The Bad Guys Succeed Only With Our Help

Remember, bucko, the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize. The goals of terror are essentially negative. To put the best face on a strategy based on terror, particularly that of the suicide sort, the desired end is one of deterrence.

With respect to the US the minimum strategic goal of each and all of the al-Qaeda clones is identical with that of Osama bin Laden. The goal is to deter the US from any military presence in Arab Muslim states as well as continuation of its diplomatic, economic and military support of Israel. The goal is to force the US to stop doing that which it has been doing.

In a larger way the strategic hope is that by deterring the US from continuing policies of many decades standing they will accomplish the same with other Western actors. The US must remain the main focus since even when a terror attack may have a desirable impact from the perspective of its authors as was the presumed linkage between the Madrid bombings and the subsequent election, the results were too narrow track to be even slightly satisfactory. It mattered not if Spain kept troops in either Afghanistan or Iraq or withdrew them ASAP.

Substantially the hope of the Glorious Martyrdom Wannabes and those who offer religious comfort, political motivation and technical preparation is identical with those who once believed that hanging pickpockets would deter the pickpockets busily picking pockets in the crowd around the gallows. That didn't work. Neither will al-Qaeda and its ilk.

Here is why, bucko.

Deterrence works only in those rare occasions where it is mutual, based on a truly existential threat and the decision makers on both sides are not only rational actors but share the same calculus of rationality. Deterrence is assured if, in addition to the foregoing, both deterred actors have alternatives by which to pursue their respective policy goals below the deterred level of conduct.

It doesn't take a lot of thinking to remind oneself as to the one long time deterrence worked. Right on, bucko, the mutually assured destruction period of the Cold War.

Since the dynamic of the relationship between al-Qaeda or the rest of the Islamist jihadist groups and the US meets none of the tests of functional deterrence, they are doomed to fail in achieving their policy ends, no matter how minimally defined. The US is not going to cut and run from its obligations either in Arab Muslim states or regarding Israel.

So, all the bad guys can hope for is a species of self-inflicted defeat on our part. The worst part of this thesis is that it is not too much to hope for. The self-inflicted defeat option is a realistic one.

There are several reasons to justify this gloomy conclusion.

One is the misuse of US military power in both Afghanistan and Iraq. While both situations have changed for the better, the net effect on We the People has been negative. We have little stomach for more military engagements with Islamist adversaries.

The second reason is the economy. Thanks to a series of world class blunders on the part of three administrations (Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama) the US has a foreign funded deficit which severely crimps our capacity for independent action on the global stage. This situation will only worsen in the near to mid-term without major changes in D.C.

Thirdly one must not underestimate the impact of the post-modernist, multi-cultural oriented, blame-America-first, pity-the-poor-and-alienated portions of the American elite. Their influence in politics, the media, and academia is significant and growing. These "useful idiots," to use Lenin's phrase, can do much to sap American political will and internal confidence. They are the Islamists' Fifth Column.

Finally, as David Brooks noted in an op-ed piece in the NYT, We the People are not the same today as were our predecessors of fifty or seventy-five years ago. We want perfect outcomes and demand that the central government and the tools of the bureaucratic state provide such all the time. We are no longer willing to acknowledge that perfection is not possible in the real world, and we will not be held harmless from all those many things that go bump in the dark.

For people of this mentality surrender is an option--provided it is not termed as such. As long as we can hide behind the positive such as declaiming faith in "the international community" we can wave a carefully concealed white flag.

It is appealing and true to say, "We aren't the world's policeman." Or, "Israel has too much power over our domestic politics." Or, "If we pull out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and so on, the Islamists will leave us alone." Or, even, "Get rid of poverty in Yemen, Somalia or wherever and there will be no more willing martyrs."

All true--at least in part. All dangerously wrong--at least in major part. But, convincing ways to put tie dyed colors on the universal flag of surrender.

The terror merchants of Islam cannot win. Not alone. They need us to do the heavy lifting.

Terror Only Works If We're Terrorized

The true impact of terrorism is found in the ground truth that it is a self-inflicted wound. True, it is difficult in the extreme not to inflict this wound upon one's self. Lenin knew this when he famously remarked, "The purpose of terror is to terrorize."

Lenin was not engaged in making a tautology. Rather he was correctly characterizing the relationship between stimulus and response. His view--which has been repeatedly proven correct over the decades--was that a relatively small stimulus whether the assassination of a high profile personality or the killing of a larger number of no-profile people would rock the larger society and its government.

By extension, repetition of terror acts or the cumulative effects of both self-induced fear and the political/economic/social frictions of counterterror actions would erode the confidence, structural integrity, and political will of the target society and its government. The slow but steady erosion, or, more properly, enervation of political will would lead over time to the target bringing itself into compliance with the policy requirements of the terrorist.

The immediate aftermath of the Underwear Bomber and his Christmas Day misfire demonstrates that Lenin's dictum has lost none of its force with either age or a change in motivation from socialist revolution to Islamist jihadism. The combination of "enhanced" but not necessarily effective security techniques and "reform" of the intelligence community and process may give the appearance of a proper response but in actuality serves to decrease confidence, increase fear, place greater friction in the twin processes of detecting and interdicting threats.

The most important fact of the Underwear Bomber's effort is to properly appreciate how inept, not to say flat out amateur it was. Like Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber of eight years ago, this attack was doomed to fail by an improperly designed detonation system. Like the Reed attempt it did not have the rather sophisticated planning and coordination of 9/11 or the Madrid subway bombings or even the 7/7 attacks in London.

To put it bluntly, despite some rare out-of-theater operations such as that in Mumbai a little more than a year ago, the terrorists of the loose al-Qaeda congeries have lost their strategic vision and operational capacity alike. The use of terror has become far more localized over time centering on active combat venues--Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen--and not on what Osama bin Laden called "the far enemy."

This reality implies that what the US and other countries have been doing over the past several years has been far more effective than the reaction to the Christmas Day attempt has indicated. While this in no way signifies that there isn't room for continued improvement in both intelligence analysis (particularly in the "dot rich" environment of counterterrorism) and the passing of product to the interdiction tasked agencies, it does mean that the overreaction shows that we are inflicting another round of terror on ourselves.

As it was civilians--not the military or the government--who acted effectively to save either the White House or Capitol Hill on 9/11, it was civilian passengers who acted reflexively and effectively on Christmas Day. We are our own best protection.

This is even more the case when the matter of terrorism as a self-inflicted condition is considered. We must make the decision not to be terrorized. We must rationally consider the long odds in our favor. Terrorism is far less of a threat to any of us than the flu or being hit by lightning. All the vast equipment of "security" has not actually made us any safer when we board an airliner. All it has done in reality is lower the pleasure of flying into the deep negative numbers, increase costs, and hassles. Other than that it has provided jobs for the otherwise unemployable and vastly expanded the intrusive sway of the central government.

Think about that the next time you have to stand in a forever line under the baleful glare of a TSA thug.

Our political "leaders" love terrorism as earlier they loved the "war on drugs." Both take full advantage of overblown and carefully stoked fear to expand the public space, restrict private space, and develop more intrusive ways to manipulate perceptions, beliefs, and behavior.

Of course the war on drugs has been long lost. The equally specious war on terror is no where near either victory or even an end.

The only way to win, the way which was followed by the British when the IRA was bombing early and often, is to decouple the link between stimulus and response. Refuse to be terrorized when an act of "terror" happens--or nearly happens.

This is something that only we can do. Not government. Us. We the People. Refuse to be filled with fear--to be terrorized--and the Underwear Bombers, the Shoe Bombers, all the Brigade of Glorious Martyrdom Seekers, and those who wind them up and send them off are defeated. It is that simple. And that hard.

It's The Religion

Even more than the Geek the Geekness is bothered by the reluctance of senior American officials among many others to acknowledge the role played by Islam in the wars currently underway throughout the world. The Geekness has a much closer acquaintance with the power of religion to influence deeply the worldview and behavior of young people than does the Geek for whom the dynamic has always been a matter of intellectual curiosity only.

The other day the Geek posted on the continuum which takes political movements from Islamic to Islamist to Islamist jihadist with limited goals and ends to Islamist jihadist with global goals. It is similar but not identical to the process described long ago by Crane Britton to describe the leftward movement of the French and other revolutions. The processes in both cases are facilitated by the existence of external pressure whether military or non-violent but still coercive in intent. This leads to the maxim: Pressure consolidates long, long before it fractures.

In the post the Geek commented that Islam is a religion by and for warriors without superior in the faiths of humankind. The Koran celebrates both war and the virtues presumed to characterize the warrior. Mohammad, the Perfect Man, was a successful military leader--and a profligate spiller of blood. The Faith which the Prophet and his Companions brought to Mecca spread by the sword across an enormous swath of the Western and, ultimately, the Eastern world.

The warriors of the scimitar and Koran proved superior in both political will and pure military capacity to the Crusaders of the two handed sword and Bible. The warrior power of Islam propelled its believers to the walls of Constantinople and finally to the walls of Vienna where the crest of the flood broke and receded.

Islam promises eschatological rewards to those of the Faith who die in battle against either the infidel or the apostate. The promises are in the sacred literature. They were not later additions tacked on by ambitious religious leaders as they were in Christianity.

It is the eschatological dimension which assures not only that there will be an inherent appeal by Islamist jihadism to young men but that the appeal will be far stronger, far more pervasive, and far less easy to defeat in battle than the secular promises of ideologies whether Fascist, Nazi, or Communist. To enjoy the benefits promised by the secular ideologies, one must stay alive for all such ideologies are present life based. The eschatological rewards are to be provided in the life after life.

That is one very powerful difference between what the US and other countries are facing today and the foes fought and defeated in the past. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, both hostilities termination and conflict resolution are easier to achieve with an opponent who is present life oriented than one who looks to the life beyond the present one.

It is a commonplace that youth is attracted to causes larger than the self. The search for personal identity, worth, and meaning which typifies the years of adolescence and early adulthood is both bolstered and challenged by the need to belong to something larger, much larger than one's self. It is this universal experience which makes youth notoriously idealistic, ever ready and eager to embrace a large enough cause, a cause which demands much of the self and promises much in return.

The Geekness reminded the Geek of the tales of martyrdom for the faith which characterized so much of the American landscape during the Fifties. She related the tales heard day after day in the parochial school she attended about the way in which Christians were tortured, imprisoned, and killed by the "godless commies" of yore. She noted that many of her age both in and out of parochial environments embraced the idea of being "martyred" for belief with great enthusiasm.

On reflection the Geek recalled the mood of the day as well. He remembered and then researched the literature of the early Cold War including the stories which decorated that ancient universal publication, My Weekly Reader. The notion--and the appeal--of standing up, dying if necessary for belief were both omnipresent and powerful as a source of both worldview and behavior. The view and the behavior need not be Christian to be sure, but they were demanded of youth, by youth, and gave rise to much of what we look back on as the raging wonder decade, the Sixties.

If that dynamic was so prevalent and powerful within the semi-secular suburban middle class youth coming of age during the Cold War, then how much more compelling must be the beliefs of Islam and the far more demanding Islamist jihadism to the youth not only of the Mideast or Central Asia but the West and the US as well. Islam in and of itself is a very potent creator of a sense of community, an anodyne for anonymity, an answer to perceived impotency. Islamist jihadism due to its emphasis on war and martyrdom is far more so.

The notion of putting one's life on the line for a belief--for the meaning that belief brings to one's life--has an appeal in and of itself. When the demand is accompanied by the promise of a very great eschatological reward, it is irresistible--at least to some.

Not all Muslims need nor desire the attractions, the promises, the assumed rewards emphasized by the purveyors of Islamism and jihadism. The assorted surveys conducted by many different organizations over the past few years make that clear. It is a fact which is both real and irrelevant.

Islamist jihadists are drawn from a small percentage of all Muslims to be sure. The youth for whom the challenge and message of Islamist jihadism has both meaning and attraction may represent only a small fraction of all Muslims, but as events of recent months in countries as disparate as Somalia, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the US have proven, it is a sufficiently large fraction as to be a very real problem.

True Belief as Eric Hoffer pointed out over a half century ago is potent because it provides an adherent with a personal identity, and, with that, a sense of belonging, of worth, of purpose, of cosmic meaning. Secular ideologies have capitalized upon this psychological reality.

So have religions. Christianity and Judaism have and do make use of the idealistic and searching nature of youth. Of these two, one does not promise eternal reward (or punishment) as a portion of its doctrine and the other makes no specific mention of the special rewards accruing to those who die in combat against the infidel and apostate.

Islam does so provide. And, Islamist jihadism emphasizes, perhaps to an exaggerated extent, the rewards to self and family of martyrdom in war. It gives both substance and reality to the oft repeated claim of Islamists that, "We love death more than the others love life."

That is why the crux of the war between the Islamist jihadists and the rest of the world's people is one of religion, not economics, nor political disenfranchisement, nor lack of social status, nor absence of "opportunity" (whatever that means), nor any of the other sociological and psychological explanations so glibly offered by regiments of academic, journalistic, and political "experts."

It's not the economy. It's not politics. It's not the Israeli "occupation." It's not the presence of American troops in the Mideast or Northwest Asia.

It's the religion, stupid.

As Allah wills.