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 cant 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, Ill 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? Thats the $64 million question
Here, Ill 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, Ill 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 Im 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 dont 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 mullahs rhetoric on Friday nights sounds like that. But go back and reread (either in my blog or the original articles from the Times and Haaretz) 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, Ill point out that almost all of the leadership of the Palestinian/Arab terror movement has been from the highly Westernized upper-middle class.
Im wondering if we are trying to fight the wrong war.
Date: 08/24/2002 00:00:00 AM
From what I understand of Islam, and its declaring the collection of interest to be sin, a middle class cannot readily emerge. Interest makes consumer credit possible, and the ability to borrow was one powerful engine (of several) behind the growth of the middle class.
Date: 08/23/2002 00:00:00 AM
The Muslim world developed a merchant/middle class more or less the same way Christian Europe did, up to a certain point in history. The Arabian Nights is an interesting source on this.
Date: 08/23/2002 00:00:00 AM
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.)
Date: 08/23/2002 00:00:00 AM
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.
Date: 08/23/2002 00:00:00 AM
Mostafa:I mention them in Part I, below (limited to Ulster, but should have thought about the whole 20’s and 30’s history in Eire as well……I’d put them into the ‘national liberation’ camp, but the recent IRA is closer to the Palestinian model.A.L.
Date: 08/21/2002 00:00:00 AM
I agree that radical Islam may have some roots in social and economic inequality but what about the role that America has played in stiring up that hornets nest? And I don’t mean by our support of Israel, although that certainly doesn’t help, I am talking about other areas where America has played a more direct role in helping radical Islam spread.
Date: 08/21/2002 00:00:00 AM
Wow, AL.Friere and Fanon. A pleasure, indeed. Not often the blogosphere climbs to such airy heights.Incidentally, I agree that this fight is not religious any more than, say, the Viet Cong were Leninist. (Or Fanon’s Negritude was meaningfully Marxist) Just a convenient ideological frame for national aspirations. I’m pretty sure Benedict Anderson adresses this point somewhere.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… I think I need some really deep, offline thought on this one.
Date: 08/22/2002 00:00:00 AM
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
Date: 08/22/2002 00:00:00 AM
Could it be that most of the Islamic middle class is almost by definition “western influenced”? Islam has not been able build an economically succesful “non-western” middle class. That may not even be possible. That must be hard to get one’s head around for a conservative Moslem.I’m impressed by your blog. Keep at it.
Date: 08/21/2002 00:00:00 AM
First, I agree re your “it works” comment. I’m trying to put down how one responds in that event.But I think the upper-middle class thing is less notable than that they were Western-influenced upper-middle class…there’s something in the interface there that matters.A.L.
Date: 08/21/2002 00:00:00 AM
Radical Islam has been able to draw the disaffected because it is the only institution left standing for them to join.Also, leaders of revolutions, underground movements virtually always are upper middle class. No surprise that this is true for militant Islam too.It’s political, social, economic – and they find answers in fundamentalism. Not unlike rabid Christians who shoot abortion clinic doctors.Terrorism is an effective tactic. It works. An ugly fact, but true.
“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.”
Congratulations, but I wish you’d paid more attention during your Philosophy 101 course when you were an undergraduate, likely your first year.
They’re all that way much like yours.
“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.”
How so? This is based on some idea, blandly characterized as liberal, that’s based on some political idea that was hatched in the same way. Shall we speak of Locke or Jefferson, *assume* they got it right when their innate hunch about this or that boiled to the surface in my thoughts one day?
Or are you a “pragmatist” (lovely term) looking for a “common sense” solution to a problem? We have this problem, see, and so we study and become learned, and we take the *appropriate* action. We’re a bit frustrated here as well because they killed a bunch of folks in NYC and DC, they now make airline travel a hassle (oops, I forgot to take my Smith & Wesson out of my carry on), but we need to set our frustrations aside and do…..
What? Are we all that learned, objective, thoughtful, or do “the rest of us” have that innate common sense and feeling of goodness and cheer needed to “do the right thing?”
I think not. Sorry. Many of us would like to just nuke the lot of them accepting the fact that a few might unhappily survive.
Social planning and decisions about how to proceed to do whatever is necessary to turn them into happy campers is a time consuming, not to mention expensive, action to undertake. Our our society (Brits & Aussies and western Europeans, Canucks, et al don’t get off this hook easily either) is atuned, if one believes the surveys (or flips on a TV for 15 minutes) that we much prefer instant gratification, the 30 second sound bites during which we obtain all our “news,” and our human tendency (or so it would appear) to get bored with the prospects of long term planning.
Most of us have maxed out our credit cards and have precious, if any, savings. I fear your thoughts may lead to one of those depressing conclusions that some of *our* resources will have to be shared.
Perish the thought. After all we worked hard to earn it and it’s ours, right?
Let them eat cake.