The Command Post - Op-Ed - Facts about terrorism

September 08, 2004

Facts about terrorism

Walter Laqueur dispels some common misperceptions about terrorism and the war on terrorism in Policy Review article The Terrorism to Come:

It is not too difficult to examine whether there is such a correlation between poverty and terrorism, and all the investigations have shown that this is not the case. The experts have maintained for a long time that poverty does not cause terrorism and prosperity does not cure it. In the world’s 50 poorest countries there is little or no terrorism. ... In the Arab countries (such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but also in North Africa), the terrorists originated not in the poorest and most neglected districts but hailed from places with concentrations of radical preachers. The backwardness, if any, was intellectual and cultural — not economic and social.

These findings, however, have had little impact on public opinion (or on many politicians), and it is not difficult to see why. There is the general feeling that poverty and backwardness with all their concomitants are bad — and that there is an urgent need to do much more about these problems. Hence the inclination to couple the two issues and the belief that if the (comparatively) wealthy Western nations would contribute much more to the development and welfare of the less fortunate, in cooperation with their governments, this would be in a long-term perspective the best, perhaps the only, effective way to solve the terrorist problem.

And

The link between terrorism and nationalist, ethnic, religious, and tribal conflict is far more tangible. These instances of terrorism are many and need not be enumerated in detail. Solving these conflicts would probably bring about a certain reduction in the incidence of terrorism. But the conflicts are many, and if some of them have been defused in recent years, other, new ones have emerged. Nor are the issues usually clear- cut or the bones of contention easy to define — let alone to solve. ...
Lastly, there should be no illusions with regard to the wider effect of a peaceful solution of one conflict or another. To give but one obvious example: Peace (or at least the absence of war) between Israel and the Palestinians would be a blessing for those concerned. It may be necessary to impose a solution since the chances of making any progress in this direction are nil but for some outside intervention. However, the assumption that a solution of a local conflict (even one of great symbolic importance) would have a dramatic effect in other parts of the world is unfounded. Osama bin Laden did not go to war because of Gaza and Nablus; he did not send his warriors to fight in Palestine. Even the disappearance of the “Zionist entity” would not have a significant impact on his supporters, except perhaps to provide encouragement for further action.

Such a warning against illusions is called for because there is a great deal of wishful thinking and naïveté in this respect — a belief in quick fixes and miracle solutions: If only there would be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, all the other conflicts would become manageable. But the problems are as much in Europe, Asia, and Africa as in the Middle East; there is a great deal of free-floating aggression which could (and probably would) easily turn in other directions once one conflict has been defused.

And finally, remember Matt Lauer's question for President Bush? Everyone scoffed at Bush's answer. Consider that this article was printed in August:

There can be no final victory in the fight against terrorism, for terrorism (rather than full-scale war) is the contemporary manifestation of conflict, and conflict will not disappear from earth as far as one can look ahead and human nature has not undergone a basic change. But it will be in our power to make life for terrorists and potential terrorists much more difficult.

Read the whole thing.

Posted By Bryan S. at September 8, 2004 06:58 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Making life more difficult for Terrists is a good thing, as defined.

But it's far more problematic to define a Potential Terrist.

Sort of like the silly gubmint intervention programs to identify "pre-delinquents" some years back. They didn't work either.

We cast a net Far too broadly, and depending on the nature of our concerns, too readily define Anyone as a Potential Terrist, viz the Terrists in Detroit. Ashcroft loudly praised their "capture" and "conviction" a few months or so back, vowing that This was a Big Deal in the WoT.

They weren't. It wasn't. We now have an alleged "enemy combatant" who's being released from Gitmo, but only after being held essentially incommunicado for months.

Terrism Works, it would seem. It makes us overreact far too easily and often and do other unwise things.

ObL couldn't have written a better plan on that scale.

Posted by: Don at September 8, 2004 06:52 PM

Don,

I think you have a point.

I think we could narrow it down quite a bit if we eliminated Baptists, Budhiddists, and Catholics from the mix and focused on Islamicists. Right away that means that you narrow the search to about 20% of the world population. Not to say that the others might not be a problem at some future date. We know Islam is a problem now.

From a book published around 1950:

Islam Inc.

A rout of Mullahs and Muftis and Musseins and Caids and Glaouis and Sheiks and Sultans and Holy Men and representatives of every conceivable Arab party make up the rank and file and attend the actual meetings from which the higher ups prudently abstain. Though the delegates are carefully searched at the door, these gatherings invariably culminate in riots. Speakers are often doused with gasoline and burned to death, or some uncouth desert Sheik opens up on his opponents with a machine gun he had concealed in the belly of a pet sheep. Nationalist martyrs with grenades up the ass mingle with the assembled conferents and suddenly ex- plode, occasioning heavy casualties.... And there was the occasion when President Ra threw the British Prime Minister to the ground and forcibly sodomized him, the spectacle being televised to the entire Arab World. Wild yipes of joy were heard in Stockholm. Interzone has an ordinance forbidding a meeting of Islam Inc. within five miles of the city limits.

Posted by: M. Simon at September 8, 2004 07:38 PM

I have strong Libertarian instincts, and cut my teeth opposing the excesses of the House Un-Amnerican Committee back in the 1960s. We have always had to wrestle with the appropriate balance of civil liberties and police power, and I have come to believe that that balance needs to change with the times--sometimes tighter, sometimes looser.

However I think that we are not being honest about the terrorist (terrist?) threat we face today. We run the risk of harming the innocent and not preventing more terrorist attacks, because we are sqeamish or too PC to call this evil what it really is--radical, extremist fundamentalist Islam.

We can spend a lot of time trying to parse the definition of terrorism, but we'd spend our time better if we simply noticed that every terrorist act from Bali to Beslin to Madrid to Algeria to New York and DC has been committed by radical, extreme, fundamentalist, Islamists..

If we accept this reality and talk about it openly, we can start intellegently profiling people of Middle Eastern and South Asian origin in air travel, in visa processing, in border crossings, etc. This is totally non-PC, but eminently practical. Stop trying to screen my 84 year-old mother, a lifetime US citizen and registered nurse, and focus on the people who have a much higher probability of committing terrorist acts. Yes, it is discrimination--but we should be extending equal protection under the law to US citizens, not necessarily to everyone who comes here or wants to come here. When I lived in Japan (as a US citizen) I had to carry my passport and Japanese resident permit with me at all times. It was inconvenient, but a minor price to pay for livein and working in another people's country. My point--no other country extends the same priviledges to non-citizens, especially illegals, as it does to it's own citizens.

In business we call it market segmentation--profile your consumers and tailor your programs to fit the behavioral tendencies of the most likely consumer segments. That's smart, effective use of resources to get maximum impact for minimum cost. Shouldn't we do the same in guarding our borders and maintaining domestic security? Can any one of us honestly say that we don't see more risk of two "Middle Eastern looking men" taking photographs of a major bridge than we would if it were my mother and her best friend? When does PC faashion and devotion to civil liberties become suicidal?

The other advantage of naming the terrorist threat for what it is--radical, extreme fundamentalist Islam--is that we can potentially force a wedge between the moderate Muslims and the extremists. If we are clever and persistant, we will force them to explain why they are different that the Wahabbists. And, ultimately success in the GWOT will only come when the moderates out the nut jobs...

Posted by: Colorado at September 9, 2004 12:32 AM