Searching for the Causes of Terrorism
The cover article in the New York Times’ Sunday Magazine on November 25th was a long, meandering and sometimes insightful piece by Andrea Elliott that probes the causes of terrorism. (The article is available here) Elliott explored the sources of terrorism by closely examining the lives of several terrorists who grew up in a neighborhood of the Moroccan city of Tetouan known as Jamaa Mezuak. She laboriously chronicles the key players’ descent into terrorism and tries to draw some general lessons from their life histories.
Elliott’s theme is that experts – although she only cites two – are increasingly turning to peer pressure and group dynamics as a cause of terrorism. The article raises some deep issues about the meaning of “causality” and provides some tantalizing facts about the origins of the Madrid.
Elliott argues that, “in the study of contemporary terrorism, there has never been a laboratory quite like Jamaa Mezuak.” This is an odd claim. There are 14,000 terrorist incidents a year, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. Five inhabitants of Jamaa Mezuak were involved in the Madrid train bombings in March 2004 and a handful of men from the same neighborhood have allegedly tried to join the insurgency in Iraq, although their whereabouts and actions are mostly unknown.
I would call Jamaa Mezuak more of a case study than a laboratory. A laboratory implies some type of an experiment; usually, one variable or process is manipulated to determine the effect on the outcome of interest. Jamaa Mezuak provides a single case, one observation. There are no comparisons to other cities. No variables are manipulated. Instead, a jumble of possible factors – family networks, friend networks, outrage at American aggression in Iraq, etc. – are tossed together and inferences are drawn about causes of terrorism.
It is useful to back up and ask how causality should be defined in the field of terrorism. Ordinarily, if we say X causes Y to occur, we mean that if X did not happen Y would not happen either. That is, causality requires a comparison of counterfactual situations. Randomized laboratory experiments solve this problem by arbitrarily assigning the treatment of X and examining what happens to Y. Nothing like this is done in the case study of Jamaa Mezuak, and I would venture to add that nothing like this is done in studies of peer pressure and group dynamics on participation in terrorism.
The issue is important because it is possible that some other factor that is related to X causes Y to happen. X may just be masking the underlying causal factor. Moreover, X may not cause Y, but something about the outcome Y may cause it to occur together with X. That is, we could have reverse causality.
Notice also that some phenomenon have multiple causes. Y may be caused by the combination of both X and Z. Suppose John Doe is killed in a head-on car crash in which the other driver veered into his lane. One could conclude the reckless driving of the other driver caused Mr. Doe’s death. But suppose that Mr. Doe was not wearing his seat belt at the time. Had he worn his seatbelt, he would have escaped with minor injuries. The absence of the seat belt also caused Mr. Doe’s death. In this case, there are multiple causes of Mr. Doe’s demise.
Back to Ms. Elliott’s article. Elliott cites the father of one of those linked to the Madrid bombings as saying: “It’s the problem of friends. If you’re friends with a good person, you’re good. If your friend is a pickpocket, you become a pickpocket.”
Leaving aside the issue that this explanation exonerates the son of responsibility because his friends made him do it, this simple theory may be, well, too simple. People do not randomly choose their friends. They seek friends who are like minded and like intended. Also, friends are selective about whom they admit to their group. A “good person” may not want to befriend a pickpocket. A group of “good people” many not allow a “bad person” to join them.
Now, it is not surprising that terrorists are parts of groups. There are many explanations for this phenomenon, not least of which is the fact that the State Department definition of terrorism requires that terrorists be part of “subnational group”. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, the Egyptian immigrant who opened fire at the El Al Airlines counter in Los Angeles in 2002, was not labeled a terrorist because he acted alone. How did his actions differ from those of a group that dispatches one of its members to shoot passengers on an Israeli airline? How do group dynamics explain his behavior?
Importantly, terrorist groups actively recruit people to their cause, as Elliott mentions in her piece. And terrorist groups deploy their members when they think it is in their interest to do so. Merely pointing out that terrorists tend to run in terrorist circles, or that terrorists become radicalized together, does not mean that the group dynamics or peer effects caused the individuals to carry out terrorist attacks. This exercise, which may be becoming increasingly popular among some terrorism experts, is more a description of a phenomenon than a causal analysis of it. What is the counterfactual situation? How do we know that absent contact with some individuals the terrorists would not have committed an act of terrorism? Studies that show how terrorists are linked to each other do little to uncover the underlying factors that cause some to become terrorists.
A more interesting causal factor to study, in my view, is the set of issues that bring would-be terrorists into the orbit of terrorist groups in the first place. For example, the residents of Jamaa Mezuak commonly cited American occupation of Iraq as a reason for their support of Jihad and as the explanation of why some men left for Iraq. If the U.S. had not invaded Iraq, does anyone think that these young men would be joining terrorist groups and embarking for Iraq? A major lesson that I draw from Elliott’s reporting is that geopolitical developments have caused an increase in the supply of terrorists. At a minimum, one would have to say there are multiple causes.
Elliott’s piece is chock full of interesting facts and stories. An interesting fact that I learned is that Sarhane Fakhet, the former economics graduate student who planned the Madrid attacks, read a document on the internet that suggested making the “utmost use” of the approaching Spanish elections. The causes of terrorism, however, are unlikely to be uncovered from Jammaa Mezuak in isolation.
Comments (90)
I pieced together the following narrative from interviews with his mother, six of his siblings and his Moroccan lawyer, as well as neighbors and friends. A number of them had never spoken with a reporter. Andrea Elliot NYT 11/26/2007
An interesting fact that I learned is that Sarhane Fakhet, the former economics graduate student who planned the Madrid attacks, read a document on the internet that suggested making the “utmost use” of the approaching Spanish elections. Alan Krueger
Are you sure it's a "fact," Perfessur? Don't want you drinking the Kool-Aid, now.
November 27, 2007 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem with the group dynamics accounts is that people everywhere are influenced by peer pressure and other group dynamical factors. I have little doubt that it is true that dispositions to engage in terrorism are spread or heightened within social groups and networks. But recognizing this phenomenon is relatively unhelpful. Dispositions to engage in just about any kind of behavior are spread and heightened by social groups and networks.
What would be the alternative to the view that group dynamics and peer pressure play a contributing causal role in spreading the disposition to engage in terrorism? That terrorism is caused entirely by genetic predispositions? Or that the disposition to engage in terrorism is born entirely from ambient environmental and gross social-environmental factors that are entirely independent of the specific peer groups or social networks and organizations to which one belongs? Neither seems at all plausible.
Now obviously, everyone recognizes that we find terrorists belonging to smallish groups, cliques, gangs etc. consisting in part of other terrorists. But one might hold that the reason for this is that the disposition to engage in terrorism comes first, prior in some way to group membership, and people with that disposition are then drawn together to form groups to pursue their common interest in engaging in terrorism. This must be part of the story, but one strongly doubts it is all of the story.
So suppose we accept the hypothesis that the disposition to engage in terrorism is spread, in part at least, in the manner of a communicable disease, from one member of a group to the next, so that these dispositions do not pre-exist group membership, but are created or heightened after one falls in with a group where they are common. Well, what follows from this?
Not much. The specific group dynamics and peer pressure at play might be no different than those at play within groups of young men everywhere, or at least everywhere within that broader society. So how would our knowledge of the role of groups help to prevent terrorism? The means are limited. Do we push for laws that young men can not hang around in groups of other young men? That they cannot assemble? That they cannot chat on the internet or participate in blogging networks? That they cannot join community centers, clubs or mosques?
So much of the discussion of terrorism seems bent on "psychologizing" terrorism, and treating it as a highly abnormal or pathological phenomenon that can in principle be combated with the right kind of psychological hygiene. Or they find the sources of terrorism in the psychological pathologies that accompany conditions of extreme economic or social deprivation: not enough money, not enough dignity, not enough status, not enough ass. These discussions depict the disposition to engage in terrorism as some kind of weird mania, depression or radically distorted belief system. But I'm not convinced that there is anything fundamentally at work here that is not at work in the all-too-human propensity to engage in violence found everywhere - in wars, uprisings and revolutions throughout history.
People develop, in a variety of ways, social and political attitudes and aims. They sometimes become convinced that they cannot achieve their aims without employing violence of some kind. Given the asymmetry in standard forms of military power between themselves and their opponents, they might become convinced that the desired effect will require the kinds of violent means available to the weaker party in a dispute - not armies, but bombs, Molotov cocktails, rocks and brickbats, etc. They may also become convinced that their only hope of success is to employ these techniques not only against the police and military combatants of their enemies, who are strong and not very vulnerable, but against non-combatants as well. These calculations might all be entirely rational.
At this point, the question becomes this: are the political aims so vital and important, and the costs of failing to achieve them so dreadful, that one will violate one's usual moral norms against killing innocents and non-combatants?
We know people will kill innocents if they believe that the stakes are sufficiently great. If I simply want to pass a law establishing socialized health care, or election finance reform, and find myself in a situation where my opponents are so powerful and numerous that I have no chance of success without engaging in violence against innocents, I may decide simply to accept my bitter fate rather than violate my most important moral taboos and start kllling people.
But if the political stakes in play are victory or loss in a great war against a dreadful and vile enemy, for example, many perfectly normal people will contemplate approaches that call for firebombing cities and killing many innocents. People are certainly prepared to inflict these casualties relatively frequently as a matter of collateral damage. But if the stakes are great enough, they will even contemplate killing non-combatants intentionally so as to intimidate and terrorize the population that quarters, supplies and supports one's combatant enemies.
Terrorists in the jihadist movement regard themselves as soldiers of a kind in a very important war. There are some in their broader communities who roughly share the same political aims, but do not judge those aims important enough to justify violating the common moral proscriptions against killing innocents. But jihadists who employ terrorism are people who judge those aims, and the historical and political stakes, so important that they are willing to kill you and me to accomplish them. Why is that so hard to understand?
Some people believe that the survival of their own community, in its traditional cultural, territorial or religious form, is so vital that assuring that community's survival justifies almost any measures taken on its behalf, if there are no other less drastic measures that hold the same promise of success. This is actually an extremely common outlook. If it is pathological, it is just the run of the mill pathology of wretched humanity.
November 28, 2007 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
“…we need to finally recognize that their fanatical, immoral desperation is fueled by a 100% legitimate cause, their pursuit of justice. They are not 'purely evil' as many would like to suggest…”
I agree with what you have written but wish to add that the Islamic terrorists that we are [mostly] talking about who have a morally justifiable reason to fight do not have the choice of joining a military and carrying that fight to their enemies. If they are justified in fighting and they only have one way to fight [terrorism] that has any chance of being effective, then that fact must enter into our judgment of their methods.
November 28, 2007 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would like to suggest, Alan, that the only way it is possible for American analysts to understand the phenomenon of terrorism is if they first acknowledge that the fire bombing of innocent civilians by American bomber pilots during WWII was just as outrageous and immoral as the suicide bombings that have occurred in Israeli restaurants.
Indeed, what we now refer to as 'strategic bombing' RAF strategists one time bluntly called Terror Bombing. Just ask yourself what inspired those men to slaughter hundreds of thousands of women and children and you will get a clue as to the kind of rationalization that occurs within the minds of Islamic terrorists.
Our bomber crews and their commanding officers felt their actions were justified for a number of reasons. Because our political and military leaders had so thoroughly demonized and de-humanized the Japanese people, the bomber crews found it easy to imagine the women and children they were roasting to death as an evil threat to the American people. Besides, even if the women and children we were slaughtering were innocent, they had their own evil leaders to blame for 'making us do this to them.' The Saudis who carried out the 911 attacks saw things precisely the same way.
We now insist that any and all attacks on innocent civilians are evil because no cause or injustice can justify such heinous behavior. But when our own country's terrorist acts have been condemned for precisely the same reasons, we argue that the end we were pursuing justified the means we used. Unleashing unimaginable brutality on Japan's civilian population (with firebombings, atomic bombs, etc.) was meant to save American lives by terrorizing them into surrendering. Islamic insurgents are today choosing terrorists actions for the same practical reasons.
What this lesson from history should teach us is that it is possible for an individual or a group (or a people) to use immoral means to pursue ends that are unquestionably moral. Americans know that, while the slaughter of innocent Japanese civilians may not have been morally justified, our participation in the war was justified because we were attacked. But just because your participation in a war is justified does not mean that any means you use to win the war is justified.
That is what we have been telling the Islamic militants, isn't it?
America's leaders are right to condemn suicide bombings as morally reprehensible, but they are hypocrites for trying to suggest that anyone who would commit such acts cannot possibly be acting in the pursuit of moral ends. We know from our own history that this is not true. The question we need to focus on is whether or not the Islamic militants are acting in pursuit of ends that are moral.
The reality we are dealing with today is that Islamic suicide bombers are pursuing ends that are actually morally justified, but are using means that are morally detestable. They are no more deserving of honor than America's bomber crews were in WWII, for the same reasons. For this reason alone we should continue to condemn their evil actions, but at the same time, we need to finally recognize that their fanatical, immoral desperation is fueled by a 100% legitimate cause, their pursuit of justice. They are not 'purely evil' as many would like to suggest...
Israel: Time For Soul Searching
November 28, 2007 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, on the other hand, as Elliott points out, the economic future for these men is so bleak and crime so rampant as a livelihood, that jihadism may seem to these men as the only legitimate way out of their predicament. If your only avenue of employment lies in stealing, smuggling, blackmarketing and drug dealing a religious cause might be seen as an act of redemption.
Elliott also remarks in her article that the brother of one of the jihadists said they were interested in jihadism before they were recruited.
November 28, 2007 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
You may well be right, Ellen, about poverty as a factor in terrorism.
In looking at the research and statistics in studies about terrorists and terrorism, while the majority were educated and had paying jobs, none of them had well paying jobs comeasurate with their level of education and training. The unemployment rate in Gaza is a whopping 75% and in East Jerusalem it is 68% for males aged 18 - 35, 63% of the population lives below the poverty line, the unemployment rate for Gaza and the West Bank is 20.3% with the per capita income at $1500.00.
So perhaps these terrorists did have jobs, but there doesn't seem to be many good paying jobs or jobs with the prospect of future advancement, so addressing poverty in these areas might well be the most productive avenue of reform.
Just thought you'd like to know.
November 28, 2007 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that suicide bombers, who emphatically are not all Islamic, are not necessarily acting immorally within their value system. It concerns me, however, that some of your analysis seems to be directed on a morality, and that certain aspects are not quite historically accurate.
Morality is not universal, so it does not lend itself to describing all terrorist behaviors. Let me deal with the process of suicide attack, with several example. Different moral systems easily could find certain of these acts moral or immoral.
Start with the pilot of a single-seat fighter or fighter-bomber. In the first example, he is dogfighting another fighter, and is hit with a burst of gunfire. He knows he is fast losing consciousness, but as his last act, he turns his aircraft to crash into the other, killing himself (perhaps minutes or seconds early), but also the other pilot.
A slightly more complex case would be where the mortally wounded pilot chose to dive his aircraft into the most valuable target he could see, not necessarily the one he was sent to hit. Assume it is a factory of some sort, and it actually makes civilian goods, but it looked, to the dying pilot, as if it was important to the enemy economy.
Moral complexity gets much deeper when one deals with Japanese kamikaze pilots, who started on their mission in perfect health. They might be wounded and crash into a target of opportunity, or into the sea. Nevertheless, they share with certain other individuals the quality that they are knowingly setting onto a suicide attack. The kamikaze method was selected as the only means available to the Japanese of the time to have a reasonable chance of damaging an aircraft carrier. If there were no carrier, any warship would do. Clearly military against military.
In the defense plans for an invasion of Japan, the orders changed. Troop transports, not warships, were the priority targets. These, however, carry soldiers. The orders, however, also said that a hospital ship was a valid target.
Now, thing of the LTTE suicide bombers in Sri Lanka, who are not necessarily of any religion, but are most likely to be Hindu. There is evidence that suicide bombing is seen by the LTTE leadership rather like the Japanese: it is a way to hit a specific and valuable target, an official that the LTTE wants to assassinate. Assume they do not believe they have any other way to kill that official. The moral complexity comes because the bomber could not reach the official in a well-guarded office, but only in a crowded public place. Innocents will be killed, but they are "collateral damage". LTTE, we think, isn't specifically trying to terrorize through civilian deaths, but knows it will produce them. Support for their targeting is they also use suicide techniques against warships.
Now, we come to the Palestinian bomber in the pizza parlor. There is absolutely no strategic significance to the target. The purpose of the attack is to spread fear and to make Israeli citizens less trustful that their government can protect them.
This has gotten long enough, and it does, I believe, raise questions of "what is moral", with such ethical questions of whether it is moral to kill soldiers who will eventually attack you, wounded soldiers who may attack you if they recover, innocent bystanders near an assassination target, and deliberately targeted innocent civilians who are the target.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 4:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Searching for the Causes of Terrorism
from the 2006 NCTC Report:
Of the 14,000 terrorist attacks in 2006, 6,600 occurred in Iraq and 750 (approximately) occurred in Afghanistan.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3bO4PcRHIl8J:wits.nctc.gov/reports/crot2006nctcannexfinal.pdf+NCTC+Report+on+Incidents+of+Terrorism+2006&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
That means that over half the terrorist attacks in 2006 occurred in countries which were invaded and occupied by the US, and (remembering the definition of causality) we can therefore conclude that the US is the primary cause of terrorism in the world, without even considering the terrorist attacks occurring elsewhere as a result of US imperialism.
This conclusion jibes with news reports of a year ago: "A classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) contends that the war in Iraq has increased Islamic radicalism, and has made the terror threat around the world worse."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0925/dailyUpdate.html
This follows on to the arming and training of Islamic radicals under the Carter administration, a subject of this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser:
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. . .
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
ecotourism
WeGoEco.com
November 28, 2007 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now, I want to address the WWII bombing, which I believe is not a binary case of right-versus-wrong, if terror was the intent, and who was to be terrorized if so. I am reluctant to use "morality" in this context, because there were significantly different moral systems in use. Nevertheless, it is perhaps worth considering things such as Aquinas' Principle of Double Effect, in which it may be licit to harm some in pursuit of a greater goal. The usual example is that the only way to stop someone setting an orphanage (or some other clearly innocent target) on fire is to shoot him, with the intention of killing.
On December 7-8, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked a number of military bases, Pearl Harbor being one of them. In all of those attacks, there were civilian casualties. Most were probably incidental, although their might have been some cases of strafing crowds.
In this discussion, it must be remembered that virtually all WWII bombing was extremely inaccurate by modern standards. A short-range dive bomber in close air support of troops was "danger close" within 1000-2000 yards. An American longer-range bomber could hit a factory and sometimes a large building, in daylight. A British or German night bomber could, at best, hit a target the size of part of a city.
The first retaliatory strike by the US was the Doolittle raid in April 1942. It was symbolic, but generally aimed at industrial target, if they could be identified, which was not a given. Doolittle told his crew that if he or the plane were critically damaged, he would offer the crew the chance to bail out, but he would then dive the aircraft into the best target (best not well defined) he could see.
Area bombing became common in the Battle of Britain. Significant numbers of civilians were killed from German bombs generally aimed at docks or factories, but that were only crudely aimed.
Arthur Harris, commander of the British Bomber Command, did establish a targeting strategy of "dehousing", or attacking the residential areas, at night, where factory workers were believed to live. Unquestionably, an intent was to demoralize, which the postwar Strategic Bombing Survey showed did not work. The bombing, however, was also intended to diable German industry by killing its workers. Harris' aircraft carried a fairly heavy bombload, but had relatively poor bombsights and defensive armament. Those three technical factors suited them only for area attack at night.
American long-range bombers attacking Europe carried much smaller bombloads, but more defensive armament and more accurate bombsights. Within certain limits, their targets were factory-sized and attacked in daylight. Civilian workers were clearly killed in the factories, and the inaccuracy was such that I'm sure bombs fell on civilian areas.
Technical problems, as well as the nature of the target, were different in the US bombing of Japan. High-altitude winds not present over Europe made high-level, relatively precise bombing impossible. Japanese industry was also much more scattered, and often mixed with residential areas. Fire bombing was one way of attacking those areas, but I am not at all convinced the attempt was to terrorize. I believe the primary intent was to destroy industry and its workers.
The nuclear bombings had both direct and indirect goals. The direct goal, especially in Hiroshima, was to destroy specific military targets. It was fully understood that large numbers of civilians would be killed, and the cities targeted deliberately had been only lightly bombed before, so the effects of the attack would be more distinct.
It is unclear how much we actually knew about the Japanese internal decisionmaking of the time, but the reality was that the leadership was not enormously concerned about civilian casualties, except to the extent they affected the military. Remember, the hard-liners were preparing a defense in which untrained civilians might be thrown into battle, although the stories about arming every civilian with a bamboo spear were probably legend. It is fairly clear that the culture was such that it would accept the death of every Japanese before being "dishonored", with the worst possible dishonor being the destruction of the spiritual significance of the monarchy. Look at the civilian suicides urged on Saipan, and it becomes hard to say the Japanese cared about civilian lives.
After WWII, we can talk about Mutual Assured Destruction, and the extent to which the population was, or was not, targeted.
I have no question that a terrorist may use suicide bombing as perceived as a means of attack. Not all "terrorist" or military attacks are suicidal, and they vary in the extent to which they avoid civilian casualties. LTTE suicide bombers probably regard civilian casualties as a side effect. Massive Israeli fire onto the sites of rocket launchers were intended to kill Hizbollah fighters, but the nature of the weapons were such that civilian casualties were to be expected, immediately and from unexploded bomblets that would act as land mines.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, my bit of a snark was directed to Krueger's somewhat naive willingness to accept the word of a Columbia Journalism School NYT features writer. Andrea Elliot is the New York Times' "Muslim" reporter. She interviews the common man (and woman) and weaves a pleasing tale the truth of which is unascertainable.
In this case, last Sunday's feature, Ms. Elliot was straightforward concerning the source of her information (see, quoted language above). She admitted to relying on the hearsay of unsophisticated informants -- but we shouldn't.
November 28, 2007 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was referring to your post on the other thread.
November 28, 2007 5:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Howard Blum in his book "The Eve of Destrustion" makes the point that at the darkest part of the Yom Kippur War, when I looked like Israel was about to be destroyed, the Israelis had Jets with nuclear weapons loaded sitting on the runway waiting for someone to simply pull the trigger. We know now that they didn't pull the trigger, but what if it had gotten just a little worse and they had nuked Egypt.
A real, believable threat to one's survival makes all talk of morality into just that. Talk.
If there were a superpower whose leaders talked serious about a Crusade against Christianity, then backed it up by invading two Christian nations and threatening to attack others, would you fight or just let them come?
Remember, they are a superpower. But fellow Christians had recently successfully uses asymmetric warfare and defeated another superpower. Are young Christians then justified in taking up arms and practicing Guerrilla/Partisan/Terrorist war to defend their nations and cultures?
I find using the tactics of asymmetric warfare (terrorism including suicide bombings) in those cases fully justified. The idea that someone can take a position of moral superiority to those fighters is simply foolish and ignorant. Those fighters may be wrong in what they believe for many reasons, but given what they believe, they are not immoral. Some things and some people are worth defending.
November 28, 2007 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the distinctions you're making are rather superficial. Maybe that was the point, to show shades of gray. But I think it fails to define meaningful issues.
For example, I don't see any meaningful difference between a kamikaze pilot, and any other combat pilot. Any combat pilot is balancing a risk of loss of life, vs. a perceived value of objective. Many US pilots flew mission with high casualty rates, where the gain was perceived to be greater than the loss. Even if the casualty rate reaches 1, so long as the perceived gain is greater, it's still the same dilemma of war. Besides, the greatest harm done by kamikaze pilots was to the Japanese military, as the over emphasis on ritualistic sacrifice and honor resulted in terrible losses of trained combat pilots and hardware. The Japanese sustained high casualties throughout the war due to poor design for pilot survivability, which over-valued honor and sacrifice and under-valued living to fight another day. Which again isn't so much a moral dilemma as a logistical one, unless one concedes in the end they're much the same.
In regards to a different moral dilemma, take the use of the atomic bomb in Japan. Which is really three separate issues. There is the traditional dilemma of war which is basically accounting, where it can be argued a military should use what force it has to prevent it's own losses, and that an invasion of Japan would have been tremendously bloody on all sides. Secondly, there is the humanistic dilemma of whether a larger total loss of life, including Japanese lives, was prevented by using the bomb. Lastly there is the philosophical dilemma of the bomb itself, whether it's simply too powerful and the dangers of its misuse exceed human judiciousness and nature.
Which is more akin to the ancient rules of chivalry even in medieval times: that warring powers didn't want to completely annihilate each other, but simply wanted to supplant each other at the top of the food chain.
Similarly, warring countries typically protect things like art museums and cultural artifacts, to preserve those things which are common human heritage and irreplaceable. With some notable recent exceptions such as the Taliban dynamiting ancient buddahs, and Rumsfeld notoriously declaring that war and democracy are "messy" as Iraq was looted in the post invasion.
***
In regards to an attack on a pizza parlor, I think we should have the intellectual honesty to admit that it does have strategic value. Justifiability is another question entirely that can and should be addressed on its own terms. But pretending the pizza parlor has no strategic value is a rather flimsy argument.
AS war planners make the connection to between civilian lives and factories producing arms and decide on fire bombing a city, so too do asymmetric war planners correlate a pizza parlor to a civilian quality of life that allows technocrats to build economic and technology infrastructure, which eventually produces aircraft carries and such.
Denying that essential parity is just faux-morality and demagoguery, which may reassure people somewhat, isn't really helping solve problems.
Also, I tend to doubt that any sufficiently complex and intelligent organization can exist, that is both smart enough to pose a significant threat, and also stupid enough to fail to account for basic principals of common humanity and self preservation. While it's temping to portray AQ or such terrorist organizations as complete nutcases who would stop at nothing to achieve their ends, including their own annihilation or that of an entire region, their actions say otherwise.
I don't really think they're all a bunch of complete nutcases who simply "hate America" and "hate freedom" and such. I think they're fundamentalists, much like our own religious fundamentalists, who through a mixture of megalomania and zealousness seek a totalitarian theocratic rule without foreign influence.
As long as they perceive us to be interfering in their region, and coercively effecting their quality of life, through bolstering the Saudis for example, they're going to continue waging asymmetrical war. Just as any people instinctually would do so, and just as Americans have against our perceived oppressors in the past.
My view is that as much as those claims are truly deranged and irrational, we should be prepared to sacrifice for our values. However, we should also look closely at our actions and values, and where they're in conflict, stop taking actions that are only hurting our long-term interests by inflaming enemies and placing ourselves in morally ambiguous gray areas.
November 28, 2007 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post, Kosmik.
November 28, 2007 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, it is group dynamics and a propensity for people to engage in certain kinds of behavior, but the tactics are decided by the leadership of the group. They then use the propensity of people to do what the leader says to do.
The leaders got there because they know how to use the group dynamics, and they select individuals who are likely to be ready to do what they are directed to do - in this case, violence.
Young men are easily led to war. That is a characteristic that is true around the world. It is as true in gangs as it is in terrorist groups or armies. It is now known that the human brain does not fully develop until around age twenty-five. Guys younger than that have a desire to act to solve problems, but lack the wisdom to know what actions are needed, and thus are easily led. Such people become the tools used by the group leaders.
Your last two paragraphs are dead on.
November 28, 2007 6:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
War, asymmetric or symmetric, is most often amoral. jus in bello, and the whole idea of proportional response and other aspects of just war theory tends to be dismissed when one side believes it is in immediate jeopardy, or has limited weaponry. This is one of the reasons I've been hard on Israel's use of M26 cluster submunition rockets against light artillery rocket firing sites, because Israel has options. Faced with the same threat (I'll assume 122mm GRAD), US doctrine will be to suppress fire with airburst 155mm howitzers, which, I believe,have a faster time of flight and a better chance of hitting the crew, but a lower chance of collateral damage -- no scattered unexploded bomblets. Even though the US M30 rockets are guided and can have more precise use, there are contracts issued to convert them to XM31 unitary warheads, and to convert most ATACMS missiles to unitary warheads. It may, indeed, be possible to make a fail-safe antipersonnel or dual-purpose bomblet; I can think of ways to do it, but the current generation don't use that technology.
In other words, if there are moral positions to be taken, the greater the set of options available to any belligerent, the more I am willing to speak of restraint being relevant under just war theory and the customary laws of land warfare. Asymmetric or not, however, I do not consider collective punishment ever to be viable, and falls under the doctrine that has traditionally been applied to piracy and slave trade: hostis humani generis, enemies of humanity who are fair game for any state.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Young men are easily led to war.
Deacon Jones . . . Jack Lambert . . . Lawrence Taylor . . . Ray Lewis . . . .
November 28, 2007 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi James,
Can you explain why this is only one way.
I want to understand why that particular British doctor, who was born in a Muslim county, decided to commit a terrorist act in London. Do I really need to understand what’s was the Truman’s reasons for ordering that Hiroshima bombing? Even if I do understand Truman’s reasons, how this would help to understand mmotivations of that British Muslim doctor?
November 28, 2007 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, didn't we figured out what's terrorism and what's insurgency?
November 28, 2007 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You say that you respect my opinions? I will explain my rating. I cannot tell if you intend to do so or not, but this reads to me as an unconstructive challenge, adding nothing to the discussion, but implicitly criticizing those that have the integrity to put out hypotheses for criticism.
One of my greatest reason for finding your constant questioning irritating and actively counterproductive is that you never seem to have the courage to put out a position that might be criticized. Instead, you criticize others, and say their work is irrelevant, but cannot seem to take what you willingly give out.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is nothing wrong with criticizing others,
without putting out own position.
November 28, 2007 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's also a huge mistake to simply look at the individual's wealth and ignore the overall poverty levels and quality of life, especially in regards to coercive foreign influence.
Empathy and justice are very powerful instincts. They're shared traits observable in our higher primate ancestors, and certainly predate humanity as fundamental primate emotions and motivators. Much of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic faiths are based on empathy for one's own people, and martyrdom in the name of justice for those people.
From what I've read, the predominant theme among terrorists seems to be the notion of communal humiliation resulting from widespread poverty and coercive foreign influence, producing a sort of guerrilla vigilantism combined with a sort of noblesse oblige, or as I like to jokingly call it: Raging Batmanism.
But it's not going away as it seems to be fundamentally wired into the human sense of justice and meaning of life. I'll bet most people would rise to violence in defense of their communities if they perceived them to be under attack. While people may fail to call 911 if they see an isolated stabbing or such random violence, if was a systematic violence perceived to be of foreign origins... well we had a revolution, civil war, and two world wars for that.
It seems we should carefully look at which principles and national interests we're truly willing to sacrifice for, and do so, and take a second look at where we've wandered into morally gray areas, where we're failing our own long term interests, and adjust accordingly.
November 28, 2007 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's very interesting to me. My guess is that in times of great social stress, the ressurection of paradigms from the past - "the good old days" - is likely to ocur. There are several historial examples: The "wild man" mythologies of the early modern era in Northern Europe, maybe even the hippy movement from the 60s. I'm thinking that jihadism may be just that - a very romanticized memory of the good old days of, say, Harun al Rashid (Aaron the just). While the jihadists yearn for the golden age of black and white politics, they forget that old Aaron was only "just" in a limited fashion - those who were forced to surrender their tongues to Aaron couldn't speak out.
My Rx is to let those who yearn for the caliphate have it. That would leave them to blow up each other, and leave the rest of the world alone. After all, the hippy movement failed because individual brainiacs really couldn't reinvent culture.
Neoboho
November 28, 2007 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
[Theodore Roosevelt]
"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all!"
[James Graham, 5th Earl of Montrose]
November 28, 2007 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rated 5 for eloquence in the definition of cowardice.
--
Howard
November 28, 2007 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, but I think Dan is hovering around something important, without actually stating it. Four or five years back, the first Palestine female suicide bomber, did her deed in Israel with tragic consequences. Her familly was quite forthcoming with details on her motivations. She wasn't particulary political or religious. The conclusion, at least from what I read, was that her motivation was from style and fashion. Killing innocent Isralis was a fashion statement. How absurb! But we really need to know if this is true.
Neoboho
November 28, 2007 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would tend to agree with many of your points. Every time there is a paradigm shift you have upheaval and distress in societies. I haven't really explored this but think back to the leap from the agricultural to industrial shift (just as an example) and the terrorism that occurred then - Sacco and Vancetti (among others) come to mind. Another would be Russia's leap from serfdom to freemen - that was a free-for-all of terrorism. You're on to something with this line of thought - look at the ascendancy of the conservative movement in this country coupled with a resurgence in fundamentalist religion - we're certainly undergoing a paradigm shift from industrial to techno/information society and along with that an uptick in rightwing terrorist groups in this country.
Something's going on, isn't it?
I agree with Hume - you cannot prove causation, you can only perceive correlation.
November 28, 2007 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, if I find errors in an RFC, the anwser will be "It is not the critic who counts" ?
It's a new concept.
November 28, 2007 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Young men aren't easily led to war, that is why there are drafts, penalties and rewards in coercing them to join.
The average "terrorist group" is 5 - 8 people and the model is "leaderless resistance" which is why terrorism today is so confounding - there seems to be no hierarchy of command which is why it is so ridiculous that states make demands on groups like Hamas to stop the violence before they will negotiate or remove sanctions. There isn't one "group" of terrorists, there are thousands of groups, each with its own group dynamics and in the group dynamics are the individual psychodynamics of the persons in the group.
This is an interesting subject to discuss, but it is essentially bullshit because we can never know what causes terrorists to act - it is simply unknowable.
November 28, 2007 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
As usual, you twist terms and lie. For those unfamiliar with how Internet technical standards ar developed, a publication is known by the term "Request For Comment" or RFC.
Originally, an RFC was literally that: a draft for comment. As the process developed, an RFC (with certain exceptions clearly marked as individual contributions) had gone through a number of Internet Drafts, usually starting in a Working Group of specialists, then going through Area Director review, and then through review by a group of elected "elders", the Steering Group.
The last RFC I published, IIRC, went through 6 drafts before Steering Group approvals. I've never seen one go through the first time. One very critical specification (BGP) reached consensus after, IIRC, 26 drafts.
Now, how is this different from Davai's snide remark? First, people systematically put their work out for peer review, which is quite different from "criticism". Simply speaking, no one will be taken seriously, as a peer reviewer, if they haven't done their own original work, both as documents that have gone through the same process, and, usually, have demonstrated their ability to build demonstrably working implementations in accordance with the document.
If TPMcafe worked like the IETF, posts would be much lengthier, with both theoretical and experimental data, and get line-by-line review by peer reviewers who have earned professional respect for actual contributions, not just criticism.
In other words, Davai, you understand the IETF process about as well as you understand reasonable discussion at TPMcafe. In my estimation, you remain an intellectual coward, afraid to put out your work because others might find fault with it, but eager to criticize anyone else with the gonads to take a stand and defend it.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct." [Benjamin Disraeli]
November 28, 2007 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the abstract sense, there is never any justification for war. But war is a general overall situation in which individuals have to act, and individual actions are not abstractions.
Were the leaders of Israel justified in conducting a preemptive attack against the gathering Egyptian troops that started the combat phase of the Six-day War? Many of those leaders had fought the Arabs when the British pulled out and failed to take any action at all to prevent violence in the 1948 War for Independence and they knew what they were facing.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a rational response to the repression of poor Egyptians by the government of Egypt, and the repression of the Egyptian Brotherhood (who assassinated Anwar Sadat) is a rational response to the threat faced by the government of Mubarak. Neither set of responses are the only possible response, but it is really difficult to convince teenagers that Ghandi's and King's non-violence is likely to be effective.
I had a Tunisian college roommate for a while who hated the French. He on several occasions spoke of the time a French Foreign Legionnaire kicked in their door, then kicked in his father's face. Salah blamed the French. I rather doubt that I would have been any more charitable had it happened to my father.
Personally, I think the use of cluster submunitions by the Israelis was intended to punish the Lebanese for permitting Hezbollah to operate from their territory.
Sure it's counterproductive in the long run, but so is hitting your child to make him mind. Both are very satisfying at the time they are done, conservatives tend to act from fear and demand immediate results, and a lot of people have no trust at all in the good will of other people, especially their enemies. Unfortunately, Ghandis and Kings are quite rare. (I think I'd include Mandela in that group.)
But my point is that a lot of people feel they have good reasons to fight rather than consider the morality of fighting. Do you prevent terrorists from killing people today in Kashmir, or do you approach it with the idea that the deaths that they commit today are necessary to reach a long-term just and moral solution to the conflicts?
How often can you extend trust to someone who abuses that trust? I currently have that problem with movement conservatives and evangelical Republicans. I not only don't think they negotiate conflicts in good faith, I don't think they every will. [That's not unique to Republican politicians, but they seem to have a culture that encourages duplicity as practiced by Nixon's plumbers, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, and they seem frankly proud of it.]
I can understand why some kids think the most moral thing to go is go fight. You don't reach those kids by lecturing them from a position of moral superiority and telling them their actions are immoral. That kind of argument is most likely to become effective after they become older and become parents. You have to show them there are other, better ways to deal with the problems they feel impel them to fight.
If you aren't also trying to provide education, health care, housing and jobs to them and those around them, I don't think you can be credible about suggesting alternate ways to deal with conflict besides fighting.
I prefer to use the term asymmetric warfare to terrorism because the term 'terrorism' is nothing more than a pejorative used to label evil people and to 'explain' why they are enemies.
The pejorative 'terrorism' is used to conceal the fact that those people most likely think they are coming from the moral high ground themselves. The use of the term 'terrorism' to describe what your enemies are doing has the effect of limiting solutions to little more than killing or imprisoning them.
If you want to stop or prevent a fight, then driving your opponents into a corner where their choice is to fight or die is highly counterproductive. Calling your opponents 'terrorists' has that effect. Looking at what they do as a rational form 'asymmetric warfare' opens a lot of routes to somehow stopping or preventing the fight.
But as I pointed out in another comment, the tactics used are decided by the leaders of the group of insurgents/guerrillas/Partisans/Whatever. The individual terrorists themselves are just tools being used to conduct the war. Each of them is replaceable. The war can only be stopped by dealing with the leaders.
November 28, 2007 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The only factor I can find that they all seem to have in common is a personal, humiliating affront to their dignity and a personal rejection by those more powerful. Whether it is Hitler, Stalin, Lenin or the Columbine school shooters they all have this in common.
Another common factor is their willingness to kill members of their own group in order to make the "grand gesture". That has to mean something, I just am not sure what...
November 28, 2007 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would you agree that a certain subset of tactics in asymmetric warfare may be grouped as terrorism? Other than it would be a tonguetwister, I'd even prefer "asymmetric conflict resolution" to asymmetric warfare.
For example, in some cultures that practice the custom of potlatch, the greatest status accrues to those who give the most to others. In these cultures, this is not seen as bribery, but as a free choice.
While I don't regard Thomas Barnett as always right, I think that he has a good point in his concept of the "connected core" of nations, and that the dysfunctional societies are ones that do not, in a very broad sense of the word, have the ability to interact, productively, with the connected core. "Productively" here is a key, as maximal globalization, with no concern for individual rights, preservation of human capital, and infrastructure development is not productive.
Cornering an opponent is usually a very bad idea, unless you are adept in forms of combat that work best when close in. The opponents in South Vietnam used to speak of "hugging" the Americans, because if they were in close contact, overwhelming air and artillery power -- a different sort of asymmetry could not be used against them. There are also martial arts techniques that can be used only when at very close range, such as being inside the distance at which one can box.
A rabbit is optimized to run away, but there have been some fearfully mauled predators that cornered a rabbit and did not kill it quickly.
There are so many forms of asymmetric warfare. Now, I'm a pretty good shot, but I have a running argument with a friend who maintains the right to keep and bear arms is the most fundamental civil right, and the guarantor of the First Amendment. At one time, that might have been true, but not against competent militaries. OTOH, if I ever had to resist a tyranny or occupier, I'd be far more of a threat with a computer, or perhaps improvised electronic warfare equipment, scrambling their command, control and communications.
There is a set of techniques that I could call terror, or perhaps a specialized class of psychological operations (or information operations in the latest buzzphrase). They can be chosen, or not chosen.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not yet, davai, what would be your opinion?
November 28, 2007 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think I said anything that contradicts what you said Rick. Rather than argue that the decision to engage in terrorism is mainly just an individual choice, I agreed that it is heavily influenced by group dynamics. I just don't think that this is a particularly important or helpful observation.
My central point could be summed up this way: Figuring out what causes people to engage in terrorism is pretty much the same thing as figuring what causes people to engage is conventional warfare that targets civilian populations. And people have been doing the latter forever. What I repudiate is the notion that terrorism is predominantly some sort of social disease or psychological pathology, that should be addressed by being diagnosed and cured. It should be addressed, I would argue, in the same way in which one responds to military assaults of any kind. If one does not mind too much relinquishing what the attacker wants, you give it to them. If you do mind, then you have to defend yourself against the attacks, to the best extent possible, until such time as the attackers are gone or have lost the will to fight and attack.
As far as our current preoccupation with jihadist terrorism, I don't think there is much of a mystery about what the jihadists want. They believe that there is an authentic Muslim community which ought to be in control of lands historically identified as Muslim lands. They believe Western and Western-backed non-Muslim countries and peoples presently play far too large a political, military and cultural role in those territories, and they want to give those countries and peoples the boot and restore said territories to authentic Muslim control.
So we have too choices: we can either intentionally reduce our activity in Muslim territories to a level that the jihadists would find acceptable - the role of occasional and not very influential guests - or we can choose not to reduce our activity in those territories in any very substantial way, and to fight and defend ourselves against jihadist terrorism forever, or until the jihadists give up and lose the spirit for the fight.
The good news is that the actual level of terrorist threat is not nearly so large as it is sometimes portrayed as being. Defending ourselves against terrorism consists mainly in using a combination of intelligence, covert activity and ordinary policing techniques to identify and thwart terrorist plots and networks, with the understanding that occasionally we will fail, but hopefully succeed much more often.
If the American people in their wisdom decide it is important to remain in the business of bankrolling and supporting West-friendly Middle East governments and clients, maintaining Middle East military bases, influencing Middle East political decisions, funding and supporting Middle East political movements, and sending over religious and secular missionaries and NGOs to convert the natives to some form of Western value system, then we have to understand that there are going to remain a number of people in the region who feel compelled to resist some or all of these activities, and are going to be willing to use violence against us as part of that resistance. Terrorism, then, is just part of the cost of doing business in the Middle East.
November 28, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Davai,
Terrorism (NCTC):
Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Insurgency (dictionary): An organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict
Terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is at the level noted in my post, which (1) is over half the world total and (2) was caused by US military aggression (according to Krueger's definition of causality).
There is little or no "insurgency" in either country. Mostly there is a resistance to occupation forces as well as the terrorism (violence against noncombatants) which has been noted. While the media commonly calls the resistance to US military occupation an "insurgency" this is a corruption of terms.
November 28, 2007 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I can point to an error, I don’t need to be a designated peer reviewer and an author would be a welcome such input. It’s obvious.
November 28, 2007 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The question remains is how much to trust the opinion of someone who never quite trust his own opinions well enough to subject them to criticism. I am really impressed how intensely you are reacting to the challenge to your only being a critic; perhaps it goes to some of your fears.
It is said "Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize." I find that a bit unfair, because there can be superb teachers and coaches that may not be able to do what their proteges do, but, through constructive criticism, help people do their best. It's more the exception than the rule that Hall of Fame coaches were stars on the playing field.
When I lead a team, I will look best if I help those working with me to look their best. Very few endeavors are improved by constant negativity.
It is instructive to look at a tray of live crabs, from which it would appear they can escape. This does not happen, because when one starts to get out, another pulls it down, for daring to be better than the norm.
Davai constantly reassures me that Diana Moon Glampers is his shining star.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
November 28, 2007 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
November 28, 2007 9:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other than I should have typed "trusts" rather than the second "trust", I meant exactly what I said. If the second answer is obvious to you, that is merely because you changed my words to fit your preconceptions of what you would have liked me to have meant.
Hint: Criticism is a subset of opinion.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
November 28, 2007 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Never mind
November 28, 2007 10:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't confuse the lack of a rigid hierarchy as meaning 'leaderless.' Leadership research has shown that in every group of three or more people with a task to perform a leader emerges. Primates are pack animals, and someone always takes a leadership position.
They do not act in close coordination with each other as armies routinely do. That is why the statement that they are 'leaderless' arises. The most effective way for one army to render another army combat ineffective is to remove its leadership or disrupt its chain of command. Suddenly the troops are undirected and unsupported and can be picked off by larger coordinated forces relatively easily. The so-called leaderless terrorist cells (like the French Resistance) protects itself from this tactic by eliminating the direct chain of command and making each cell as self-sufficient as possible.
The so-called leaderless terrorist cells have internal leadership, and they are provided with material and financial support as well as training from outside agencies. Food and shelter is obtained from the civilian economy rather than from formal supply organizations. They are also provided with Intelligence from outside agencies, but they also obtain a lot of Intelligence from the civilians they live among. Part of their training is to identify and choose targets. They can generally acquire some weapons on their own, but the more sophisticate weapons like current EIDs are either supplied from th outside agency, purchased from criminal organizations, stolen from police or local military, or even made on site by specialists with specialized training.
Such groups are not under direct, immediate control of some central headquarters, but they have a common culture, common goals, common forms of support and indirect forms of coordination such as the Internet. The umbrella organization that formed and supports them can - with time - also restrain them.
Such groups are not immediately responsive to orders from some higher headquarters, but they can be separated from their very close association with the civilians who support them. Their umbrella agency can cut them off, and the opponents can take actions to break the connections between the insurgents and the local population. This latter action not generally a part of military capability. In the case of the U.S. it is generally directed out of the State Department with extensive use of civilian NGO's.
That is why civilians working in NGO's have been targeted by the Iraqi and Afghanistan insurgents. When the NGO functions are effective, the terrorist groups lose their support among the populace and become a lot more vulnerable.
Hamas is not powerless to control the amount of violence. Groups like Hamas can be induced to protect those NGO's as one action if they want to stop the violence. They can also stop the flow of ammunition to the groups, and cut off the funds they use to pay for support from the civilian economy.
The terrorist groups are then either forced to stop the violence (after running out of ammunition and food) or they are reduced to being simply bandits feeding off the population they previously claimed to be fighting for. Someone will sooner or later tire of this and give them up to the counter insurgents. [This doesn't always work in the modern world. FARC and AUM in Colombia allied with the drug cartels, providing them protection from the government as the rebels continued fighting. The warlords in Afghanistan are similarly supporting their fighting with the drug trade. Fatah under Arafat had huge international investments that kept them operating before they took the government of Palestine.] But the point is, the so-called 'leaderless groups' while quite independent of direct command, are not beyond control by those who sent them out.
As to the motivations of individual terrorists - the problem is not that they are unknowable. The reason they appear unknowable is that our propaganda demonizes them and assumes that they act from some unknowable 'Evil' personal characteristics.
Who cares what motivates a Orc? They are simply evil. But do parent Orcs love baby Orcs? (Is there a novel in that?)
Why individual terrorists act as they do is quite knowable if you just ask them, and develop a situation of trust. That's not a job for the inherently impatient, however. It's a question for a profiler.
Generally it is not to the advantage of a politician who got his position by promising to deal with 'terrorists' be observed 'wasting his time speaking with such evil people.' That's probably one basis for Bush's refusal to negotiate with Iranians and Syrians until after they have agreed to give up the behavior that causes the conflict. It's much easier just to shoot or nuke he enemy, as Dick Cheny wants to do. Problem solved - until their children grow up angry, unfed and uneducated, perfect cannon-fodder for some intelligent insurgents.
Learning what causes terrorists to act is not unknowable. The information is available. There are just a lot of real barriers to trying to find out.
Find out why the Jewish militias (the Haganah, Etzel and Lehi) decided to form a unified Jewish resistance movement against the British prior to 1948. That information is available, and directly addresses the question.
November 28, 2007 10:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Terrorism is violence against noncombatants by subnational groups. So the following is not terrorism, by definition.
"That road outside of Nasiriyah—when we drove through there on March 25th or so, I saw all these women and children shot on the road by Americans. . . .They were shot by helicopters and LAVs, light armored vehicles. They were shot in vehicles and they were shot in buses, because it’s true that it was justified in the sense that there were some civilian buses that had Fedayeen fighters in them. Instances like that. You hear those explanations but when you see a little girl in pretty clothes that someone dressed her in, and she’s smushed on the road with her legs cut off, you don’t think, well you know there were Fedayeen near by and this is collateral damage."
http://www.godspy.com/reviews/Into-Iraq-With-Generation-Kill-An-Interview-with-Evan-Wright-by-Angelo-Matera.cfm
It would have been terrorism if these women and children had been shot by people in subnational groups but since these noncombatants were killed by people in a national group it is not terrorism, it is collateral damage in the "war on terrorism".
We are looking for the causes of terrorism and we are NOT looking for the causes of collateral damage because there is no war on collateral damage. If we WERE looking for the causes of collateral damage we would have to look at factors like recruitment techniques, indoctrination about how Iraq is revenge for 9/11, training in killing 'ragheads' and stuff like that. But we don't care about the causes of collateral damage or its effects, not only on the victims but on many of the perpetrators who face a lifetime of horrible nightmares over what the US government has coerced them to do. Hey, stuff happens.
November 28, 2007 10:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Except that I think that group dynamics are at least as important in what causes terrorism as individual predispositions, I think you and I are saying much the same thing.
I wish that people would be more careful about what is called terrorism, though. The bush administration appears to have staked its existence and legacy on fighting some existential war against someone they call 'terrorists.' So they take every possible violent action anywhere and call it terrorism. Then they try to pass this off as being caused by a combination of Islam and some nihilistic form of inherent personal 'Evilness' that pervades all the dead bodies labeled terrorists.
I don't consider the insurgency in Iraq to be a form of terrorism, at least not at first. Anyone familiar with Soviet History is aware that the Soviet people generally did not like Stalin and wanted him gone. His brutal response of purging most of the officers of the military in the late 30's was a preemptive attack to avoid a well-deserved coup. But when Hitler attacked the USSR, the Soviet people rose up together to expel the invader. Hitler was not attacking Stalin, he was attacking the Soviet people. Anyone who expected a different reaction when American invaded Iraq was a fool.
And Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were fools of the highest order. They attacked Iraq for no good reason, creating the ideal conditions to motivate an insurgent reaction, then they demobilized the Army, police and civil service at the time those organizations could have maintained stability and prevented the growth of the insurgency. So the requirement for providing social stability was thrown onto the U.S. military who, if they had sent everyone wearing a uniform or who had previously worn a uniform all at once would never have had enough people on the ground to prevent the growth of an insurgency.
What do you call someone who creates an enemy, motivates them to fight you, then does nothing to stop them from organizing, training and preparing to conduct an insurgency?
They are not just fools. They were and remain blind, stupid, self-destructive fools. [I know, I know, we all know this - but this was such an absolutely stupid enterprise that people are going to be repeating what I just wrote in wonder for a century or more. Sometimes I think that the conservative movement is an organization designed purposely to create deranged fools.]
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld created the perfect cockpit for an insurgency with the inadequately planned and supplied invasion and occupation of Iraq, and out of it grew a cancer of insurgency. That cancer has now spread into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Individual cancer cells are not a problem the body can't deal with. It is when they group together and replicate that they become a problem.
The individual terrorists are, separately, no worse then bandits always have been since time immemorial. These individuals, however, carry the meme for creating terrorist organizations that replicate more terrorists. There are specific techniques, attitudes, forms of organization, and ways of dealing with the local populations which are unique to terrorists and are a result of terrorist training and experience. The spread of these terrorism memes is a problem in group dynamics rather than individual psychology.
Groups learn, just like individuals. These terrorist groups have developed over time into very efficient carriers and transmitters for the terrorism meme. Unfortunately, once such groups have developed, preventing their spread is a lot more difficult than keeping them from learning how to be efficient terrorists would have been.
One thing that groups of cancer cells do to exist and grow is to tap into the blood system and attract blood vessels to feed themselves. Disrupting that process is expected to be a way to kill cancer. If an analogous way of disrupting the support of terrorists groups can be found, that may be useful. [Data mining might produce some insights.]
But I do suggest that many possible solutions to terrorism will come out of group dynamics. That runs counter to the American idealization of the lone individual, I know, but it still is something to consider. Every individual is the product of at least one group, and usually many groups.
November 28, 2007 11:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope you are not mistaking Sacco and Vanzetti for terrorists. They were lynched by the state as Italians and Anarchists who were accused of having robbed and murdered two payroll clerks.
Even if they had been guilty, and the trial transcript does not show that they were, a payroll robbery gone bad is not usually terrorism.
One thing that I suspect is that the rise of the right wing and the fundamentalist Churches is associated with the long-term decline of America from its high point immediately after WW II. Let me explain.
The stalemate in Korea was the beginning. Then the long, fruitless war in Vietnam which we lost followed, and accompanied sexual freedom (the pill), the Civil Rights movement, Rock-and-roll replaced 'good' music, and the rejection of American values that the Hippies represented. I was sent to Germany in 1967, and when I returned in 1970 I literally had culture shock. At the same time, foreign cars began to be sold in America, and after about twenty or so years, Japanese cars dominated many categories of auto sales. Nixon's resignation didn't help bolster American pride, nor did Carter's abandonment of the Panama Canal. Then OPEC took control of international oil supplies and really twisted America's tail. So did the Iranian students when the took the Embassy in Tehran and held the hostages until Carter was defeated and replaced.
American wages have not significantly increased since 1970. Stagflation blighted both Ford and Carter's terms, followed by the bad recession caused by the fed chief Paul Volker who Carter appointed in 1979 to stop inflation. (it worked. Reagan got the credit.)
Somewhere in that time the U.S. dropped from being a creditor nation to a debtor nation, but at least the dollar was still the international reserve currency. (That's what the OPEC leaders were questioning a week or so ago. How much longer will they permit the dollar to be the international reserve currency?)
Of all the positions of superiority the U.S. had coming out of WW II, economic, social and military, the only one remaining today is still having the only military force in the world capable of fighting anywhere in the world, and Bush/Rumsfeld have done their best to destroy that.
A lot of the decline has been only a comparative decline, as our trading partners recovered from WW II and developing nations like South Korea and Singapore caught up. But it sure looks like a decline of America.
The last thirty years of this decline has also seen the growth of the conservative movement and evangelical Christianity as it moved into media, mega-churches, and politics. Somehow I can't help but think the two trends are related.
November 28, 2007 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Alan:
November 29, 2007 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
A group of tactics within the realm of asymmetric warfare that might be labeled 'terrorism' would be analogous to the tactics and weapons considered war crimes under the laws of war.
What is the appropriate action to the use of either term? Call the tactics 'terrorism' and you demonize your enemy so that you don't have to deal with him or the reasons he has adopted those tactics.
Call them 'war crimes', and you are setting up a situation that if someone uses those tactics, they become criminals, not combatants. Criminals are subject to known punishments. There is still the option to deal with them in other ways and try to stop the combat.
I don't see any value in the term 'asymmetric conflict resolution.' Asymmetric warfare is a set of techniques and tactics used between by combatant forces of hugely different capability and organization. A weaker force can use insurgent tactics to drive the population into rejecting a much more powerful conventional armed force. But I don't see it as any form of conflict ~resolution~ technique. Instead it is a set of techniques for carrying out the conflict.
Barnett's book "The Pentagon's New Map" has some interesting insights, of which you are correct that the 'Connected Core nations' is quite interesting. As I recall, he argument was that those nations not part of the connected core would have to be policed, and that America as the Superpower was the nation to do the policing. I'm not sure if Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld have left us enough military force outside the Navy to do that now, even if we wanted to.
Between the excessive international debt, the falling dollar, the lack of American industrial production capacity and the destruction of all American ground forces, I really think that if the nations not part of the connected core need policing then there better be some kind of international police force established to do it.
I'd like to see those undeveloped nations become better developed, but the track record of those who claim to understand how to develop underdeveloped nations is far from reassuring. Or to put it more bluntly, ~the so-called experts at the World Bank don't know shit, and neither does anyone else.~
What can be done with Mugabe, for example? What he has done to Zimbabwe only American conservatives could approach in terms of disaster. Zimbabwe, Eastern Congo, Darfur, Somalia (again) and so on, does Barnett have any solution other than American troops? But I guess all those except Darfur are sufficiently far from the 'Connected Core nations' to not be considered a problem, right?
November 29, 2007 12:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you're both getting too far into semantics. You're both talking about psychological warfare via collective punishment and collateral civilian deaths and maiming.
Terminology aside, the methods and purpose are equivalent, whether it's a guy wearing a bomb into a pizza parlor, or firing cluster munitions into civilian areas, the end result is much the same: killed and maimed civilians including children.
The concept of "war crimes" is important to limit the use of force to proportional responses and for an outside community to hopefully prevent escalation of localized warfare to be either excessively violent, long, or widespread.
And that concept of policing isn't so much altruism as it's in the global communities self interest to prevent any region from reverting to utter barbarism, as that sinkhole tends to spread and suck in neighbors and then regions and then the globe, both materiality and spiritually.
The mistake hawks make is the presumption that only a Superpower's top-down projection of order through the use of force can solve or mediate these crisis. Sometimes that can work, but other times it's the worst option and may even inflame hostilities.
Making matters worse, the superpower frequently has interests in the region which it e