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Maybe We Should Stop Calling Them Terrorists
Young men, angry and lethal.
In my teen years at summer camp a few decades ago (ouch!), I befriended a teenage girl from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). We resolved to stay in touch and corresponded by mail for a couple of years. She sent me a letter in which she had drawn a map of Rhodesia. Outside the borders of her country, she wrote in every direction “terrorists here”. She also wrote it in a couple of regions inside the borders. Rhodesia at the time was going through a civil war and a ‘transition’ from white minority rule to black majority rule. (I know this description does not do justice to that conflict, but it is good enough for our purposes).
My friend was white. I was not very sophisticated in foreign issues, but it struck me as odd that she would refer to such a large movement of people as terrorists, regardless of their motivation. To me back then, terrorists were small groups like Baader-Meinhof or the Brigate Rosse carrying out small operations, like planting bombs in restaurants.
And it was doubly odd since majority rule sounded good to me, regardless of its color. Majority rule is what our own system of governance is about, isn’t it? Notwithstanding the Democrats’ effort to impose on us rule by minorities…
I have the same feeling today. It does not any longer seem right to refer to ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al-Nusra and other Als as “terrorists”. Of course, they sow terror, they kill innocent people, and they are evil and barbaric — just like terrorists. But they are more than that. They are a problem we cannot solve if we don’t learn to describe it correctly. The term “terrorist” now seems too short-hand and too simplistic for what these groups are. It may describe their actions, but it blocks out their identity and their drive.
All these groupings in the Middle East and North Africa are essentially angry young men led by angry middle-aged men. And they are angry because their lives have fallen behind while the rest of the world has moved on at accelerating speed. I am no expert on Islam, but I am an expert (granted, self-appointed) on human nature and I don’t think the average warrior in the desert of Syria/Iraq gives a hoot about religious purity, except for the cover it gives him to carry out his violent deeds.
Religion here is merely a conduit to channel one’s anger, just as communism was a conduit to channel one’s anger in Russia and China, and Nazism in Germany. Each gives the adherent a blank check for violence under the pretense that it is for a ‘good cause.” So communists and Nazis slaughtered millions and felt ok about it because it was allegedly for the betterment of the human race or the Germanic race. Some people raised their hand to point out that maybe killing tens of millions to help humanity was a bit of a contradiction, but they were bulldozed by the state machine and sent to Siberia to mull over their scruples until death.
So they are terrorists — but not only terrorists. More importantly, they are angry. And there are two ways to deal with an angry person racing towards you with a butcher knife. 1) Shoot them down before they reach you (this is what we have been doing through our drone and air strikes). 2) If it looks like the ranks of the angry are still swelling, try to neutralize their anger.
That is easier said than done. It took a massive war to “neutralize” the anger of Germans that started after World War I and grew and grew until World War II. So we can try to stamp out these armies in the Middle East and Central Asia. We did stamp them out during the Bush Presidency. But they grew back when we stopped shooting. As with a disease (and this is a disease) maybe it is because we have been treating symptoms instead of root causes.
In order to attack the root causes, we can try to understand and remove the sources of their anger. If this proves unsuccessful, we are going to have to gun them down with redoubled effort, because they mean business, just as communists and Nazis did.
Here is a short list of causes for their anger, in no particular order:
– No job. No skill to keep up with globalization.
– No girl. Self-explanatory.
– Unable to cope with Westernization of their culture.
– Loss of job and livelihood (for former Iraqi officers now leading ISIS).
– American support for Israel, Saudi monarchs, Egyptian rulers etc.
– Grievances over past actions by the West (in Iran and other places).
– Lack of a voice in governance of one’s ethnic group.
There may be others.
I may be too optimistic, but each of the above can be addressed constructively, when or if the shooting dies down. We need a global conference to redraw some borders, send a multinational force, and provide an economic reconstruction plan. On the economy, it begs the question of why the oil countries didn’t use some their wealth to educate their own people and their neighbors instead of buying sophisticated weapons and investing in London hotels and other Western assets?
Absent some fresh thinking, the angry will continue turning to terrorism — and the killing will go on.
Published in General
Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
A: 4. Just because you call the tail a leg, doesn’t make it so.
You said “Of course, they sow terror, they kill innocent people, they are evil and barbaric, just like terrorists. “. So we should call them what? Jobless youths? Proto-entrepreneurs? They are animated by a religion that promises rewards for KILLING Christians and Jews. Do you really honestly think you can change them by giving them a hamburger flipper job, getting them laid and trying to teach them some history lessons? Do you really think you can just give them some sensitivity training to cure them of their misogyny? Send over a squad of LGBT activists to teach them about tolerance? You need to stop infantilizing these killers by giving the agency to decide their own actions and beliefs. Those actions have consequences. You demean and denigrate them by saying “they just don’t understand what they are doing. They’re poor and hungry and down trodden and oppressed and can’t help their actions.” They are grown adults who have chosen their path.
@Metalheaddoc
In a small group, say a cell of 10 hardened terrorists like Baader Meinhof, I agree that it is pointless to try rehabilitation. But here we are talking about whole armies where perhaps 10 to 20% are irredeemable but the others could be “brought back”. It is worth a try, in particular because the bomb-bomb-bomb approach is not reducing their numbers. Quite the opposite, it seems.
“And they are angry because their lives have fallen behind while the rest of the world has moved on at accelerating speed.”
If that were truly the problem they wouldn’t define their solution as returning to the 7th century. This is not a question of material poverty with them. It is a question of spiritual poverty with us.
Maybe we should just start killing them and stop making excuses for them.
Marion,
From the national security standpoint, what is the point of ‘bringing back’ some of those terrorists? The problem is the ones who aren’t brought back. If your goal is to save their souls, OK. If you want to protect the country, its the number of baddies that you have to worry about, not the number of redeemed.
All of the root causes you mentioned can be claimed by many people across history. They don’t take up arms and start killing infidels. You want to look at every root cause but the specific one, a hate filled religion. Spare me the Islam is a religion of peace line. If these terrorists are “perverters” of their “peaceful” religion, it is up to their co-religionists to cast them out, by death if necessary, to preserve their religion. How strong is your faith if you would let “perverts” run amok in your name?
What is the evidence that these are disaffected youths who just need a job? I think that is a very big assumption. The leaders of these movements have been highly educated and at least in the case of Bin Laden, very wealthy. Many of the soldiers in the movement seem to be very well educated. They have young teens flying in from Europe and America to aid the cause (including teenage girls who go on to be “wives” of the fighters). Their efforts are not the efforts of a proletariat but of a zealous religious death cult. I would encourage you to read this article from the Atlantic explaining who ISIS is and what they want. Jobs is not what this is about.
Tough talk and action can be seductive but don’t always solve the problem. Is killing them solving the problem? Not yet, anyway. AND you are confusing causes and excuses. Understanding something is not the same as excusing it.
For the loser on the front line, it is. Many of these guys are in it for the pay check. As to the leaders, they are of course motivated by power, greed etc. and use religion as a way to rally the gullible. I had already read the Atlantic article. Seems like the author too believes the BS propagated by the ISIS leadership.
But what evidence is there of that? Its not like these guys were just standing in front of the local Home Depot and got picked to go fight jihad for the day. They are people flying in from around the world.
Islamism is a Cargo Cult response to the fact that Western Civilization is so clearly better than what they have. They are doing everything “right” and yet we seem to have all the goodies. Since they believe they are “right” then obviously, their not having the goodies is not their fault, but ours. Their misery is because of something we do or don’t do.
Classic response of an inferior civilization to a superior one. They do this every couple of generations or so.
“If that were truly the problem they wouldn’t define their solution as returning to the 7th century.”
Why not? You have never seen someone flip the board game over because they are losing?
Marion – you sound like you’re parroting Marie Harf. Any chance you’re her in here under a pseudonym?
Hah, I didn’t know who she is but I just looked her up. Her hair is nicer than mine.
Your list of causes obscures rather than enlightens regarding the motivations.
Contributor Judith Levy points this out quite well in an earlier article she posted here back in 2011, An Ex-Islamist Speaks:
Precisely how would you care to address this constructively?
Could you give any evidence for this? How do we now the Atlantic article is based on “BS”?
Your logic needs more than a list of possible grievances. I could given you a list of things that might make any group of people angry. That does not mean that any of those things actually turned those people into murders.
What makes you sure or reasonably convinced that if every item on your list were addressed appropriately the ISIS members would not just find another “justification” for committing horrors?
That can’t be right, otherwise we wouldn’t have so many disaffected people from Europe, America, and Australia going to join ISIS and other insane death cults. If anything, there’s a feeling that the west is too sterile, too bloodless, too fixated on replacing passion, blood, fire, and heroism with bland corporate multicultural monoculture. They look at modern civilization and see something decadent and weak, which ought to be thrown down in the name of holy God, so that proper civilization – one which acknowledges the proper divine order of things – can arize in its place. It’s not jealousy, it’s radical theology.
See here.(whoops I didn’t realize that article had already been brought up).Intellectual heavy weight Chris Mathew responded well to this . “there will always be poor people, there will always be poor Muslims”
Note that I identified this as one of the causes I listed: “Unable to cope with Westernization of their culture”. It won’t be easy to change the attitude of someone brought up in a paternalistic male-dominant society but it can be done over time. I recommend this article which discusses the issue of authoritarianism and paternalism in these societies.
It strikes me as a huge lie that any successful rebel leader would have a genuine “end of days” ambition. All despots want power and money, and to stay in power. A person who is working towards the apocalypse would not be able to stay in power. He would quickly be toppled by the better “manager” who just lusts for power and knows how to distribute it to his acolytes. In revolutions, the most ruthless and calculating end up in control, not the most idealistic or theoretical.
Marion,
I appreciate your efforts. However, I think you are projecting your own emotions onto a phenomena that is much more foreign than you think.
– No job. No skill to keep up with globalization.
The 911 people were highly educated as was Major Hassan. Post graduate level education. They were employed and could expect to be employed at high paying jobs on into the future. They were very financially secure.
– No girl. Self-explanatory.
You must grasp that in the culture your are talking about you don’t date. Marriages are arranged. If you have as much money as many of these had you might expect to have more than one wife. Yes it is always an incentive but in this case it is to gain a wife or wives like a cattle rustler would gain a herd.
– Unable to cope with Westernization of their culture.
They came to America voluntarily. They were educated in America voluntarily. In a way yes. It is completely un-Western Civilization to expect to conquer the world and impose a religious dictatorship upon it. Justifying virtually any murderous act in this cause.
– Loss of job and livelihood (for former Iraqi officers now leading ISIS).
It is highly unlikely that someone with nothing but a career and job in mind would fit in with ISIS. The religious ideology is an integral part of what they are. Those that made the transition already had sympathetic leanings and beliefs. When Major Hassan screamed Allahu Akbar before he cold bloodily murdered his fellow Americans he was telling you exactly why he was doing it. You only need to listen. He certainly wasn’t losing his job. He probably could have retired from the Army as a Colonel or even higher. He chose to do what he did.
– American support for Israel, Saudi monarchs, Egyptian rulers etc.
Time and again this is a disconnect. What could Boko Haram care about what happens in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Only that fellow Jihadists are killing non-Jihadists. This is the only link and it is the critical link.
cont.
cont. from #20
– Grievances over past actions by the West (in Iran and other places).
I sincerely doubt the millions who were protesting the mullahs for half a year in the streets in Tehran were concerned about what did or did not happen 50 or 100 years ago. They were trying to throw off a religious absolutist dictatorship and got no help from the country who most represents liberty in the world.
– Lack of a voice in governance of one’s ethnic group.
Democracy is the way to get a voice. Jihadism is specifically undemocratic. Jihadists despise democracy. They intend to impose a religious dictatorship. If you happen to be not in the majority ethnic group you will be in big trouble if they succeed.
Marion you are projecting what you are familiar with onto these people. They are not a culture that you are familiar with. Your explanations don’t match the facts. I don’t call them terrorists because the name doesn’t describe them accurately enough not because I am in any way sympathetic to their plight. This is a religious ideology. It’s part of a religion that is very foreign to your experience so you are more comfortable not viewing it as such.
This way of looking at the problem won’t get the job done.
Regards,
Jim
Adam,
The Muslims in the West did not form Islamism. My points on Cargo Cults are about its formation. The guys in the West are attracted to the cult of Islamism. I don’t disagree with your points on why they are going. I was getting at the genesis of the Islamism in the first place.
Mohamed Atta had a degree in architecture. Anjem Choudary is a lawyer. One of the most common phrases I’ve seen in descriptions of individuals seeking jihad is “left college to join ISIS.”
This reason holds no water.
Great but this really does not address the issue, so the leaders are not really working towards the apocalypse. That does not really address why a person would join a group that publicly decapitates its enemies. Being single or without a job does not turn you into a murderer.
Solving your list of grievances is basically tearing down the whole culture, governments, and borders in the area. Then rebuilding it all in a better but “non-western way”, while abandoning Israel.
Try one of the others such as “Unable to cope with Westernization” or Grievances over past Western actions. At any rate, Atta was part of a small group, a la Baader Meinhof, not part of an army. As such, you may consider him as one of the irredeemables, the extremist 5 or 10 or 20% within these groups. And Choudary wants to be a leader. He is not a guy fighting in the desert.
Who is going to miss the Sykes-Picot borders? So why not redraw the borders and give each group more autonomy? The Syria, Iraq border looks arbitrary. You could say that the coastal areas such as Northwest Syria (Alawite territory), Lebanon and Israel have a very different identity (more diverse and Westernized) vs. the hinterland. And this difference should be supported.
How do you address “Grievances over past Western Actions”, what does that look like?
Their culture can only become “westernized” if the people in that area want it to be that way. So because they are “angry” they get to set the rules? What if they are “angry” but represent the minority of the people in their area/country?
Your argument is really that they are angry, so they kill innocent people, we should really try to make life better for bad people? Good people do not join groups that cut off the heads of innocent people, not for money nor because Israel exists.
Evil people are attracted to evil. Since this evil is large, it attracts more and more evil to it.
It is not the fault of the West that there are evil people in the world. It is the human condition.
I just as soon not call them terrorists, and switch to calling them savages.
Solving your list of grievances is basically tearing down the whole culture, governments, and borders in the area. Then rebuilding it all in a better but “non-western way”, while abandoning Israel.
My argument is not really in favor of the Sykes-Picot borders, but more that you seem to be waving a magic wand here. It is just as easy as changing absolutely every aspect of life in the area (but not in a way like the West), reparations for past “bad acts” of Western powers and abandoning Israel. Simple.
Of course once the new borders and culture are established, there will still be winners and losers, so there will still be the opportunity for angry young men to create problems.
Everyone can point to grievances with some other group. Heck, there are people in Canada that could demand a “right of return” to America (to say nothing of the Indians). Should the Brahma class in India pick up and move back north to where they came from?
The whole “its not fair”, “we were done wrong” can go on and on and on. As Ghandi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”.
Folks can accept things as they are and move on, or grind themselves and their future away on what will not change.
Reason, rationality, heck, basic cause and effect? These guys don’t have any of that. What they have is a wounded pride that the West kicks butt, and their sorry little culture does not.