Rethinking Islamist Terrorism
Dan Yankelovich

Participant
Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago (my alma mater--we stick together too) has done a study he reported in today's NY Times of all the suicide bombers from all over the world since 1980, 188 of them. It is of special relevance to our discussion here. His conclusion is that the idea that these are religiously motivated attacks is completely wrong. I quote:

"Rather, what nearly all suicide campaigns have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel liberal democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although is it often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective."

"When one considers the strategic logic of terrorism, it becomes clear that America's war on terrorism is heading in the wrong direction. The close association between foreign military occupations and the growth of suicide terrorist movements shows the folly of any strategy centering on conquering countries that sponsor terrorism or in trying to transform their political systems. At most, occupying countries will disrupt terrorist operations in the short term. But over time it will simply increase the number of terrorists coming at us."

Participant
Harlan, we welcome your question. It is clearly relevant to our mission here.

Terrorism, by its many definitions, has been and will be with us forever. Our move to start a "war" on terrorism implies that it is possible to eliminate it, that such a war is winnable, neither of which is possible, surely not with military force.

The "war" was started to mobilize popular support for, or divert attention from, an agenda that had little or nothing to do with terrorism, and for the most part the war has not even been directed at terrorists. So we need to separate the terms "war" and "terrorism" for they have almost no connection, except for demagogic propaganda.

The attack of 9/11 was spectacular because the buildings unexpectedly collapsed, and the event was carried on live international television. Otherwise, that tragedy would have just been seen more as an escalation of the Oklahoma City bombing--horrifying, but manageable. More like the Pentagon bombing, which was devastating, but probably not a powerful enough image to mobilize the American public for war. The combination of the accidental collapse of the buildings, and the administration's eagerness to exploit the fear and outrage that was produced for its own political purposes, led to an amazing ripple effect that has wrought incalculable damage to America. The terrorists could not have dreamed of the devastation they produced by those airliner crashes. The eventual economic damage will probably be in the trillions, and the damage to our civil liberties, and to our international standing, as a result of the administration's responses, may not be reparable. Indeed, the terrorists have fomented a situation in America that has the earmarks of a precursor to some form of totalitarianism.

So not only are the terrorists way ahead, light years ahead, on any comparative measurement of damage done to the enemy, but the outlook for the future is that they will get stronger while America becomes weaker.

Participant
That quote from Robert Pape (in #152) pretty much answers Harlan's question. As long as we think of this as a "war", the answer is, and will remain, "The terrorists are winning".

When we change our objective into "Reducing terrorism in the world", then we might be able to focus on removing the causes of terrorism, and achieve progress toward our objective instead of away from it.

My two-bits. See y'all later.

Participant
Harlan, I would also want to argue with the question, for reasons I have already indicated. Insofar as there is an answer to who's winning, I would say it is clearly: nobody. We are not winning -- partly because it isn't a war. The terrorists aren't winning, although they are doing a lot of damage, because they are as deficient in the vision thing as any Bushie. They may have some excellent reasons for feeling angry, but a grudge has never been the same thing as a sane and coherent agenda for change. And the innocent bystanders are losing because a lot of them are getting killed, and vast resources that could be used for positive change are being squandered -- not only by us, but by the terrorists and the leaders of most governments in the region.

Participant
Parts of Robert Pape's report that I didn't quote explain that by and large the suicide bombers operate in collaboration with a larger strategy, and are usually successful in gaining concessions.

Participant
When Walt says nobody wins, he's referring to the war on terror as a non-zero sum game, which characterizes most recent wars. A zero sum game (I win, you lose) is what the question Harlan has been given implies. Perhaps Kosovo was such a war for us. We are far from that model in the current struggle.

Participant
I think Pape thinks terrorists are a lot more rational than I think they are. But you're right about its being a zero-sum game.

Participant
With respect to non-zero sum games, the reports I read about the reasons for Gen. Wesley Clark being moved out of the NATO command was for disagreements about the use of ground troops vs. air power only in Kosovo. Apparently, Clark argued that fewer Serbian lives would be lost by our inserting ground troops, even though we would suffer casualties. Interesting.

Participant
The lead article in the current Harper's magazine discusses the fact that Americans now have a much higher regard for the military than they do for other institutions and professions. They believe that the military will do the right thing. The author, Kevin Baker, suggests the scenario that as the public becomes disenchanted and then angry with the Bush administration, America would be ripe for a military coup. Does that seem plausible?

It is always interesting to me to see how we Americans can witness all sorts of dramatic changes in other countries, and yet never expect any here. We have little appreciation for just how fragile our democratic nation is.

Participant
Contemplating a military coup under current conditions, or almost any conceivable conditions, sounds far-fetched to me. Most of the top military officers I have known are strikingly cautious about the use of military force, even abroad, and are also real believers in our constitutional system. The kind of "sergeants' coup" that used to be a la mode in Latin America and elsewhere seems even less imaginable in the USA.

But the good opinion held of Americans who have followed military careers for at least parts of their lives does help explain the relative standing of political leaders such as John McCain and John Kerry. And it is certainly part of what has enabled Wesley Clark to emerge in a few weeks as one of the few Democratic candidates "most likely to succeed" in the crowded Democratic horserace for the presidential nomination.

Participant
I used to be very negative about military men in politics, but as I contemplate the next governor of California, the generals look better all the time.

Participant
Half seriously, I suggest that there are times in politics -- widely separated, usually -- when something very much out of the ordinary is required to "shake things up". By pure coincidence, this may be one of those times both nationally and in California.

I consider military men and actors in politics to be "very much out of the ordinary". But please don't read into this a potential vote for either one.

Participant
Actually, it's not all that unusual to have military men in politics. Most of our presidents were military officers, seven or eight of them, I think, were generals. It's just the last couple that have little or no military experience. In California we've had Ronald Reagan, George Murphy and now Arnold, so we've even had our share of actors.

The problem we have is that none of the current contenders for governor could be elected in a regular election. I'm afraid it is a reflection on our educational system that we would endorse the current front runners.

Well, we'll see if shaking things up has a salutary effect.

Participant
The news that yet a third American has been arrested for security violations after working in Guantanamo makes one wonder if possibly the three were converted to espionage after witnessing the treatment their brothers in religion were receiving.

Participant
The "war on terrorism" worsens daily as a costly, foolish, corrupt and tragic mess. Rather than protecting us, it has placed all our lives at much greater risk. Yesterday's government reports indicate that worldwide hatred of the USA has grown to new levels.

But the idiocy continues, with support from most quarters. Homeland security seems to be on everyone's list, but surely there must be some minds among them that understand that security measures usually fail, are rarely worth the cost, and are often actually counter-productive, making us less secure. No one, outside this group, bothers to figure out how to remove ourselves as a target.

We are so wedded to "supporting the troops" that we forget that we sent them (against their general officers' better judgment) to fight an unwinnable war, and continue to expose them to injury and death daily. More money and more troops won't change that. We are also unable to leave because we cannot abandon the Iraqi people whom we have traumatized and crippled by our invasion. We have in our rhetoric that the "world has changed" but we don't seem to get how it has changed. We cannot accomplish what Bush has set out to do, yet we still can't stop him. So between supporting the troops and increasing homeland security we are trapped in a costly and unending policy straightjacket that will someday be seen, not as a noble effort, but as one of the great atrocities of history.

Meanwhile, we completely ignore the one area where we could prevail, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As Tom Friedman says in his column today, the Bush administration is deep in Sharon's pocket. But who among our presidential candidates is going to challenge that shameful fact? We don't have the politicians to do it, unless our old friend Wes Clark steps up to the plate. But, instead, homeland security seems to be at the top of his list. Well, he's running for president, and our uneducated masses have been given no critical abilities to exercise in the selections they will make next year. I am about to be governed by gang banger Arnold Schwarzenegger.

We have in this forum the brainpower, the influence, the chance to make a difference in these policies worldwide. We just have to mobilize it. Anybody know a concerned millionaire angel? It's really a matter of life and death.

Participant
America's invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq served to legitimize today's Israeli attack on Syria, so it isn't only Israel that has overstepped the boundaries of international law and attacked a sovereign nation, but the US. In the interest of pursuing a war on terrorism, we have widened the scope of permissible hostilities acted out by a nation. This is a direct result of our pre-emptive posture, not just Israel's. This new Mid-east crisis is of our creation, and our response, predictably, is to sympathize with Sharon. It would be rather hypocritical of us to do otherwise.

By the way, the Israeli spokesman said that the attack on Syria was "part of America's war on terrorism". Thanks a lot! But, unfortunately, how right he is.

Participant
As Richard Cohen reports, Israel has become a dysfunctional society. "Religious zealots have inordinate influence and their vision, a Greater Israel, compels the building or thickening of West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements. With every suicide bombing, the rational course--a withdrawal from Palestinian areas--seems like a weakness rather than wisdom."

Interesting how we seldom see the words "leadership" and "wisdom" in the same sentence. Bush today supports Sharon in the attack on Syria, citing Israel's right to protect its homeland. Somehow Bush cannot see the fury that Middle Easterners will feel when he ignores the fact that the Palestinians also regard that as their homeland.

We must be aware of the growing power of religious zealotry in the US, and the possibility of our own impending dysfunction. We have to remember that the House majority leader, Tom Delay, attributed the Columbine shootings to the teaching of evolution.

Politicians and economists often discuss the US economic issues in crisis terms, suggesting that when international trust in our financial stability fails, which they are fairly confident it will, there will be serious problems. But they don't seem to go past that statement to outline possible scenarios when that happens. The scenarios in my mind are dysfunctional, to say the least.

Participant
Continuing with my soliloquy, I find it interesting that we identify the religious zealotry of the Islamist terrorist as the main threat both to stability in the Middle East and to the safety of ourselves and our allies, yet we ignore the religious zealotry of the powerful ultra right fundamentalist religious extremists' wing of Likud, which is probably provoking more terrorism than any other activity anywhere, including our 9/11 holocaust.

Curiously, this troublesome wing is supported by our own huge and rapidly growing evangelical fundamentalist Christian right who claim a biblical tie with the Jewish people because Jerusalem is the predicted site of Armageddon and the second coming when Christians (and Jews if they convert to Christianity) will ascend to heaven.

Shouldn't we be worried about this development? In curbing religious terrorism, shouldn't Dan address this issue?

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