Since the early 1980’s yours truly has been interested in the people who become terrorists. The interest became sort of a job after being posted in West Berlin in the Army. The interest is not so dramatic that it was a matter of survival, it was just curiosity at first, then a sort of fascination and part of a job later. The city had already seen LaBelle Disco Bombing, West Germany had seen numerous activity by Baader-Meinhoff, and the Islamic Terrorists were beginning to get their act together to go after the US. I was fortunate enough, because of my assignment to get a lot of good info and briefings on all these terrorists. The studies continued through college to this day.
So the first question is what is terrorism? The answer is not the flippant response that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. I always loathed that quote for its lack of reasoning and over-simplicity. The problem is that the definition of terrorism is very slippery. IIRC, there were over 100 definitions, all had this aspect in common: the use of or the threat of the use of violence. The most succinct that I recall is Sajid Dawar’s, “The act or threat of violence by any individual, group, organization aimed at to secure predetermined ends through illegal channels.” Yes it technically can include silliness like bar fights, so lets combine the previous with Walter Laqueur’s definition, “Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted.”
The second question is who are the terrorists? There is an adage in development studies that says that if a man is busy all day trying to feed himself and his family, he has no time to get angry and act out over politics. The uneducated dirt farmer or Bedouin that works sun up to sun down has not time nor energy nor thought to pick up the gun and strike a blow against some unseen and undefined oppressor.
So, who has the surplus energy and the surplus time for the education education necessary to first know why they are angry, and second who the target is? That would be the middle and upper middle classes, this transcends causes and religions. Yes, I know I sound like a Marxists, bear with me. They are driven by hate, not by psychological problems. The hate comes from self loathing of the comfortable situation that they came from in relation to the ‘injustices’ they see all around them.
As THE expert on terrorism psychology (and one of my favorite reads) Jerold Post, MD, has stated: “To counter terrorism, we must get into the mind of the terrorists, and that mind is distinctly not deranged,” Post said. He said terrorist groups systematically work to screen out emotionally unstable people when recruiting because they pose a significant security risk. Instead, Post argues that terrorism is the product of collective identity, shaped over years, as children are indoctrinated with a message of hatred, either from community leaders or religious radicals whose interpretations of scripture are rejected by the vast majority of the population. “One has to understand the perpetrators of this violence — within their own cultural context — and communicate with those not yet fully committed before their identity is consolidated,” Post said
A simple search will turn up the same backgrounds for terrorists, Carlos was the son of a lawyer, the core of Baader-Meinhof Gang, Ulrike Meinhoff could quote Gramsci and Marcuse and was a journalist. The founders of the Red Brigades in Italy were all college students from upper middle classes. The core of the Japanese Red Army were all college students at one time, their families could afford to sent them to school. All spoke of the injustices that they saw and espoused violent overthrow of those systems in which they could have been very comfortable. The poor aren’t the terrorists. If we look at the profiles of the 9/11 terrorists, we find that they all came from above average homes, were nicely educated, and had the mental wherewithal to go to flight school. A look at the leaders of Al-Queda tells the same story. They range from Doctors to Nuclear Engineers.
This latest underwear bomber from Nigeria via Yemen and the
coverage of his family reminded me of some old papers that I wrote a while back. I was not surprised by the press’s astonishment that the bomber came from an upper-class background. I was saddened, yet again, at the all idiot journalism majors and meat sticks with nice hair blathering from the teleprompter about how could a nice boy from such a wealthy family become a terrorist? Terrorists come from wealth, this has been the case practically always.
This is where national security runs into an immigrant conundrum. Its easy to identify an opposing soldier, but very hard to identify a terrorist. The manual laborer isn’t the one flying airplanes into buildings, the college educated immigrant is. But, we want to bring the worlds talent in to grow our country, but that talent might have a price. And what of the press in this last episode….they seemed racists in their astonishment at the luxury of the compound where the gutchie bomber grew up. I will bet they wouldn’t be so surprised if he weren’t a black African.
Tags: Jihad
