Been Googling in between working, and came across this:
Sex, Drugs, and Cults by H. Keith Henson
He specifically talks about some potential roots of terrorist behavior. Haven’t absorbed enough to decide if he makes sense, but thought I’d throw it out there and see what people think.

But today he covers the whole “sex in the cathedral” thing brilliantly.
One of the (many) reasons I’ll never run for office is that my private life has been faaaar too entertaining. I’m all for fun in whatever nondamaging ways people can manage to have it.
But I’m also for a sense of decency, consideration, and tolerance because we all have to live together. There’s a reason bedrooms have doors.
Bringing your taste for sexual exhibitionism into my church (it actually isn’t my church, but you get the point) isn’t a test of my tolerance, it’s a display of your lack of tolerance.
Go read Lileks; he says it much better.

Reality is keeping me away from blogging a bit right now, but I’m working on a wrapup on terrorism in my spare time and will try and get it posted.
One thing I have been doing is installing the gun safe in the new house (wow, lots of work!) and it occurs to me that this is a good time to wave at my fellow shooters and ask “Do you have your guns safely stored?” – i.e. where your too-young-to-responsibly-handle-guns children and casual burglars can’t get to them? If not, why not?

Read this; Tony Woodlief’s ode to the home he is leaving…and more that is left behind.

OK, let’s recap, with an eye to responding to some themes in the comments.
First, let’s assume for the sake of discussion that there is a form of violence which we call ‘terrorism’, which is different on one end, from crime, and on the other, from open warfare, which maintaining some of the features of each.
The three key distinguishing features would be: violence against civilian targets with the intent to damage morale and effect political change; violence not targeted at either political leaders, combatants, or the resources necessary to lead or conduct war or economic life. The targets … trains, airliners, Olympic athletes, airports, cafes, schools, and symbolic buildings … are selected for their maximal dramatic impact, rather than for their substantive impact.
It would be like attacking Los Angeles by blowing up Universal Studios rather than the California Aqueduct.
This is ultimately a philosophy of self-liberating action – of praxis. In this philosophy, the actor finds the meaning of his or her life in the liberating acts that they do. Sound familiar? I’ll quote (for the 3rd time) Berlin:

The values to which they attached the highest importance were such values as integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one’s life to some inner light, dedication to an ideal for which it is worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living and dying. You would have found that they were not primarily interested in knowledge, or in the advancement of science, not interested in political power, not interested in happiness, not interested, above all, in adjustment to life, in finding your place in society, in living at peace with your government, even loyalty to your king, or your republic. You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it. The very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind of a man who is willing to sacrifice a great deal for principles or some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, because he believes in it – this attitude was relatively new. What people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was.
No matter what it was: that is the important thing.

I’ve suggested above that there is a philosophical basis for this violence, and I’ll go further, and say that to defeat it, you have to understand and manage it’s philosophical underpinnings, because one of the key features of this kind of violence is that it is both hard to capture the managers, and relatively easy to recruit the agents.
Now here, I’ll confess a bias. I’m basically a philosophical kind of guy, although that will come as a surprise to my friends in physical space, who know me as the guy who goes “Beer!! More Beer!!” a lot (not too much Sam Adams any more, though), and so there is the problem at a psychologist has in imputing psychological interpretations to every event.
But I’ll restate the above more seriously. It is easy to grow terrorists in this climate. Easiest right now in the Middle East, but I’ll suggest that other parts of the world are not all that far behind. We can work had to capture them, build layers of security into our lives, accept some level of tragedy or loss, or we can figure out how to stop growing them.
Now this isn’t a call to roll over and play dead, nor to simply give in to the current crop of political demands. In fact, it’s an argument that as soon as we did give in to the current crop of demands, a whole new set would come up, because if I am right, it is the act of warring against the West and modernity that matters, not any specific goals.

I very much doubt that Friere and Fanon are responsible here. That’s not to say that the thinking is any different. It’s just to say that in point of fact it’s more likely that the thinking you describe came about independently in Islamic countries rather than as a result of two little-known Western authors. (Likewise, the fact that the Cherokee had a religious/spiritual concept of balance between opposites doesn’t mean they must have been influenced by the Taoists.)
— alkali

Uh, Fanon was an Algerian, and his writings were central to the modern understanding of colonial rebellion; the PLO and successor organizations uses rhetoric pretty much out of his playbook. I’m not suggesting that he is somehow personally culpable, or that without his book that the world would be radically different; just that there is a philosophical strain of thought which runs through him and appears to be showing up today.
New ideas are genuinely rare; we live in a world of shared ideas and some grow and others don’t. These ideas have grown.

I also think the whole, “they hate our freedoms” angle is 100% wrong. From what I have gathered from my father who was raised there and others that I know, is that most Egyptians (and my guess this is a common opinion) LOVE our democratic system. The problem they have with us is our foreign policy and the hypocrisy that it entails. When Bush goes out and says “Democracy is important to the Palestinian and Iraqi people,” while at the same time supporting the corrupt and thuggis regimes of Mubarak and the House of Saud. They don’t hate the U.S. because we vote or have women’s rights, they hate us because we use them for oil or strategic reasons.
Some of it is jealousy, I admit, but what kind of message do we send when we call Arafat a danger to his people, but the Saud family and Mubarak are dandy? We say, “We only want you to be democratic when it helps US. If disrupting the despotisms raise our oil prices during the revolution, then we want your despotisms to stand.” When you do that, you give psychopaths like OBL a chance to exploit people.
When people have no political power they turn to two things, the church and violence. And because of the poverty and low literacy and education rates the church becomes an easy place to control people.
I have an semi-unrelated question A.L. (this is my first time on you blog). Why no mention of the IRA as a terrorist orginization. Which group would they be in? I would lump them into a group similar to the Arab orgs.
— Mostafa Sabet

As noted elsewhere, I talked about the IRA in Part I, but limited to Ulster, instead of remembering (doooh!!) the long history from the early 1900’s in Eire. I don’t doubt the resentment talked about here is real (part of another discussion I’m thinking about on us and the Arab world), but my issue is “why is it manifesting itself in this way?”

You seem to discuss terrorism solely as a tactic of insurgents — those on the outside looking in. But states practice terrorism and then write histories that absolve themselves of guilt. For instance, if you believe Israeli historian Benny Morris, everything that Hamas is doing the Zionists used to do (though in keeping with the Jewish adage, only crazy people commit suicide). To some extent, insurgents learn terrorism from their oppressors. I’m not saying this justifies terrorism, but it is at least part of the explanation.
You also neglect the dimension of feasible alternatives, which goes back to the JFK cliche “If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.” This is at least part of the explanation (again, aside from moral judgements) for the selection of tactics.
The other missing element in your posts gets to the substance a bit more. Terrorists sometimes lack a plausible notion of what sometimes is called “agency.” Namely, an idea of what is the motive force in history. You need a motive force if you expect to change history. The Weatherpeople, for instance, envisioned their deeds would spark a revolt of minorities and radical hippies. Sometimes terrorists are just loopy (i.e., the SLA), but their acts get sufficient notice as to invite analyses that make them part of something larger, when they are simply nuts.
On the whole I enjoyed the posts.
Cheers,
Max

Hmmm. A couple of things. First, the issue isn’t violence, it’s terrorism. I don’t doubt that (effectively every) modern state has some roots that were watered in blood. And I don’t doubt that much, if not most, of that blood was essentially innocent. But there is a unique quality to terrorism … particularly modern terrorism … that bears discussing.
Again, part of my issue is the relative ineffectiveness of the terror tactics on any practical basis. The acts seek image and drama more than impact, and that’s part of what I’m puzzling over.
More in a bit.

Go away from the computer for a while, and whammo!! Lots of link love, as Dawn would say.
My only request to the folks visiting is that they think about the posts and comment or email; as you can doubtless tell from the tone, I’m working this out in public, and your feedback is critical (in more ways than one…).
Thanks to Instapundit, Redwood Dragon, Cooped Up, Lean Left, Ranting Screeds, Sketch, and all the other folks who blogged this work-in-progress.
I’m just back home, and about to go have dinner with my fiancee and my ex-wife. [Begin Irony]Blogging somehow can’t get to center stage in my awareness just right now…[End Irony]…so I’ll promote some comments and see if I can put up some quick responses.
Part 4 is on the stove right now, will be up tomorrow.

Here’s the nub of the question: Are we fighting the Muslim Arab world in a replay of the Siege of Vienna? Or are we struggling with issues endemic to both the developing and developed world, which are, for specific reasons, more apparent right now in the Arab world?
This is a really important question to me.
First, please note that it really doesn’t significantly change the politics between us and the Arab/Palestinian world. From my point of view, it strips away some of my emotional reaction to their tactics, but the underlying conflicts remain what they are…which is something I haven’t yet seen clearly articulated (but will try and talk about more in the next few days)
It is important because if this theory holds water…and I’ll try in this post to succinctly articulate it so that folks can work with me to try and come up with some tests…we are in for some seriously challenging times as terrorism becomes more and more endemic not only through the Third World, where it is common, but in our own front yards.
Let’s present two alternate interpretations of recent events:
First, that we are in an undeclared war with the Muslim Arab world, who have used terrorist tactics against the Israelis for almost thirty years with some success, and who are now extending their tactics to the supporters of Israel (i.e. us).
This suggests that the overall cultural moment of the Muslim Arabs is aimed at both the destruction of Israel and the weakening of influence (if not overall weakening) of the United States.
The second possibility is that there is a rising tide of dissent, often led by the educated classes throughout the world; in the Arab world, the only survivable outlet is in protest against Israel and America, which fits neatly into the philosophical underpinnings of that educated dissent, which is the rejection of modernity and the Western concept of ‘progress’. But while the incoming wave is most visible where there are reefs…and so the fact that this viewpoint finds official support in the Arab world, for a variety of reasons…the wave is moving in along a very broad front.
Here are some individual (and sweepingly overgeneralized) facts to consider:
Africa is essentially becoming ungovernable, and subnational violence is rising everywhere the governments become too weak to repress it.
Parts of Asia look to follow Africa, with particular attention to India, where Hindu violence against Muslims, and Muslim violence against Hindus seems to be increasingly unsurpressible.
Latin America has similar problems with lost of national government legitimacy and increasing violence from subnational groups on the right and the left.
Now some of this looks like overt acts of directed terrorism; some like simple tribal or religious mob violence; some like high-intensity crime.
In Europe, we have a substantial rise in street crime, with the peaks…attacks on banks, jewelry stores, and armored cars by organized gangs armed with assault rifles and RPG’s…looking different from terrorist attacks only because there is loot to be taken away. We also have increasingly factionalized politics, and national politics explictly driven in some part by fear of further factionalization.
And here in the U.S. we are mirroring the level of European high-intensity crime (I just watched the LAPD tape of the North Hollywood bank robberies…) and in crime by subnational groups (the white-supremacist group that was robbing armored cars and banks). Add to this the increasing level of ‘mucker’ crimes, such as Columbine and the recent LAX shootings, and all that is missing is a philosophical framework in which to place this level of alienation and rage.
That framework exists, as above.
It supports and rationalizes attacks on ‘oppressive institutions’, and suggests that personal gratification and liberation can only be found in such violent attacks.
Andrew comments:

A personal note. I remember thinking on September 11th back to reading Fanon when I was an undergraduate bolsheveik. I remember feeling terrible, absolutely terrible, that I’d ever entertained the notion (from Fanon)that violence against civilians was an acceptable response to oppression. Hmmm…

These attacks will typically be symbolic, rather than practical.
In my younger days, as I learned about the mechanical underpinnings of cities…the commerce in energy, water, food and the dance of transportation on which life in any big city depends. I used to marvel at how easy it would be for ten or fifteen determined people to move Los Angeles toward the edge of habitability. If Al Quieda had meant to physically attack the US, instead of symbolically attack it, they would have attacked along one of those paths, or attacked the NSA or CIA headquarters. They had an opportunity to do something that would have genuinely weakened the U.S., as well as demoralized us.
Instead they attacked the symbols of American economic and military might.
Lee Harris’ article has received a lot of play in the Blogosphere. In the event that you’re one of the three people who haven’t read it, go now. Here’s something to whet your appetite:

…this does not change the fact that the final criterion of military success is always pragmatic: Does it work? Does it in fact bring us closer to realizing our political objectives?
But is this the right model for understanding 9-11? Or have we, like Montezuma, imposed our own inadequate categories on an event that simply does not fit them? Yet, if 9-11 was not an act of war, then what was it? In what follows, I would like to pursue a line suggested by a remark by the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in reference to 9-11: his much-quoted comment that it was “the greatest work of art of all time.”
Despite the repellent nihilism that is at the base of Stockhausen’s ghoulish aesthetic judgment, it contains an important insight and comes closer to a genuine assessment of 9-11 than the competing interpretation of it in terms of Clausewitzian war. For Stockhausen did grasp one big truth: 9-11 was the enactment of a fantasy — not an artistic fantasy, to be sure, but a fantasy nonetheless.

Bill Quick and N.Z. Bear have posted “I’m available for work” to their blogs, and I’ve been looking (without result so far), so why not add myself to the list, I thought…
I’m looking for a short-to medium term consulting project (preferred) or, God Forbid, a job (actually have been thinking about hanging up the consulting hat, since I’m tired of making recommendations that get ignored). Here’s what I do in a nutshell:
1) Evaluate and manage troubled (and other) projects. My recent experience is in technology projects, including large Ariba/Tradex and Oracle projects. Spent 60% of the budget and have nothing to show for it? I’ll typically evaluate what you’ve got and suggest the least painful path out. And help hang the guilty, where appropriate. I’ve also got significant experience in large real estate workouts both of financially troubled existing projects and politically troubled development projects.
2) Devise technology strategy to fit business objectives, and design systems (down to the architecture level) to implement this strategy.
I have a bunch of happy ex-clients (or at least ex-clients who wished they had done what I suggested), and up until this round haven’t spent much time looking for projects or work. I didn’t even have a finished resume until six weeks ago…hadn’t needed one.
But times are different now…
Please email me if you have a lead or an “opportunity” as they are called, somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area.
…back to terrorists on motorcycles later today.

First, let me try and set some expectations. I am not a military historian or expert; I have no ‘inside’ knowledge of our plans, responses or of the plans or responses of those opposed to us. I do not intend to talk about the tactical issues involved in practicing terrorism, nor about the tactics of suppressing it. Lots of folks in the Blogosphere seem to feel that they are terrorism and counterterrorism experts; maybe they are graduates of Ft. Benning, or maybe they read a Tom Clancy book once. I can’t opine, because I am not an expert.
What I am is a citizen, and what I am qualified to speak about is our goals and the acceptable costs and range of paths toward those goals. The rest is up to the professionals.
First, unlike conventional wars, which are typically at root fought for objective interests, I’ll argue that terrorist wars are fought as much for emotional and psychological reasons…in short, out of hate and frustration.
Where does the hate and frustration come from? That’s the $64 million question…
Here, I’ll step over to the faar left side of the room and introduce ‘liberation theory’. This is a catch-all critical theory that explains all of Western society in the context of the various relationships created by the market and between classes of people, which are defined in this model by power and ultimately oppression. For some reading, I’ll suggest first, and foremost, Franz Fanon. His work (including the referenced ‘Wretched of the Earth’ is probably the cornerstone of what Paolo Freire called the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Essentially, (and I’m running on old memory here) these works translate essentially all relationships into relationships of power. Since the market, and particularly the extractive colonial markets, in which colonies were essentially sources of raw materials and inexpensive labor, uses power – the power of the colonial military, the superior technology and economy of the colonizer, they define the relationships between colonizer and colonized…which to them is both a national and a racial relationship…as oppressive. The colonizer oppresses the colonized.
Now I don’t agree with much, if any, of liberation theory. I believe that they started out with their conclusion and ideology and constructed theories to support it. But first, it is a useful and coherent analysis, and second and far more important, it is impossible to understand the roots of modern terrorism without understanding this body of work.
Read these quotes from Freire

Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more human. This distortion occurs within history; but it is not a historical vocation. Indeed to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair. The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny, but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.
This, then is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit, and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both. Any attempt to “soften” the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of the oppressed almost always manifests itself in the form of false generosity; indeed, the attempt never goes beyond this. In order to have the continued opportunity to express their “generosity”, the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well. An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this “generosity”, which is nourished by death, despair, and poverty. That is why the dispensers of false generosity become desperate at the slightest threat to its source.

And another one:

Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such a situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with the individual’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation.
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail others as persons — not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well). Force is used not by those who have become weak under the preponderance of the strong, but by the strong who have emasculated them. For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call “the oppressed” but — depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not –“those people” or “the blind and envious masses” or “savages” or “natives” or “subversives”) who are disaffected, who are “violent,” “barbaric,” “wicked,” or “ferocious” when they react to the violence of the oppressors.
Yet it is — paradoxical though it may seem — precisely in the response of the oppressed to the violence of their oppressors that a gesture of love may be found. Consciously or unconsciously, the act of rebellion by the oppressed (an act which is always, or nearly always, as violent as the initial violence of the oppressors) can initiate love. Whereas the violence of the oppressors prevents the oppressed from being fully human, the response of the latter to this violence is grounded in the desire to pursue the right to be human. As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.

You have to realize that all three of the waves of terror in our time come from the philosophical roots set out here. First, the terrorist wars against colonial powers; then the terrorist attacks against manifestations of the capitalist state by the academic terrorists; and now the Arab terrorist war against Israel, and by proxy, the West.
I had leant to the assumption that because the latest round of terrorists used the language and rhetoric of Islam, that what we were seeing was a war of religious fanatics against the West. And to be sure, the mullah’s rhetoric on Friday nights sounds like that. But go back and reread (either in my blog or the original articles from the Times and Ha’aretz) the interviews with the ‘failed’ terrorists.
Does this sound like religious fanaticism? For myself, I have an easier time placing it in the context of alienation and a striving for national liberation. I think they have more in common with the kids who were pulled into the Weather Underground, and in support, I’ll point out that almost all of the leadership of the Palestinian/Arab terror movement has been from the highly Westernized upper-middle class.
I’m wondering if we are trying to fight the wrong war.