important topic and I appreciate your attempt to bring some dispassionate analysis to the subject. This is no small ambition since whatever else is essential to an accurate profile of the “terrorist,” passion is at the center of their identity. Israel has grasped this and applies it to the design of their security screening at public thoroughfares such as airports. Their screeners, while applying some metrics for suspicion, ultimately rely on the judgment of one person, the screener, of the demeanor of another person, the traveler. That judgment is held superior to any abstract profiling regimen; the screener has the last say. And so it will have to be with any attempt to say who is and who is not a “terrorist.” Isn’t this the argument for abandoning due process and institutional regulations regarding counter-terror efforts in the U.S. today? It has been decided that individual officials will decide who is a “terrorist.” This begs the question, of course, whether status as a “terrorist” is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps a functional definition of “terrorist” may be useful. I would suggest this:

A terrorist is someone who, without the color of authority, causes you to feel fear.”

I recall a commentary shortly after 911 where a man described how he had to sit at his eight year old daughter’s bedside and assure her that those “terrorists” were not a danger to her. What made this story interesting was that the family lived in Idaho. As someone who lived for forty years under the “re-assuring” umbrella of MAD ( Mutually Assured Destruction), I am struck by the difference in the viscera of the two reactions. There is something about the absence of the “color of authority” that makes the 911 experience so troubling to its real target, me. In fact isn’t this ultimately the explanation for the popular support for the adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Were they not an attempt to turn a disconcerting fear of the unknown into some comprehendible, albeit fantastic and self-defeating “reality,” like MAD? Terrorists work one side of this street and everyone else works the other. It may be that this is the only distinction between “terrorist” and citizen.

By this measure the Mafia in the U.S. was a terrorist organization which I find an interesting speculation. The Mafia is commonly thought of as a criminal enterprise, but what if in fact it was a terrorist movement? It does satisfy my simple functional rubric. And importantly I think it makes the terrorist a more commonplace persona. I am generally adverse to the exaggerations of the potency of historical figures, good and bad. I am entertained by the characterization of Don Corleone but I find Tony Soprano a more believable figure.

Fear is common in human experience so why should the terrorist be caste as such a mystery? This is my real motivation for pursuing this line of thought. Rather than respond to a terrorist with some MAD-like intellectual construction, I approach the problem as a battle of wills. Rather than abandon the subtle institutions of the life of a citizen, merely to become a more formidable terrorist, I would choose to defend those institutions against the fear mongering other. The coward dies a thousand deaths. The enemy of fear is courage.

The blanket use of the words 'terrorist,' 'terrorism' or the juxtapostion of 'war' and 'terror' is meant to strike terror in a population, us, which is exactly why the terms are used.

Breaking down the myriads of violent acts now lumped under terrorism would certainly result in a lessening of its intended effectiveness as a coercive weapon - and ultimately identify what could be combatted and what couldn't be, something that is really never talked about. Much of the killing between Iraqi nationals are revenge killings, some stemming from way before our invasion of the country. Terrorists acts they're not yet they're classified as such. Combatable? Once we win the War on Crime, we'll be better able to win the War on Revenge Killings? Ridiculous.

I don't think it's all as difficult as we're making it.

Prof. Kreuger's subject isn't really about what "makes a terrorist" but rather, what makes a young person (in most cases a young man) be willing to give up his life for a cause. The answer's to be found in psychology and sociology and not in semantics.

I contend that the narrowness of the definition causes us to miss the triggers to such acts and serves to decriminalize terrorism while elevating it to a symbolic act of war.

Terrorism whether it is state sanctioned, sanctioned by a stateless organization or the random act of an individual is meant to inflict pain and suffering on those with whom the terrorist has no known relationship or connection. If the goal is to influence an audience there are easier ways to do that than an act of terrorism.

I am aware that for discussion purposes we need to define and I suppose, limit the definition but I also think that it deprives us of means to understanding, and shifts the burden of responsibility from the terrorist to society as a whole.

Good post.

At first, I started to agree with this, but then realized Stanley Milgram's experiments were on response to authority, not on the individual initiative that may be necessary to start a terrorist action

Howard,

In Milgram's experiment, the "terrorist" would be the subjects that rebelled and defied the authority figure. I know that there were few that refused the orders to shock on their face and that the numbers of refusal were painfully (no pun intended) slow in coming, but refusals did come. What that tipping point was, what "social cue" kicked in to cause the defiance is what I was trying to examine. Was it the screaming? The pleading? The stone face of the "clinician" demanding that the subject continue while they wrestled with a conflicted conscience?

The response and resistance to authority is exactly what we are discussing, or perhaps the abuse of authority that has characterized the screeching right turn that this country has taken. I'm not suggesting that we sit idly and wait for the next plane to hit, but the characterization that Prof. Krueger strives to refine amounts to nothing until rational individuals are at the helm. Only then will we be in a position to assess our true risk.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Not all terrorist acts are suicide attacks in which the attacker loses his life or even seriously risks his life. So maybe the more germane questions are "What makes a person willing to kill for a cause?" and "What makes them willing to kill a non-combatant in the pursuit of a cause.

Who is the audience? The ethnic group or the competing ethnic group? There are neigbhorhoods in Boston (for example) that used to be completely Irish - now they're completely Viet Namese/other ethnic group/s.
So while there was certainly violence with the transition, there were no acts of overt terrorism to force one group out. Of course it might have something to do with the fact that one ethnic group had alternative places to go, but I couldn't say for sure and money certainly was an exchange mechanism, but who knows?

How easy do you think it is to perpetrate an act of extreme violence on others? I don't think it's easy to kill yourself to make a point - in fact, I think I could probably find easier ways to do so. Ghandi had some good ideas, but then maybe the goal isn't to influence an audience but to inflict pain and suffering on others.

Hmm.  I somehow don't think your average terrorist is prepared to devote three or four generations to accomplishing his task.  Eighteen months to clear out South Boston would be more like it.

I'm not sure that is the motivation, at least looking at the broader area of military sociology. A soldier might have lost close comrades to the enemy, but the most effective soldiers are the ones that operate systematically, not emotionally.

Your distinction between capability and ability, I'm afraid, is not coming through.

--
Howard

"The secret teaching of the Itto Ryu school of Kendo, Kiriotoshi, is the first technique of some hundred or so. The teaching is "Ai Uchi", meaning to cut the opponent just as he cuts you. This is the ultimate training... it is lack of anger. It means to treat your enemy as an honored guest. It also means to abandon your life or throw away fear." [Miyamoto Musashi]]

I don't think it's easy to kill yourself to make a point - in fact, I think I could probably find easier ways to do so

Which is why the self-immolation of the monks in Vietnam was such a powerful statement, and spread from it's use to protest religious persecution under the US puppet Diem to a wider anti-war statement.

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

Davai,

Spelling, sentence structure, and syntax count. 

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

And I agree with you that the act(s) defined as “terrorist” are already proscribed by every organized system of criminal law. This is not limited to those like ourselves who inherit the English Common Law tradition. Most societies have recognized that such acts are both disruptive enough of social order to be sanctioned, and commonplace enough to be enumerated and detailed in their respective criminal codes. I would assert that this is an additional argument in favor of my suggestion that the “terrorist” is a more ubiquitous character than is usually appreciated.

I do however think that the concepts “terrorism” and “terrorists” should not be dismissed as merely “emotive” as you suggest. I think they have content although perhaps not the content we might expect. That content is more intellectual than merely psychological and so the standards for the discussion will be more liberal than empirical science. “Ism’s” are typically the intellectual constructs of historians. Take the term “nationalism.” Once nation states appear, historians try to divine an explanation for their appearance. The roots of “nationalism” are discovered in ages before there were nation states. Once these historical entities appear, one may then speak of “nationalists,” whose profile is circumscribed by the content of the construct “nationalism.” At this point the historical analysis takes on a life of its own and controversies, discoveries and re-evaluations extend forever into the future.

I think that the terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” are similarly linked. Simply put you cannot have a “terrorist” until you have “terrorism.” There seems to be general agreement among modern governing institutional thought that there is content to the notion of “terrorism.” While there is no universally accepted delineation of the elements of this construct, a simply Google search will confirm that there is general agreement that the construct “terrorism” refers to a real, contemporary and historical phenomenon. That phenomenon seems to have two essential characteristics, which I suggested in my functional definition of “terrorist,” namely the absence of color of authority and the creation of fear.

My own thinking about this is as follows. Just as “Fascism” can exist only in an industrialized nation state and is thereby an artifact of the modern industrial state, similarly “terrorism” must be an artifact of the modern world. I am not clear about the dynamics of this genesis but the explanation ought to lie in some or all of the characteristics of the status quo. As I said above “Terrorists work one side of this street and everyone else works the other. It may be that this is the only distinction between ‘terrorist’ and citizen.” I am not being intentionally obtuse. I just think that the “terrorist” is an historical character, not some archetype of all men in all times. He/she can only be understood in context, which may go a long way toward explaining why it is so hard to create a moral, ethical or even psychological model for the “terrorist” that isn’t fraught with contradictions and circumlocutions.

Not at all, Ellen.  I've always believed that Ludwig was responsible for the "anal" in analytic philosophy. 

Neoboho

P.S. Once again, as I mentioned on the last thread, I think the popularization of suicide terrorism is the very crucial factor, because it is so difficult for civilization to fight. We used to have frequent airline hijackings and Carlos the Jackal and Munich Olympics type events (and the Mafia most definitely used terror as a tactic) but these quickly lost their fear factor and became the stuff of adventure movies or even comedic skits and did not affect societies so deeply like a committment to suicide terrorism does.

I always knew you had a little terrorist in ya, Berserkowitz...at least that's what I keep repeating when I hear that funny clicking noise on my phone... 

Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
Iranians are fighting the Americans in Iraq so they don't have to fight them on the streets of Tehran

No this was not his reason. He lost the last argument we had so he got mad.

Which raises further questions on a definition of terrorism: Were Berserkers really terrorists, or were they peace loving shroomheads on a bad trip?

Neoboho

I agree with you. My point is that to narrowly define its use and purpose is to limit our understanding of motivation, reward and intent. To explain it only in the context of politics or historical phenomenon we make terrorism itself a cause, when it is a means and seldom even a means to an end - just a means. As you said, it becomes its own entity and we see only that part of it, instead of the whole.

I believe that there may well be a common factor that triggers a human being to acts of astonishing violence. I have a suspicion as to what that is, but I am not certain, by any means.

I do not abuse the rating system, even for someone for whom I have as much contempt as I do for you. No, the reason for the zero is that you appear to be playing a game that you frequently play: as others are trying to extract general principles and agree on definitions, you start demanding examples, often quite removed from the problem. Given examples, you then start twisting the conversation so that the examples support your positions, and any sense of unifying concepts are lost.

The challenge for me is whether your abilities at abstract reasoning are so brilliant that you know this is a way to disrupt any discussion that you do not control, or if your abstract reasoning is so poor that you cannot understand anything not in examples.

It was your declaration that you "won" an argument because I would not respond to your loaded questions that defined things in your system, much like "have you quit beating your wife?". It was my declaration that you didn't win anything -- your game was one I wasn't going to play. No one forfeits a game when they refuse to join the league.

Start contributing content to discussions, rather than diverting them with rhetorical or oversimplified questions and challenges, and if you make a reasoned argument that Israel should run the world, I'll give you a 5. I won't be happy with doing it, but I hope I have the intellectual integrity to do so.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

BevD - not that you asked for my 2 cents, but... the terrorists objectives are not just about inflicting pain and misery. Rather, the ends are generally about forcing a government to change it's policies and the means for doing so are the casualties. Starting back in 1998, Bin Laden included calls for US armed forces to get out of Saudi Arabia and ending US support of Israel and sanctions against Iraq. The audience is us, the citizens.

Separating terrorist orgs from state sponsors and/or terrorist states is essential because not only are the motives for each probably different, but their vulnerabilities to military and political force are vastly different. States have fixed addresses and assets to protect, whereas terrorists are transnational and in Pakistan today, Iraq tomorrow. It's hard to drop a bomb on a moving target or get sanctions applied to the stateless.

With this in mind, it is society's burden to understand terrorism, especially when our government can't be trusted to speak the truth. But more importantly, just understanding and sorting facts from fiction lowers the fear level to manageable proportions for most people. As the government's own Defense Science Board put it, 'They hate our policies, not our freedom.'

...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

Not all terrorist acts are suicide attacks in which the attacker loses his life or even seriously risks his life.  Dan K

A category error?  Sign up for the life of the terrorist-on-the-ground and you've agreed to give up your life for the cause.  There are no golden parachutes or 401(k)s in the terrorism business.

I'm not sure that a person who drives around without license plates because he believes the state has no authority to restrict his freedom of movement can be thought to have "planned his escape."

Arrogance?  Doubtless.  Concern for self-preservation?  Not so much.

Or perhaps he didn't plan it well, or the person who dropped off the car was too nervous, stupid, or careless to check, even if it was McVeigh himself.

I also didn't say it was concern for his self-preservation. I don't know why he tried to escape, which is why I framed it as a question.

excellent point, Notrol.

his action had more in common with those of 19th century anarchists than any other parallel that occurs to me

Interesting point.

Reminds me that many are not aware of the echoes there are of today's atmosphere regarding civil liberties and security and the brouhaha over anarchists in New York City in the early 20th century, if you read contemporary periodicals like The Masses. The word terrorism was used then, too. I recall that some of the case stories I followed while researching something else, like a planned bombing of St. Patrick's Cathedral, are eerily familar, with the questionable informants and the agent provocateurs from law enforcement, as well as the screaming from the leftist media about set-ups and framing for political purposes and the "major source media" of the day, the tabloids, far more inflammatory, stoking the fear that sells. At Ellis Island, one of the questions asked of immigrants was "Are you an anarchist?" Just like the luggage question at the airport today, even the illiterate knew the correct answer to give.

Oh, I'm sure it was a war protest, but I don't see it as an act of terrorism because the infliction of pain and suffering was only on himself.

Perhaps it is that I understand that simple method, and that I understand that if one is trained in scientific method and experimental design, one does not start with examples. One constructs a hypothesis, and then tests examples against it to see if the hypothesis includes them. If there is a mismatch, one determines if the hypothesis or the example is the problem; it can be either one or both. If it appears the hypothesis does not cover the example, one makes the minimum necessary change to the hypothesis.

One does not throw out random examples and hope a hypothesis falls out.

There are heuristics for intermediate approaches, such as the Pareto Principle, and use of some of the Agile Manifesto concepts in software design. If this is done, the examples need to be considered individually and carefully, to determine if they are in the 20% of cases that cover 80% of the problem scope.

Your list of examples seemed as random as throwing darts at an encyclopedia. They included things that not all will agree are terrorism. They are fairly recent, and good social science requires taking a reasonable historical perspective. I rather doubt that Krueger came up with a list of examples and then tried to find a hypothesis, or hypotheses, to cover them.

You are correct in some things and not in others. You are correct that you are not sure what I understand. You are incorrect that I am going to buy into your usual game of having everyone else do the work and let you make no substantive contribution besides asking apparently random questions. You are incorrect that I am your friend.

You seem to dislike my references to Churchill, but he observed that when he was criticized for his formal language in declaring war on the Empire of Japan, "When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."




I have the honor to be,
...Sir
......Your obedient servant,
..........Howard C. Berkowitz

Liar. We are in no agreement. For future reference, if Davai says I agree with him and I don't, he is lying. He keeps coming up with unilateral declarations that I agree with him, that he has won arguments that I've refused to enter, and generally is an unpleasant reminder of peripubertal illogic.

I think coming up with a set of examples, in Davai's model, is absurd. One starts with definitions and incrementally refines them. Of course, that takes mental discipline, understanding that things are not simple because you want them to be, actual work, and integrity.

(smiling sweetly at Davai) just remember that an obedient servant is in an excellent position to poison your tea.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

I understand your point and agree with it to a point - I just don't think that self-immolation is a form of terrorism. I don't buy into the idea that terrorism is opposition to authority or abuse of authority. I'm sure that it is a defining moment/etc, and has societal influence, but I just don't think the purpose is the same.

"Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men. The Shadow knows." (A lead in to an old 1930's and '40's radio program.) I think people, whether acting alone or joining a group committed to carrying out acts of violence do so for all sorts of reasons - everything from boredom, to finding an identity, to commitment to a cause, to retribution for slights.

I don't think that you can simply define terrorism as violence intended to influence one or a very few persons. That would make every pimp who beats his women to keep them in line into a terrorist. as despicable as that behavior is, it is not the same as the actions of the Red Brigade in the Airport in Rome when they randomly killed people there purely for shock effect, the actions of the kidnappers at the 1972 Munich Olympics, or the 9/11 attackers.

The purpose for defining certain actions as terrorism rather than just criminal violence is that a different set of defenses are necessary for terrorism.

Historically, terrorist actions have been conducted the change a political system that the terrorists feel they cannot modify by using existing accepted political methods. Terrorists are people who have abandoned (or been excluded from ) the existing political system, yet want their political agenda addressed. So they publicize an agenda, then conduct actions so violent that the media must publicize it widely. The intent is to drive attention to the agenda proposals and by creating feelings of "Shock and Awe" in the targeted population, encouraging them to adopt the agenda in order to return to a state of peace.

This is very different from the violence used to intimidate a spouse, prostitute or mugging victim through fear. Those can be dealt with through the police and justice system.

Terrorism is a political tactic, carefully planned and designed to use the public media to influence large groups of people. Identifying and interrupting terrorist actions requires different processes from those used by local police forces against individual criminals.

The purpose of labeling some actions as "Terrorist" is a decision regarding what social, political and governmental tactics are needed to deal with them. The fact that every human being has certain violent impulses is totally irrelevant to dealing with terrorism because terrorist violence is a carefully pre-planned political tactic, not something that grows out of the inherent violence and random aggressiveness that exists in all of us to a greater or lesser extent.

I do however think that the concepts “terrorism” and “terrorists” should not be dismissed as merely “emotive”

If you are attempting to combat terrorism, then you need to structure organizations capable of identifying and interrupting terrorist violence. A very careful use of the definition of terrorism - applied without emotion - will make defeating true terrorist actions more efficient.

However, if you are using the term as the core of a government propaganda effort to mobilize the population against an "Evil" enemy, then the emotional connotations of the term "terrorist" become paramount. The organizations, tactics and purposes of using the term "terrorist" with all its emotional connotations for propaganda are very different from those used to efficiently combat terrorism.

The two administrative uses of the term "terrorism" also interfere with each other. Which is more important depends on what the leaders of the government want to accomplish.

Howard,

I normally find your posts to be highly informative and look forward to them, but since (further down) I presented a set of categories that I propose define terrorism, then ask for examples of terrorist incidents to test the model with, I find it difficult to go with you on this effort. :}

But you are correct that it would have been nice for Davai to have attempted some synthesis of his examples.

Training gives them confidence, but it doesn't motivate men to fight. The army doesn't want automatons, they want normal kids who can be manipulated through guilt to fight. Those most likely to survive on the battlefield are those who are lucky, which any combat soldier will tell you. The longer you are in a combat zone, the more likely you are to be killed, which is in contradiction to the claim that experience and training make the best soldiers and the ones most likely to survive. You ask any soldier who stormed the beach of Normandy why he survived and his buddy didn't, and he'll tell you that it was luck - training isn't even mentioned. In studies of ptsd (combat survivors) the reason they cite the most often for their distress is guilt at letting down their buddies/unit. Real combat veterans will tell you that the feeling most common was a constant fear. Fear is reflexive and it produces the chemical adrenaline which is why some researchers are looking at the process by which adrenaline is released through the body, how it is processed and what the withdrawal of it does to the body. PTSD could well be the result of both emotional and chemical disorders in the human body. While ptsd cannot be cured, it could well be managed by a combination of the right pharmacologicals and psychological treatment.

War isn't a norm, war is an aberration - it is counter-intuitive to our survival as a species.

"A Buddhist priest burns himself for our five requests." Buddhist banner, evening of June 11, 1963 explaining the purpose for Thich Quang Duc's self-immolation

Thich Tri Quang's* five-point "manifesto of the monks": 1) freedom to fly the Buddhist flag, 2) religious equality between Buddhists and Catholics, 3) compensation for the families of the Hue Vesak shootings, 4) an end to arbitrary arrests, and 5) punishment for the officials responsible for Hue Vesak.

It's hard to see how the protests or the monk "barbecues" (see Madame Nhu) were particularly anti-war.

* Buddhist monk who led the "Buddhist crisis"-- May-November 1963

See, Propaganda of the Deed

My belief that the current discipline of economics limits itself to those activities that can be measured financially and ignores the various social power institutions that create and modify the markets economist measure. Econometricians have yet to find valid and reliable numerical data that effectively describes power. Thus there are no economic theories that suggest optimum values that include power factors.

Terrorists do not generally suffer from the same professional blindness. Changes in political and power institutions will change most economic outcomes.

Let's people to decide if my comment reflected reality:

I guess, that Howard, my obedient servant, and I are in some kind of general agreement, that set of examples would help to undersand what is and what is not terrorism.

It is confidence in the training, pride in your unit and trust in your buddies and your leaders that motivates soldiers to fight, not guilt. Pride is more likely than guilt to motivate men.

The USSR tried to use political indoctrination to motivate its soldiers, and the US used training, pride in the unit and trust in the leaders. Man for man the U.S. military was greatly superior to the politically indoctrinated soviet troops.

Statistics show that soldiers are most likely to get killed in the first few weeks in combat before they learn how to survive, and in the last month or so when they drop their guard. Effective and intensive training sharply lowers the death rate early in combat. This is carefully kept track of, and fed back into the training process. It really works.

True, more time in combat means a greater chance of becoming a casualty, but the same thing is true about driving on the freeway in rush hour traffic.

Fear is a constant in combat, but it cannot be allowed to effect the decision-making. Letting fear take over lowers the likelihood of survival. Fear is dealt with after the combat is over.

No one in their right mind resorts to war. Once it is resorted to, however, the professionals are responsible for conducting it, winning it if the political constraints permit (there are always political reasons for war and constraints on how it is fought), and doing the best to ensure the survival and care of the troops and their families both during the war and afterwards.

I really doubt that war is an aberration. I have no doubt that is is counterproductive, but an aberration? I suspect that it is uninterrupted peace which is the aberration. For most people, their personal survival is a lot more important than the very abstract idea of our survival as a species. On these two items I suspect we will simply have to disagree.

I find that I grow even more cynical as I observe Republican politicians, politicians in general, and evangelical christians at work.

That you may not be able to figure it out does not mean that other people, attempting to deal with a complex issue, have to join with your channeling Diana Moon Glampers. I'd say that you might be trying to bring things to the lowest common denominator, but I suspect that dividing by zero might be more to the point.

Davai, I shall attempt a bit of courtesy. I cannot utter a complete sentence in Russian. I don't attempt to do so. I rarely involve myself in economic analysis here, because I know I don't understand economics very well. If you were to make a comment on Russian literature, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt you knew what you are talking about. Why, then, is it when other people seem to be communicating, perhaps in terms that aren't comfortable to you, you demand that the conversation be put into terms that you follow, whether oversimplifications or not? There are many times here, when specialists talk, that I listen and learn.

I don't find it at all going in circles, especially when thinking of some really tough problems. I hear progress. I find an interesting interaction with Rick and others. We may be lucky to have a guest poster who participates. I don't, for example, agree with Bev on a number of points about military sociology, but I accept her completely good faith in putting out her ideas.

Personally, when I find myself lost in a discussion, I listen to tell if there are some other people who do seem to be going somewhere. If so, I will listen and may well learn.

When I make a flat statement that something is in a rathole, I feel dishonest unless I can contribute a potential answer, a potential new direction. Try it sometime.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

you demand that the conversation be put.

Howard, it seems to me that Professor Krueger wrote the post and that Davai can ask his questions without being disingenuine. I've never had interactions with him before, but his past questions you discussed are not necessarily indicative of where Davai may be going with his questions of Dr. Krueger today.

You have said that Davai has asked questions that you predicted he would use to twist the discussion around to support his definitions. However, before you can even arrive at a hypothesis, it is not always a bad idea to ask, answer and discuss such questions.

In addition, even if Davai were trying to manipulate the conversation to come around to his way of seeing the issues discussed, all can learn from reading and listening to him quite independently from his intended purposes.

That Davai may not have read as much as you have does not mean his questions and / or his experiences may not bring a special perspective to the subject that your reading does not. Also, because he asks questions first does not mean he will not come in later with more information to support his perspective. This does not mean that he is "hiding the ball" unless he is doing it merely to play "gotcha" with others on the forum. However, I often find that observing how someone argues can itself be an example or analogy to some of the topics discussed.

Sometimes I have noticed that you will list a number of references that you read whether during your stint at the Library of Congress or some other time, and you will bring out several different perspectives from authors, politicians, generals, warriors, ancient sources or academics and then render your observations on several facets of connection to the issue at hand. That is good multi-faceted analysis, but I do not see it leading to a unification of principles in many cases, but rather a set of more elaborately stated and listed questions that show how much you've read. However that doesn't make you a disrupter IMHO, either.

On occasion, you come along with a "who are you to question me" attitude appearing in your texts...not very often, but it happens. And you do no small share of directing, manipulating and guiding conversations yourself. Again, it isn't always the case, but you do it with different techniques than perhaps others do. You may not agree, but that's feedback from one who has had exchanges with you and has noticed that sometimes your criticisms of what I have supposedly intended or appeared to intend by what I've written are off the mark. And it has taken no small amount of clarification to respond to those.

Having said that, I have no doubt done likewise, and / or have not provided as much information up front as you would prefer to see. Sometimes that is because I aim at a narrow objective. Other times it is because I do not want to throw my thinking and support out there first so that it becomes a flashpoint of discussion and makes the contributions too linear or too narrow from the start. Sometimes, as I'd hoped in a recent blog I wrote, I hope to see many people contributing their varied opinions and viewpoints even as I've started out generally.

On terrorism, I think it is helpful to ask pointed questions about specific examples in forming up our definitions, winnowing through good and bad questions, increasing awareness and so on. He referred to Iraqi attacks on US military targets and you averred the insufficiency of the question on the basis that he didn't say "which group," however, his question could very well go to what all groups share in common in their attacks on US troops, and whether those commonalities are terrorism. So no, I do not think his approach is altogether wrongheaded.

I am not saying that I think Davai's views are all sound, or that I agree with them. For instance, the nuclear bombing of Japan was not so much to terrorize in my understanding of the history of it as it was to break the enemy's spirit to cut the war short, saving the greater number of lives that could be lost to an invasion of Japan by the allies. It may have been that the Sun Tzu dictum that breaking the enemy's spirit but not shattering their entire country may have been part of the US thinking on what would be necessary to beat the Japanese, simply because that might be their negative premise: if the spirit to fight remains, so does the fight.

I really don't know what some of Davais views are. I suppose I could just ask him to answer his questions, or if he planned to do so later. We could analyze his questions, vetting them in part as you have already done, but also expanding on their components, details, and s on. We could ask questions built upon his questions, or about them, and arrive at better questions, for example.

Dr. Krueger:

I'd be interested to know whether socio-economics motivates terrorist acts, as opposed to breeding terrorists. If it were a key motivator, it would suggest something of the value systems of the highly educated terrorists with a grievance. In other words, is the blight of fellows a grievance? If so, then going to the cause of the blight plus the perceived cause of the blight would make sense.

I think your work is important. Thanks for your insightful posts.

Hi Reece, No problem and go ahead, rate me 0 if you feel better.
The reason I have problem with Howard 0 rating. is that overall I have some respect for him, and I don't like him behave that silly. I don't imply that I have no respect for you, I just don't remember any interesting your comment, so I just don't care.
Anyway, I don't think I deserve so much attention, let's go back to the main topic.

I don't believe you're correct in this. Training doesn't make men fight. It is not a motivating force, it does not prepare you for combat - in fact, nothing prepares you for combat. Training and experience help as they help in all situations, but no matter how much training, how much experience, how much political indoctrination, (which the army does everyday) you cannot make normal, functioning males fight in combat without a motivating force. That is why when we have great wars, we must have drafts and there must be penalties for those who evade or leave service. Which of course, indicates that war is indeed an aberration - if it was normal behavior conducive to our survival as a species, there would be no need to draft or induce or coerce men into combat. If personal survival was paramount to our survival we wouldn't have war at all. War is a societal and cultural construct, it is neither reflexive or instinctive behavior in humans. We are a co-operative and interdependent species even in artificial construsts and while there are those humans that act contrary to that, they are the aberration, the variations, the terrorists,the killers, the criminals, the scofflaws, the unco-operative and that is why society punishes, ostracises and generally shuns those people. That is why we study them and examine their behavior and try to understand them - because we need to know.

I did not say that fear does take over - I said that it is a constant, and no, it is not dealt with after combat is over, it is dealt with continuously during combat. That is why researchers are interested in how the brain processes and deals with fear and what effect that has on the human body both emotionally and physically.

I agree that those who spend much time driving on more likely to have an accident, but I would also like to know why - they certainly have more experience, don't they? So what about the human brain causes it to shut down and at what level of intensity does it exhaust itself and begin the process of shutting down? Do soldiers in combat let their guard down, or does their brain begin a process in which it start shutting down in order to "save itself"? What mix and amount of chemicals are too exhausting to the brain, when does it begin to misfire because the physiological process begins to break down?

So I believe it is a tad more complicated than giving people intense training and expecting them to perform on cue. That's part of it, but the greater part, the part that makes them fight is emotional manipulation through guilt and fear.

Oops, I should have been clearer.  I agree with you that it was not an act of terrorism - that's what I meant to say.

Neoboho

Howard,

:-) :-)

The terrorists and the subjects who rebelled in the Milgram experiment share the same ability to reject the established authority. On the other hand the subjects who rejected the Milgram experiment would reject terrorism for the same reason: they objected to cruelty.

By most definitions offered in this thread, the shelling of civilians from Gaze would be terrorism.

Offering this as a possible counter-example is perfectly reasonable.

The initial step in scientific logic in my view is sorting like from unlike. Then you make the hypothesis that you wish to test: other things of this sort will be alike in the following ways.

This is easier in the physical world than in the social sciences where deciding what you are looking at is so difficult.

The Waffen SS could be viewed as the deliberate use of terror by a government for the same purposes that terrorists used terror -- to strike fear in the hearts of opponents and accomplish the political aim of keeping them quiet.

The Nazi use of terror was accompanied by strong deliberate indoctrination.

The hippy movement was a pre-Internet viral indoctrination in an alternate world view. It is hard to say how much of this was person to person and how much of it was transmitted by media.

The current murder/suicide bombers from the Moslem world (yes, I know the tactic is also used elsehwhere)on the basis of research has a similar quality of self-indoctrinated people choosing that route. Currently their media keep in the forefront of the picture the violence and wrongs visted on other Muslims.

And yes, I'm sure, that Davai chooses his examples with malice aforethought to be as supportive of his views as possible. And your point is?

Some people reason better from the particular to the general and some the reverse. You and Davai seem to be from the opposite ends of that spectrum.

And Davai, please find a spell checker. In extremis write out your comments in Word or Wordperfect and then paste them back here. I get sloppy on spelling on occassion and I try to find the patience to do that.

Our culture admires the dead heroes who defend our land and people. We celebrate them in song, literature, art, monuments, film and entire cemeteries are dedicated to them.

I think that would indicate that something other than hero worship is at play here.

I see no evidence that terrorists are indifferent to suffering. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Not only are they acutely aware of their suffering, they are acutely interested in inflicting that suffering on others.

Empathy is both innate and learned behavior. It is a neurological response, and it does not always result in sympathy and compassion. I did not claim that these terrorists are sympathetic to the suffering of others, their goal is to inflict pain and suffering on others as they themselves have experienced it. It is a punishment - an eye for an eye. Humans who are motivated by fear of draconian punishment are apt to believe that all humans are motivated by fear of punishment. (And pain and suffering are a means of motivation for humans just as reward is.)

As bizarre as it might sound, I believe these terrorists want people to understand their pain and are desparate enough to think that their only means of making others understand is to inflict that same kind of pain on others. We may not see it as equivalent but they do.

Empathy for the suffering of our enemies may be more common than we think - that's why governments try so hard to de-humanize them. I would suggest "The Christmas Truce" as a good example of this.

Well, no worries, Davai, you're getting 0's whether you want them, give permission, or ever know who I am.

I think you've seriously shortchanged the subject by failing to take a good look at Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on terrorism to get a much deeper understanding of the subject. For instance, do a google search, "Lenin on terrorism," and you'll get find plenty of useful analytical sources, in addition to original writings that I think will challenge your framework. For the latter, look at Lenin's classic writing, "Left-wing Communism: An infantile disorder;" Trotsky's "Terrorism" and Communism;" and some of Marx's letters.

One academic(?) analysis I just came across is the text of a talk that defines (and explores) terrorism as follows: "We can define terrorism as the use of fear-inducing violence by an individual, a political group or a social class to achieve some aim: it may be simply an act of revenge against injustice; an attempt to stimulate the masses to struggle and revolt; or an attempt to intimidate its opponents, to sap their will or ability to resist." (http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/Terrorism/Terrorism.htm) To the extent that one can come up with a single definition, that one strikes me as eminently sensible.

What's noteworthy about your definition is not the political aspect, but that it hinges on the notion of intimidation. However, that's but one type, historically more often employed by rulers or a ruling class than by oppositionists, to wit the U.S. military in Iraq, but also given plenty of run by some oppositional groups there.

Looking at the classical American case, the Weatherman faction of SDS, your definition fails. Weatherman was not interested in intimidation, but exactly the opposite. It was a group of mostly young white middle class radicals that coalesced out of frustration with the lack or pace of change in the U.S. In opposition, they staged "exemplary actions" that attacked ("trashed") what they saw as symbols of bourgeois rule. They believed that these actions would lead to the "shit hitting the fan" in terms of generalized ruling class repression and, in response, the masses would arise. Political isolation, a sense of impotence, desperation, impatience, these are all classic defining characteristics of modern political oppositional terrorism that can be found on left and right (even among those who seek to intimidate).

To your knowledge, did any of the Weathermen write anything substantive about their philosophy? As a reference for the idea that generic terror will cause working class repression, I have found Carlos Marighella reasonably clear about that doctrine, but I'm always looking for other sources. Perhaps there are some among the 19th century nihilists.

Among the Viet Cong/NLF, there were different approaches to terror, but they almost always shared a message of "do not cooperate with the government" rather than inviting oppression. Some of the urban bombings aimed both at Americans and South Vietnamese. Their "armed propaganda" teams in the hamlets tended to do exceptionally gory executions of "collaborators" before a population held at gunpoint, but one would have to say their messages implied very clear cause and effect. Trotsky seemed to be opposed to selective assassination, unless it was a group effort: "In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes toward a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission."

The LTTE targets for suicide attack tend to be either high in the opposition leadership, or sometimes military units.

I wanted to emphasize the point that not one of the examples in this post are Islamist, but they are unquestionably terrorist. There is an unfortunate tendency to assume radical Islam is synonymous with terror.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

Sure, It's nice to know that I can make you feel better. Enjoy.

Eh... I think the temptation to violence is universal and the temptation to attempt to coerce and train others via some sort of Pavlovian instinct is also universal. It's rampant in our culture as well. Bush for example exemplified it when he started talking Wild West and Crusade analogies, which are all about the intimidating power of extreme force.

Not everyone will act on it, in a given circumstance. Generally the more intelligent and enlightened a person is, the less likely they'll resort to violence.

And some people perhaps never would. Gandhi perhaps was so devoted to non-violence he would have died before striking back. Quakers generally are devoted to non-violence on spiritual and rational principles.

But, it's my obvious observation on human nature that as the circumstance becomes more extreme, a larger number of people inevitably will.

Technically, any violence with the psychological intent of intimidation could be termed "terrorism" to some extent. For example, a parent may shout at or spank a child to shock them into a sort of Pavlovian conditioning, which is in a sense "terrorizing" the child to condition behavior supposedly for it's own good. Of course we don't think of it that way, and not so bright people will be shocked at the analogy, but both actions stem from the same initial, and highly instinctual, presumption of coercive force as solutions to problems.

What we call terrorism just seems like an extreme outcome of that rather fundamental and primitive line of thought, given a lack of other options, and extreme circumstances.

It doesn't surprise me that some highly educated and affluent professionals will resort to violence to solve problems, especially when they're dealing with issues of tribal identity and humiliation which are themselves especially irrational and prone to violent outcomes. And barring other options, such as aircraft carriers and conventional forces, they'll choose asymmetrical warfare.

Just as for example, many well educated business people around the world supported the bombing of Cambodia to "teach them a lesson" or the instillation of dictators in Latin America and the ME and elsewhere, and so on. The rationale there was that we couldn't beat them in asymmetrical warfare, but we could still bomb them to oblivion and make them pay a heavy price. Which was cruel, irrational, and counter productive, but isn't exactly an uncommon line of thought.

If it's not universal, it's pretty close, and just a matter of degree really.

Ouch! or should that be Oujgh?