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.

“…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.

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.

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]

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]

I was referring to your post on the other thread.

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.

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.

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.

Young men are easily led to war.

Deacon Jones . . . Jack Lambert . . . Lawrence Taylor . . . Ray Lewis . . . .

So, didn't we figured out what's terrorism and what's insurgency?

There is nothing wrong with criticizing others,
without putting out own position.

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

Rated 5 for eloquence in the definition of cowardice.

--
Howard

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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

The question remains is how much to trust the CRITICISM of someone who never quite trust his own opinions well enough to subject them to criticism. I

Never mind

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.

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.

Would you agree that a certain subset of tactics in asymmetric warfare may be grouped as terrorism?

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?

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. ...

Well, what follows from this?

Not much.

Exactly. It's about as meaningful as citing oxygen as a contributing factor. Social networking is universal. It's the essence of humanity. The outcome of social networking varies greatly by other environmental conditions, determining whether they're networking Tupperware, or pipe bombs.

Obviously we have to try and disrupt networks of hardened terrorists planning attacks. But the idea we could ever short circuit the general networking of emerging resentment, in literally millions of people incensed at US policies, through TIA, radio broadcasts, leaflets, or such, while continuing to invade Islamic countries and prop up dictators... well it seems incredibly naive and bungled notion of Orwellian thought control. Yosemite Sam as Big Brother.

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

It's also what the American Revolutionaries had in common in the continued offensiveness of the British Monarchy. Or for that matter what the British Monarchy had in common with the offense they took at the continued influence of the Roman Catholic Church. And so on.

Such righteous indignation, rational or otherwise, is also observable in our primate ancestors when social rules for fairness are deemed to have been breached. There is a famous study of chimps which shows that chimps trained to work for rewards will stop working if they observe a peer receiving higher pay for equal work. A sense of fairness is innate in higher social species. It could be no other way.

Every social structure must have commonly accepted rules of what is acceptable fair exchange. And when those rules are perceived to be breached, and unjust, civilization breaks down and often resorts to violence.

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...

It's not a "grand gesture" so much as it's naturally emergent behavior. As extreme circumstances crystallize a tribal identity devoted violence, then those who don't fit in are of course likely to be purged by violence, as their chosen means.

For example, it was common for combat units in Vietnam to purge their own of anyone who didn't fit the group or endangered it. And these were mostly drafted city and farm kids, not some strangely unique group of people known for "grand gestures" or violence. Just ordinary people in extreme circumstances.

The Jewish Sicarii Zealots crystallized into one of the earliest examples of organized terrorism under the depraved circumstances of Roman oppression, and were also known for ruthlessness, terror tactics, and purging their own.

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.

I'm not confusing the lack of a rigid hierarchy with leaderless resistance. You're confusing leaderless resistance with a rigid hierarchy. Leaderless resistance by its nature is the small group acting without direction or permission from a hierarchy. We're still addressing terrorism with the same metrics that we used in the 60s and 70s when terrorist groups did use the Marighelli model of a military hierarchy structure. Cutting off the head of that terrorist structure resulted in a dismantling of the terrorist group - now when we attack the leadership the result is more terrorist groups. This is a NEW kind of terrorism, it is not based on the military structure of command levels and control.

There are more than 25 known independent terrorist groups operating in the West Bank/Gaza strip alone,(in Iraq there are more than 100) many of them are self-funded or funded by single wealthy donors. These aren't groups "sent out" by Hamas or the PLO, they are separate entities. They don't "obtain food and shelter" from the civilians, they ARE the civilians - they're not "full time terrorists" and NO, they do not have common goals and common support structures and they have no "umbrella agency".

The Bush administration views this terrorism through the same prism of the 70s model and they think that states and organizations should be able to control these groups and cut off their funding or issue orders for them to cease and desist and it is not going to work that way. One basis for Bush not negotiating with the Iranians/Syrians/bad guys is that on some level this has to be known - whatever control these states have is a drop in the ocean and there is no way we can "win" the war on this kind of terrorism.

No, the cause of terrorism is unknowable, just as the cause of crime is unknowable - there are too many variables and factors to say with any certainty - THIS is the cause.

Davai, you are truly an intellectual giant, and you contribute so much to this effort to find the truth that I hardly know how to express my everlasting gratitude for your intelligent and wise counsel so I won't.

S and V was an example, and whether they were guilty of terrorism or not I do not know. I've read two books on the subject and one maintained that they were guilty and one maintained that they were not. Payroll and bank robberies were often a means to acquiring funds for revolutionaries and terrorists.

I don't know if America is in a decline or not - there are as many reasons to think it is, as to think it isn't. Whether it is good or bad to be a creditor nation or a debtor nation depends on the kind of credit, kinds of expansion and kinds of investments made with the credit.

Excellent post. But now permit me to quibble a few points.

I don't think that you can simply dismiss what Howard and I are discussing as just semantics. I think we are discussing the political and administrative use of words as tools to drive both thoughts and the resulting actions. Is it really just semantics to recognize that using an emotionally loaded negative term for certain behavior or to characterize those who practice that behavior limits the response to that behavior to only the extremes? Except to professionals (which our political leaders clearly are not) terrorism is such an emotionally laden negative term.

If you are going to deal with terrorism effectively, then you have to remove emotionally-drive responses from the repetoire of actions.

It appears to me that you are distinguishing terrorism from war as being a case of "psychological warfare via collective punishment and collateral civilian deaths and maiming." Twentieth century warfare, actually starting with the American Civil War, has been a period of total war that did not distinguish between military and civilians. The wars have lasted until both the civilians and the military quit, so destroying the civilian motivation and ability to support the war has been critical in ending it. Terrorism is merely total war between asymmetrically capable combatants who both apply the practices of total war to the combat.

Once such a total war starts, I find little reason to distinguish the tactics of the more powerful using standing armies to do thing like invade refugee camps and kill everyone there or firebombing a city - both attempts to terrorize the population into quitting the fight - and the use of strap-on bombs against students in a school bus which has a similar purpose. Other than the scope of the tragedies, how do you really distinguish between the tactics? "Terrorism" is a natural and anticipated tactical outgrowth of total war, particularly (but not exclusively) between two enemies of greatly mismatched capabilities. I'm with Churchill when he supposedly said "Jaw-Jaw, is better than War-War." It's not terrorism that is the culprit, it is war itself.

I think American political leaders other then Reagan and Bush (both brain damaged) have understood that. Of course, talking is effective only when done from a base of military capability, but that is still not total war.

Totally off topic, but as far as what made Rome successful for as long as it was, I find it interesting that the Empire consisted essentially the beaches of the Mediterranean and the areas that the Romans could build roads to. I'd say that seapower was probably more significant in the creation and maintenance of the Empire than was their use of cavalry. They learned it from the Carthaginians. Rome was supplied with its primary source of food, grain, from the Eastern end of Lake Med, and the Legions generally had access to food and weapons shipped in from the main centers. The Roman road network was designed to supplement the shipping that maintained the Empire. Shipping (with associated roads), literacy among the soldiers, and the training of the Legions (standing armies permit training that levy's never can equal - I don't think BevD recognizes the importance of training to combat effectiveness - nor, I would guess, does she care too much. I certainly respect her views.) were what unified and maintained the Empire. The ability to concentrate large military forces quickly through shipping and the roads, and the shipping in of grain, etc. from outside the battle area permitted concentrating larger armies than their enemies had. The external supplies would permit those larger armies to stay longer and remain effective on the battlefield, long after their enemies had eaten everything within two or three days' ride. That's the REMF in me. War is logistics first and foremost.

This reminds me of a project in the 60s to regularize knowledge of social revolution, supported by SORO at American U and other groups. I admire attempts to find science in the messiness of politics, but I think we're a millenium or so away from useful formal theory. I think we're not even close to anything beyond anecdotal evidence about terrorism. It hasn't been around in its current from long enough to generalize.

Better to resist the wholly human urge to find patterns, except for graduate-study purposes, and simply learn the stories various political groups tell themselves. How could we find generalities encompassing "I have but one life to give" and Mohammed Atta, and including the Weathermen, Red Brigades, IRA, Basques, Nihilists, anarchists, survivalists, Tamils, Viet Cong, Chechens, Irgun, Hezbollah, SOE, OSS, CIA, KGB, and so on?

I am afraid that, like the proposed Commission to study homegrown terrorism, the results will simply be Rorschach blots suitable for demonizing the outcasts du jour.

I also don't know if S and V were guilty of robbery and murder. They were essentially convicted of murder by a biased judge who did not permit a trial. The transcript shows that. They were convicted before the trial started because they were Italian, working class and avowed Anarchists. I have never seen anything but speculation (not based on convincing evidence that was not apparently planted by police) that they were either guilty or connected to terrorism in any way.

Like you, I do not know if America is in decline. I frankly doubt it. What is clear is that it is rapidly changing, and if you are predisposed to look at only the negative sides of the change, then the picture of decline is obvious. That's what I was trying to present.

I will say that to the extent that conditions in America do represent decline, it is primarily because of conservative political policies that prevent government tracking and amelioration of social problems caused by the changes, together with in the increase in population density.

But of course, it is obvious to right-minded folk that all bad things are caused either by criminals, conservatives or the Devil, and since Bush 43 was appointed, I no longer feel I can distinguish between the three. :-}

While I'm a bred-in-the-bone skeptic (too?), I do think there may be some benefit in going with what we do have -- as incomplete as our understanding may be. Is Krueger doing a service in trying to tease out the conditions which lead the individual terrorist to be willing to sacrifice himself for the group's cause?

For example, if we can agree (if we conclude) that terrorists act almost only when members of and supported by small cultic/clique-ish groups, might we then decide to put greater restrictions on the freedom of assembly -- a balancing of security against civil rights which would be dependent upon Krueger's and other's findings in respect to group dynamics?

I can live with "war crime", but there are war crimes that don't necessarily fall into the category of The Pejorative That Must Not Be Said. The whole area of war crimes is legally messy, given the Nuremberg (all 14, not just the most familiar trial of the Major War Criminals) and Tokyo tribunals were not established by treaty, and we have a patchwork of war conduct treaties with very mixed patterns of ratification. Ironically, "planning to wage aggressive war" had been outlawed before WWII, in the Kellogg-Briand accord no one remembers.

Part of the problem is that the existing treaties are very much oriented to nation-states. To cover some of the non-national actors, we may have to look at the piracy and law of the sea treaty, with their concepts of jus cogens and hostis humani generis. The former creates a standard of conduct for nations generally -- I wonder if the ICC treaty refers to it? The latter refers to "enemies of mankind", but the usage is for pirates and slavers in international waters.

Barnett-style experience

Barnett, you will remember, has two forces: Leviathan, which is the first-world "hyperwar" force for taking down conventional militaries, which is likely to be single nation or at least alliance such as NATO, for the practical reasons of interoperability and common doctrine. His second component, System administrator, is the peace enforcement and nation building force, which is expected to be multinational.

Without reference to the appropriateness of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the conventional forces did the Leviathan mission fairly well. The problem is that they were then asked to be System Administrator, which requires a different mindset, organization, and staffing. Historically, the Iraq fiasco lacked the occupation contingency planning and peace enforcers such as the WWII organizations to which I link.

The best example of a Barnett-style operation so far, I believe, was in Sierra Leone, where a British marine commando unit, from an amphibious group, took down the worst of the gangs as Leviathan, and then started backing out as the ECOMOG security and nation-building group from ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States, moved in. Once ECOMOG (mostly Nigerians, but truly multinational, the British sailed away).

Where has development worked?

I'm not trying to be exhaustive, but there are a few turnaround states in Africa after debt relief. Uganda is the one with which I'm most familiar, and, while it's no paradise, it's improved drastically in a wide range of metrics from inflation rate to the incidence of new HIV cases. I suspect the first step is not to look so much at the failures and seemingly overwhelming challenges, but to look at the successes both to understand what is possible, and how it was done. Even with the civil/Eritrean war, Ethiopia has done some very smart infrastructure development, which also can easily connect into the quasi-autonomous South Sudan. The Ethiopians expanded their power grid, but simultaneously used new Wireless Local Loop technology on the power pylons to provide easy hookup to a decent communications network. There is, incidentally, at least one entepreneur in South Sudan who has done an amazing job in putting together what loosely could be called "business centers", using old cellular gear that had been scrapped, and not trying more than was economical.

The African problems

I've posted extensively and specifically on Darfur, but could reopen it again. The first problem in dealing with Darfur starts with looking seriously at a transportation map, and coming up with a way to get the POL needed for any serious intervention into it. Right now, they have one airport that takes C-130s that have to carry round-trip fuel, and a World Food Programme convoy about every 2 weeks.

I'm less familiar with the current situation in the other countries, but I've been impressed with (I will have to find his name) the South Sudan development. The degree of autonomy of the South, which has a referendum about staying part of Sudan in 2011, is not well realized in most of the world. What appears to be key is to work on an "oil spot" sort of approach to economic development, and bootstrap.

Do remember that the confirmed oil is in South Sudan, but, at present, the only pipeline and export terminal are in the North. There is a real possibility of railroads from the South into Kenya, where there are pipelines and refineries, although in need of improvement. Still, Kenya muddles along and could become a much more viable state. With Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, and even Ethiopia, there is, if you will, the start of a connected "subcore" in East Africa. Djibouti is also positioning itself as a telecommunications and transportation hub.

No, I don't have an answer to Mugabe, but I'm not sure, tugs on the heartstrings being ignored, that he and Darfur are the right questions. With Africa, it may be much more of a question of strengthening some of the better-developing nations with many problems, with a goal of a takeoff like the "Tigers" of southeast Asia, and using them as a base for improving their failed-state neighbors.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

As I said, I admire the scholarly intent, but worry about the political use. In your example, perhaps we should prohibit meetings of smaller than a certain number.

No, it's a waste of time at the policy level, if one takes an economic view, because the cost to economy is mainly the inhibiting effects of security clampdown. It's a waste of time at the strict saving-lives level, since terror-related deaths are almost below noise level statistically. It's a waste of time regarding national security, since the threat to nation is our own government becoming a security state.

The SORO (Special Operations Research Office) project achieved nada. The CIA reversed a few social revolutions by buying opposition and installing a dictatorship. So much for science of revolution. A science of terrorism is even more vague. But history is inherently just stories, and I think we should collect as many stories as possible. We should know the truth, but we should not imagine we can predict human behavior beyond the obvious, which we have ignored.

All you're discussing is martyrdom, which isn't exactly a new concept. It's even a pre-human act which is selected for by evolution for the survival of the group. Situations continually arise where an individual sacrifice will yield greater results for the group. Situations where one life sacrificed may save many. and the group which embodies that characteristic, will then be more fit to survive, and it will be selected for. The basis of all morality is evolved empathy and fairness in our ancestors.

In our own military, many of the top medals are awarded posthumously. In chimps and other social animals frequently members of the group will die for the defense of the group against predators and other threats. This behavior is common in nature. It's basically the defense of one's shared DNA with the group.

Martyrdom is just an extreme example of empathy and individual sacrifice for the good of the group, and it is most certainly a naturally emergent behavior which has been selected for through evolution.

The trait is further modulated by the utility of the sacrifice. If for example a group is benefitted due to sacrifice greater than the loss of the individual, those traits will be selected for. If on the other hand a sacrifice is meaningless, such as blood sacrifices to non-existent gods to improve the weather or such, then those groups will be selected against.

[not an] "innate sense of fairness" [but instead] inequity response.

You're just playing semantic games now. I never claimed it was 100% consistent. No animal or human behavior is. But it is still a naturally emerging behavior which is selected for because it has value to the survival of the group.

For one example, food sharing, and particularly meat sharing, is common among social animals, to allow them to more efficiently distribute food than if each individual merely took what it could grab. By establishing a mechanism for distribution, which also takes into account status and effort exerted for the prize, is a basic sense of accounting, of fairness, while also allowing for group cooperation to maximize the potential positive outcomes for the group over time. It makes possible collective action with collective rewards, such as coordinated hunting, higher intelligence, language, etc.

Then there is the idea of empathy and community welfare at the direct expense of the individual. For example, many experiments have shown that chimps will share food with other chimps, and respond to begging, even when physically separated and direct coercion is prevented. There are many other examples of chimps demonstrating a deep sense of empathy and communal welfare and willingness to sacrifice personal gain for the good of the group.

That may seem irrational if one presumes an individual should only consider it's own personal welfare. That's terribly simplistic however. If for example a chimp acts out an instinct to sacrifice for the group, and dies, it is personally disadvantaging it's DNA. However, if all members of the group share that potential, as plasticity of behavior is high while mutation of genes are fairly low, and if the sacrifice does in fact increase the fitness of the group, then DNA very similar to the sacrificial member will be passed to the next generation and favored, so that the next time a sacrificial situation arises, the group will continue to have the plasticity of behavior to select some number of sacrifices. Even better, it's self regulating, i.e. the individual with the highest sense of self sacrifice, perhaps even excessive, is less likely to pass on genes directly, so what's effectively optimized in the group potential for a plasticity of behavior, not necessarily the individual mutation.

****

If you take the idea of martyrdom, i.e. individual sacrifice for the greater good, which is prevalent in all human societies, and plenty of other social species, and especially in military context; and then you add empathy for one's own group and their suffering, and add to that a sense of injustice or combativenesses against a perceived evil, what you have is a soldier, or firefighter, or whatever, willing to personally sacrifice for the greater good to achieve some goal against an evil.

It can be as complex and intellectual as a calculated risk for a specific result such as a firefighter risking death to save children in the hope others would do the same for his children, as emotional and poetic as Bogey making the "grand gesture" in Casablanca, or as instinctual as the guard dog that willingly fights to the death to protect it's charge as it's training has exploited its pack instinct.

It's a totally naturally emergent behavior which natural evolution has selected for in many ways. And given predictable circumstances, it will emerge in a larger percentage of the populace.

Don, you can express your everlasting gratitude by stopping to whine about somebody preventing to discuss important for you issues.

You see no way to manage motivation? What do you suppose a paycheck does? It manages motivation.

As to war as an "individual pastime" I never claimed any such thing nor would I - war is a collective enterprise. That is why individuals have to be motivated to act as a group and the way the army does that is to break down the individual by removing him from his customary support group and transferring that allegiance to another group. By making the individual soldier responsible for the safety and survival of the group, the army is motivating him through guilt. Training is a tool, it is not a motivating factor. I can train you to drive a cab, but without intrinsic and extrinsic rewards I cannot make him get up in the morning and drive the cab.

What do you think organizations and corporations do? They offer intrinsic rewards such as promotions and titles, and extrinsic rewards such as paychecks and bonuses. GM doesn't train rivetheads and turn them loose, they pay them, offer them perks such as a choice in shifts and medical benefits and so forth to motivate them.

The jails in Britain were bursting with soldiers on the eve of D-Day - obviously for some people NO reward, and NO training was enough for them to risk dying, but for most of the soldiers their loyalty to their battle buddies and their unit was the motivating factor and that was because the army was able to induce enough guilt in them to overcome their fear of dying just enough to get them out of the landing craft.

Of course the army tries to screen out the sociopaths, lone wolves, and the narcissists - they are unable to motivate them to act in concert with the unit. That is exactly my point.

Groups certainly do have motives both individually and collectively. No matter how charismatic a leader is, without motivation the group will not cohere as a unit. If the only goals and motivation that mattered was the leader, he wouldn't be a leader for very long - as a group the relationship must be reciprocal (even if it is just praise and a sharing of credit) - that's what separates a good boss from a great boss and a good general from a great general.

Yes, our focus is different - I am acknowledging the fact that terrorism is no longer a hierarchy of command operating under a militant structure of highly organized persons in pursuit of a common goal. It is those individuals or those acting in small independent groups that are the terrorists now.

These are not your father's terrorists.

Howard, while groups like Al Qaeda have structure, there are over a known 100 groups acting in Iraq alone which can consist or 2 or 5 or 8 people without a structure or organized command. There are at least 23 known groups in the West Bank/Gaza area which act as collectives rather than organizations with a command structure.

You and Rick seem unable to grasp that this kind of terrorism has new metrics and parameters. (No offense, but you do.) The old methods of infiltration, intelligence gathering and attacking the command structure from the top down will no longer work. Killing the leader and expecting the terrorism to stop is an exercise in futility - it is like the Pillsbury Doughboy, if you push him one place, he's going to pop out somewhere else.

eh, well think it over for a while. Maybe it'll click for you.

"Sacrifice for the greater good" is not a "naturally emergent behavior" if it was, we'd all be dead.

Of course it is. But people are variable. Some are more or less violent, more or less intellectual, more or less empathetic, etc. All are naturally emergent behaviors for which evolution has selected. That doesn't mean they're equal in all people. How silly.

Different people have different environmental thresholds to become violent, empathetic, or whatever. The triggers are fairly predictable, as are the levels at which you'll start seeing behaviors trigger, on an aggregate basis given a large enough group.

Right - people are variable. That's why your claim doesn't hold up. I think you've got it.

Are you very sure Rick has not been in combat? Why? He's made a number of references, from time to time, suggesting that he spent a good deal of time in uniform. They may have been subtle things, such as references to particular military schools, or certain phrasings and terminology.

Also, I would hesitate to say we cannot understand anything about the motivation or command structures of "new kinds of terrorists". You made me wonder when you dismissed, as intelligence gathering, an article of mine that had very specific descriptions of a reasonable understanding of the way in which al-Qaeda exerts, or does not exert, positive control over operational cells. In the organization charts I drew, there were cells whose links had curving dotted lines across their connection. It appears that at some point in the operation, which is a quite different paradigm than has been used by other groups, that the operational cells are released to decide the final details of their mission without headquarters approval.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

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

She's correct. I have never been in combat. I wanted to, but my now ex-wife threatened to divorce me if I didn't request out of the Army when I got my orders for 'Nam. The Personnel warrant assured me that I could submit the request and that they were all being turned down, so I stupidly did so. I delayed the inevitable divorce by nine years.

Neither the warrant officer nor I realized that Nixon had already started the draw-down by early '70. My request to get out was one of the first they approved. I remained in the Reserves another 17 years, conducting field training exercises and map exercises for units (battalion, division,Corps, Corps Support Command and Field Army levels anywhere west of the Mississippi. My last six months was on active duty assisting the 7th Infantry Division (Light) write the exercises in which their new light infantry status was being certified. By then I was older than anyone in the Division except the Colonels, Generals and Command Sergeant Majors, and I began to realize that I wasn't going to be running over the hills carrying a rifle like the kids did anymore. Besides, I was a logistics officer, mostly supporting armor units.

It's amazing how much the combat guys will tell you as we all sat around playing poker and drinking beer. But BevD's right, I haven't seen combat myself. People I've trained have, but I haven't.

The FBI definition of terrorism seems to be more encompassing - "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce (a government,)the civilian population or any segment thereof in furtherance of a political or social objective."

If you would remove government in the above definition would not the Administration’s actions against the objecting citizens fit the definition of terrorism!

That is the problem, the techniques of control and direction by a government when it abandons the rule of law then produces an increase in resistance to its objective outside the country, and itself becomes an agent of terrorism to its own citizens!

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Today, are we searching for I deals or Ideals?
-Thinking