What Powers Terrorist Organizations? (Part One)
The recipe for creating a successful terrorist group includes exploitable grievances, a compliant media, crime-riddled areas, and plenty of disposable income.
Following a speech in late November 2001, a member of the audience caught me in the hallway and asked me, “What really powers an organization like al-Qaeda?”
“Grievance and money,” I replied.
I didn’t have time to elaborate on my entering-the-elevator quip, but the speech had addressed several of Osama bin Laden’s more grandiose historical gripes. (This column from November 2001 is illustrative.)
Obviously, aggrieved and embittering passions do not ipso facto create a terrorist. Money doesn’t commit murder and sociopaths with slender resources can wreak terrible mayhem. However, cash creates options, and killers with cash become a much deadlier force and more complicated enemy. Flush finances mean mass murderers can recruit, sustain, and train more terrorist cadres; conduct increasingly sophisticated reconnaissance missions; create and support a communications network; run propaganda and psychological operations; and acquire more weapons — in other words, they can operate and maintain a complex organization.
The March 11, 2004, Madrid terror bombing sparked a particularly memorable discussion in the undergraduate seminar I teach at the University of Texas. The Madrid atrocity arguably led to al-Qaeda’s biggest victory. Al-Qaeda targeted Spain as “the weak link” in America’s “coalition of the willing” alliance and conducted the attack seventy-two hours before the national election, with the clear intention of scaring the Spanish electorate and electing a “peace” government. Al-Qaeda achieved both goals. The Madrid bombing provided an unfortunate opportunity to discuss bin Laden’s irredentist claim to Spain — he bewails 1492 — and compare it to Leonid Brezhnev’s Cold War declaration “once Communist-socialist, always Communist-socialist.”
During the class, one of my students asked a serious question, albeit with a definitely undergraduate twist: “Dr. Bay, how do you run a terrorist organization?” Well, I don’t run a terrorist organization, though appeasnik Democrats often react rather strongly to my newspaper columns. The student, however, wanted an “elements and process” explanation — in other words, an operational, dynamic description. Grievance and money were part of my answer.
Writing the Global War on Terror chapter for the 4th edition of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War gave me the opportunity to expand on my classroom response to the student’s broader question: What does it take to create and run an international terrorist movement?
1. Grievance
A well-run terrorist organization must be able to leverage grievance and resentment. Historical resentments provide a particularly fertile ground for radical ideology that promises justice — to salve the grievance and resentment — and quick social solutions.
What Went Wrong? by scholar Bernard Lewis, published right after 9/11, provides an excellent summary of Muslim and Arab “historical grievance.” From a grand political, economic, and cultural zenith in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Islamic world has declined. Osama bin Laden bewails those 800 years of decline and degradation.
Someone has to take the blame. Islamist terrorists insist that Islam is under attack by infidels, meaning non-Muslims. This assault comes in the form of ideas, including democracy, that are, or should be, abhorrent to a true believer in Islam. The United States is considered the principal enemy because America produces most of the video, audio, lifestyle, and intellectual “attacks” that the Islamic radicals find so distasteful. At first, Islamic terrorists sought to overthrow the “corrupt” governments in existing Islamic nations such as Egypt and create Islamic republics. All of these “true” Islamic nations would then unite to reconstitute the caliphate that existed over a thousand years ago, the last and only time all Islamic countries were united. That unity didn’t last because people and countries are different, and Islam was not enough to keep them all united. That has not changed.
2. Ethnic or Sectarian Antagonisms
Terrorists almost always exploit ethnic and sectarian antagonisms. Ireland’s IRA and Spain’s ETA are European examples.
Al-Qaeda thrives on both ethnic and sectarian divisions. Muslims had been driving infidels out of Islamic nations for a long time. That’s why most Arab-Americans are Arab Christians. Despite having been in Arab lands before Islam came along, Arab Christians — and Arabs professing other religions — were always under pressure to either convert or leave. Many of those who left over the past two centuries came to America and prospered in a much more tolerant society. Islamic militants have conducted campaigns against infidels in Kashmir (1989-present), Indonesia (1998-present), Egypt (1985-present), Philippines (2000-present), Nigeria (1999-present), Lebanon (1975-90), Sudan (1988-present), Pakistan (1989-present), and Israel (2000-present). These campaigns against non-Muslims go beyond the lower level of religious strife that has taken place for centuries. The current violence is part of the Islamic radicalism espoused by groups like al-Qaeda. The objective is the expulsion of infidels from Islamic areas, as defined by Islamic radicals, and the eventual conversion of all infidels to Islam. This religion-based terrorism has killed over half a million infidels, mostly Christians, in the past two decades.
3. A Recruitment Base
Terrorist organizations need recruits — the more angry, resentful, and aggrieved, the better. Al-Qaeda believes it has a large recruitment pool. There are approximately one billion Muslims on the planet, and most of them live in impoverished and oppressed countries run by corrupt, autocratic governments. Islam is the majority religion in 52 nations (Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cote D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, UAE, Uzbekistan, Western Sahara, and Yemen). Several other nations have large Muslim minorities (Mozambique, Suriname, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, and India). Europe’s “new underclass” of unassimilated immigrant Muslims and unemployed Muslim men provides another recruitment pool.
4. Crime
Terrorists have an easier time operating when there are powerful criminal gangs available to provide weapons, information, and transportation services. Nations that have a great deal of terrorism, or function as a base for terrorists, usually have high crime rates.
Drug smugglers are generally apolitical, but they also offer a criminal underground that will provide weapons and other assistance to anyone who can pay for it. During the Cold War, the Soviets’ KGB intelligence agency frequently used criminal gangs to assist in its espionage operations and to support anti-Western terrorists.
Many revolutionary, insurgent, and terrorist groups engage in drug trafficking. Almost all of them are using drug smuggling to finance their operations. Terrorist and insurgent groups bring valued services to the drug smugglers, as they already have networks of safe houses, secure remote areas, and in-place pipelines for smuggling.
Unemployed young men are a problem. Street gangs easily move from petty crime to calculated banditry to smuggling. The subsequent step to “guerrilla band” or “insurgent unit” is quite small. (See Chapter 6: The Balkans.)
5. Money
Terrorist organizations need financial support. It takes money to pay for maintaining the volunteers and buying materials. Money also buys information on how to carry out attacks.
Al-Qaeda depends on financial support from wealthy Persian Gulf “donors,” money raised by various Islamist charities, and criminal activity. Several kidnappings in Iraq have been essentially criminal operations designed to raise money in order to conduct traditional terrorist attacks. Charity organizations have long been used to provide secret support for revolutionary movements. Often the aid is deliberate, but more frequently it is not. For example, NGOs — non-governmental organizations, like the Red Cross and religious charities — often control the movement of millions of dollars in charitable aid into areas suffering from civil unrest. In those areas, there is usually a lack, or complete absence, of law and order. Men with guns do what they want, and many of the men with guns are members of rebel or terrorist groups. The gunmen take what they want from the charity workers, and the charities usually tolerate this as a form of “taxation” so that aid can be provided to people dying from lack of food, water, medical care, and other needs.
6.Training Facilities
“Training facilities” is a practical way of describing the utility of “terror harbors” — hence the phrase “harboring terrorists.” Terrorists need place to train; they need a place to be while gathering intelligence, waging ideological war via the media, and preparing for their next strike. Sudan in the early 1990s provided some facilities for al-Qaeda, but Afghanistan became al-Qaeda’s great global training base. Terrorists also need “safe houses” and other physical support systems — places to live, to store weapons, etc.
7. Communications
Terrorist organizations must have swift, reliable, and secure communications.
The Internet and powerful encryption capabilities have made it much easier for terrorists to communicate. In the past, phone calls, mail, and couriers could be intercepted. However, industrial-strength encryption programs, easily available on the Internet, make it much more difficult for U.S. intelligence organizations to decode terrorist messages.
Cell phones, beepers, the Internet, CB radios, and walkie-talkies are cheap, easy to use, and widely available. Guerrillas, terrorists, and gangsters have been quick to adopt all of these items to make their work easier
8. Media
Terrorists rely on the media to magnify the effects of their attacks. The media is also “the battlefield of ideas” for waging political and ideological warfare. In fact, a good case can be made that the real battleground in the GWOT is the media and that the only terrorist victories are in the media.
Nineteenth-century terrorists relied on newspapers and the telegraph. Twenty-first-century terrorists crave video imagery via television and the Internet. The Internet is also useful for spreading rumors. Thanks to the Internet, a rumor is now heard the same day by several million people instead of a few dozen.
9. The Terrorist’s Tool Kit (Materiel)
In December 2003 Turkish television ran a clip showing terrorist-related materiel captured by what was described as “the Istanbul Counterterrorism Department.” The material the Turkish counter-terror police discovered amounted to a “terrorist’s tool kit.” The cache included a large quantity of RDX (Cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, a plastic explosive), five AK-type assault rifles, 1,117 rounds of AK ammunition, various pistols, “remote-control bomb mechanisms,” electric circuits, explosive fuses, and “propaganda documents in Arabic.” The police also found an unspecified amount of dynamite, fake ID cards, hand-held radios, various computers, and cell phones. The only thing missing from this list was … well, money.
Other aspects of terrorist organizations will be discussed in part two.
Austin Bay is an author and syndicated columnist. His online writings can be found here.
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20 Comments
1. What Powers Terrorist Organizations? (Part One) « Kruisvaarder’s Weblog:[...] Lees het helemaal… [...]
Apr 9, 2008 - 3:52 am 2. Benson:The nod to “Ethnic or sectarian antagonisms” is correct, but it does not describe the Muslim terrorist as precisely as I believe it should. We need to focus on the fact that Muslims are murdering because God wants them to. Faith is the problem, in other words.
Overall, Bay’s fundamental requirements for the foundation and operation of an international terrorist movement seem to me to be met by feminism. Certainly the antagonisms are there, at least among the hard core. The fact that feminists have not been blowing up buildings and assassinating politicians appears to be at odds with the criteria. Sure, the opponents of feminism have committed a few murders at abortion clinics — what, two or three? But that seems to have ended the madness, and Gloria Steinem does not need the security required by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Why is that? Well, people just don’t have the stomach to be all that violent in Western Civilization’s cultural civil war, and that may be due to our fundamental commitment to the rights of the indvidual — which is totally lacking in Islam.
This is not a definitive critique of Bay’s list, just a suggestion that faith is a driving force that is given short shrift on that list, and that the underlying values of the culture have been ignored. Values, or ethics, have a lot to do with how far people are willing to go, and a quick perusal of the Koran will make clear that the concepts of right and wrong found in those pages are extraordinarily dangerous to non-Muslims, as long as Muslims don’t ignore those bloodthirsty commandments of God. Christians and Jews do ignore large sections of the Bible, which is why those religions are as peaceful as they are: people have lost faith. They just don’t believe that when, for example, God commanded death for adulterers, it was a mandate that applies to us today.
I suggest that the list be reformulated in accord with this prediction: until Islam evolves as Christianity and Judaism have, we will have to face Islamic terrorists. They are a special case. Give it about 600 years, and things may calm down.
Apr 9, 2008 - 4:49 am 3. david p:Ask an expert appeaser former president Carter when he returns from his meeting with Hamas terrorist leaders in Syria. If the former president isn’t arrested and tried for treason, then he should be able to answer your questions.
Apr 9, 2008 - 6:04 am 4. Morton Doodslag:This is a fascinating dissection of only part of the story; what about intent as a driving force in “creating” terror outfits? Before grievance comes a goal. We’ve repeatedly seen how hollow many Muslim grievances actually are; Motoons, “Palestinian” suffering, insults to Islam, the “grievance” theater of C.A.I.R. Mr. Bay’s first category may more accurately be labelled “pretext”, when it comes to Islamic terrorism. So while “grievance” might be an effective management tool to keep a motivating hatred alive, grievance itself is not sufficient to “create” a terrorist organization, so something more substantive must come first, and that something is doctrine.
In the case of Islam, in the case of “creating and maintaining” Islamic terror organizations, the doctrinal intent of Islam is not to foster grievance, per se, but to spread Islam, and then to assert and maintain Islam’s primacy over conquered territories and minions. Grievance can then serve in maintaining the hatred necessary to sustain all the rest.
The answer to the question must include intent, and the intentions of Muslims along with the tenets of Islam which make Muslims search for and create pretexts and grievances to accomplish all the rest.
Islam is the unifying thread which runs through all varieties of the myriad octopus arms of Islamic terrorism and Islamic totalitarianism. Those other management aspects which are enumerated above serve only as generic markers within the framework of any well run supremacist fascist nightmare; Nazi, Communist, Imperial Japanese, etc. As such, the list above hardly explains why Islamic terrorism is so ubiquitous, or why it poses so much more of a threat than Nazism, Communism, or Japanese Imperialism ever did. Islam is much more widespread — it hides under the repectable cloak of “religion”; there are more than a billion practitioners; Muslims are here in their millions, protected by our hard won civil rights to practice their “religion” of war, terror, and conquest and we are hamstrung to stop them. Do you think they aren’t aware of all of this? It’s a fatal error to attempt to depict Islamic terror as being akin to any run-of-the-mill terror group. It is a conglomeration. A syndicate with thousands upon thousands of outlets. Virtually any Muslim at any time is a franchisee if he or she follows the tenets of Islam and spreads Islam or “defends” Islam. And it all begins with intent to spread Islam with the purpose of eventually seeing Islam Uber Alles.
Apr 9, 2008 - 9:06 am 5. Geoff:Good comment, Benson, but I would argue that it’s not faith per se that’s the problem, but rather ideology. Faith, properly understood, means trusting in God (or a higher power) to provide meaning and purpose to life. Ideology, on the other hand, may incorporate faith, but generally begins with the assumption that said faith - or whatever doctrines or ideas are contained within the ideology - ought to be held by everyone, because the world (or their corner of it) will be properly managed only when that ideology is primary.
Religion has been guilty of this, but so are most human endeavors. It is almost instinctual to assume that “the way I do things” is probably the best way. Of course, that’s a weak and foolish assumption, and most of us, as individuals, realize that sooner or later. But when it comes to societies and cultures as a whole, it is much harder to separate ourselves from our ideologies, especially given the complex social structures that we’ve built up around those ideologies.
I agree with you, it seems that Islam is currently in the process of trying to decide how to respond to its own ideologies, and I wonder how much of that would be taking place “in-house” even without interference from the West. I get the sense that, over the last 50 years or so, the U.S. and other Western nations have (for a variety of reasons) forced their way into what might be called an “internal” issue for the Islamic world, and I wonder whether or not we may have unintentionally made things worse.
Lots to think about here.
Apr 9, 2008 - 11:55 am 6. ajacksonian:There have been some organizations that one describes as terrorists that can lack these fundamentals.
One is the Death Cult. Most horrifically was Aum Shinrikyo that perfected the multiple simultaneous attack plot with good COINTEL and internally cohesive structure. They did not thrive on grievance, but more on ennui and then a sophisticated form of chemical indoctrination, along with the Western standards of sex and rock’n'roll. Being a Death Cult they had few antagonisms and sought to hasten the day all the souls on earth could be set free. They had a unique funding scheme: running computer retailing outlets. Like the Rajneeshi followers they worked for little or nothing and their founder had made shrewd investments and withdrew them on a timely basis. That combined with the sale of narcotics allowed them to purchase industrial space in Japan and expand into the USSR. Additionally, as many of the recruitees were upper middle class, they could fund their own ways on many trips for doing chemical, biological and nuclear research outside of the constraints put on Iran, say. And their recruitment base was anyone attending a rock concert and wanting to listen to some of their teachings. The overwhelming majority were not recruited, but in straining society to get those who see life as pointless, they did get those and gave them purpose. They were effective enough to have properly produced Sarin and Vx nerve gas and actually weaponized anthrax but got the strain wrong. In one of the most chilling episodes, KGB agents sent to infiltrate them were turned, and many disappeared during the flux period between the end of Communist rule and the standing up of Russia. The individuals sent to perform deadly missions were expected to *return* for R&R and then go out to ‘release more souls’.
On the non-religious grievance side there are the various Red/Maoist and other groups adhering to forms of Communism, like Shining Path and the various Red Army groups. The fall of the USSR brought most of those to an end, but Shining Path continues its work in Peru, CPN-M in Nepal is still deadly, and FARC shifted from Marxism to narcotics based terrorism with a patina of leftism hanging around it. Over a decade of COIN is wearing FARC down, but recent backing from Venezuela still makes it a nasty organization to deal with. Shining Path is highly insular, but has been stubborn in giving up its ideals or struggle, even though it is not the threat it used to be.
What is disconcerting are the melding of Islamic based terror organizations with Balkan organized crime groups, particularly the 14 Families in Albania and Kosovo. The internetworking with Albanians has allowed ethnic based crime to stretch to the US and Canada, and that entree has allowed HAMAS, Hezbollah and al Qaeda to exploit those inroads. Getting to put a minor ‘terror tax’ on even 1% of the Balkan narcotics trade would make that one of the top funding sources for Hezbollah after Iran. Hezbollah, itself, has shifted to multiple bases of operations, particularly in S. America, where its use of money laundering for narcotics trafficking allows it to buy part ownership in shopping malls in Paraguay…. not something we consider to be a traditional haven for terrorists or financing them.
On the flip side are the brutal Red Mafias, that do not have the older ‘family code’ of interaction. These organizations have had little problem supplying terrorists for a price and even helping out on projects or doing some terror work of their own when necessary. That is more market share/competitor driven, and the ideology is capitalism in a very raw and meaty form. A mere handfull of individuals created a global money laundering system that even now, 8 years after discovery, the West has not pieced together and may never be able to do so due to the complexities involved. When trade in aluminum, steel and other industrial goods are used to hide proceeds from prostitution, narcotics trafficking and nuclear materials trade, and the web of companies set up on a global basis to deal with that makes tracking anything virtually impossible, you have a nascent organization driven by well known concepts and brutality to get their way.
These things do not obviate the traditional model of terrorist organizations, but those models have been morphing and hard for the last two decades and we must understand this. When state backed companies like Huawei from China can enter into agreements with terror supporting states and organizations and then utilize those contacts to gain and enforce market share via economic disruption, we no longer see a pure form of terrorism, but a hybrid form with multiple and often conflicting driving factors that have temporary coincidence and cooperation. And there is always the sophisticated, Western death cult with high technical capability and ability to utilize lawyers to deflect problems for years that can suddenly arise and create a nasty set of scenarios. These are *not* prevented by trade concerns or even production controls when a good front can be put up for dual-use equipment… and by being Western they can be highly ingenious in their views. A KGB agent thought it was funny that a death cult had ‘a fanciful imagination’… I find that absolutely chilling.
Apr 9, 2008 - 1:38 pm 7. Benson:On faith and ideology: can they exist independently? To me, faith means believeing in things (ideas, concepts, claims, reports, descriptions, explanations) for which there is no evidence whatsoever. It means eternal patience — a willingness to await proof that never comes. Ideology, as I understand it, is the tales we spin that give faith form and substance.
So faith is THAT you believe without reason or evidence, and ideology is WHAT you believe. Or?
The path to error begins with faith. Absent faith, we would have to face life rationally and realistically. For many, that is a terrifying prospect, certainly.
The alternative, however, is often terrible. The Christianity of the 14th century existed in a time of powerful faith, and was a horror beyond our comprehension. The most preposterous and inhumane principles were considered ordained by the allmighty creator. Without faith, the obscenity would have collapsed.
That’s not to say that from our fetid imaginations no good can possibly come: if I believed in a Moon goddess who tells me to be kind, I would, presumably, be a better person than if I believed (as Koran-believing Muslims do) that it is my task in life to see to Islam’s expansion.
The problem, IMHO: whenever you have faith, there is much you can get wrong. Setting aside reason is never a positive step. That contention leads me to resist the exclusive identification of the good results of faith with faith itself. Similarly, I would not define guesswork as only what you do when you get good results from making choices at random.
Apr 9, 2008 - 7:16 pm 8. Jules Crittenden » Reality Checks:[...] Bay at Pajamas talks about the nuts-and-bolts needs of terrorist organizations. Note prominence of havens on that [...]
Apr 10, 2008 - 6:44 am 9. Bugs:“Without faith, the obscenity would have collapsed.”
And it would have been replaced by what? It doesn’t make much sense to assume that when faith collapses, reason automatically springs up to fill the void. In the Middle Ages, the literate few may have had reason to fall back on - but what about the majority who knew nothing about science or logic? If Christianity had suddenly disappeared, I think the masses would have come up with a million little faiths to replace it.
Today, faith is just one of many options available to help us deal with life. The principles of science and reason are also there for everyone to learn and use. That was not the case seven hundred years ago. That’s not to say I entirely disagree with Benson about the present. I just try not to apply 21st century standards to 13th century people.
The problem with Islam (and, according to some people, all religions) is that it tries to apply 13th century standards to 21st century people. Personally, I have no desire to return to the “good old days.”
Apr 10, 2008 - 8:10 am 10. Benson:Well, Bugs, if faith itself had collapsed while the church was torturing and murdering people, no little faiths would have replaced the Christian horror. My point was that without faith, there can be no religion; I should have put it that way.
Now I do recognize that the resort to faith is a cultural universal (or so nearly so that it might as well be). So simply getting rid of Christianity would indeed allow other faiths — paganism, etc. — to flourish, as you point out.
As to the absence of science and reason some seven centuries ago, mankind had simple, everyday common sense for thousands of years before the relatively harmless folklore of the supernatural changed into a monster. The craftsmen who first flaked flint into blades were very rational, practical people who depended on logic, education, experience and straight thinking. They were probably just as intelligent as we are. Their craft was not true science, but it was knowledge, as Socrates pointed out: the artisans were the only folks he felt knew anything. He had a point.
Literacy and science were not necessary for the evolution of our species, and are very probably not necessary for its continued survival. Not that doing without dentistry appeals to me….
Dealing with life does not require faith, though spirituality is of benefit. One need not believe in manifest absurdities in order to be spiritual, a point that is not widely understood. Recognizing that ethics does not spring from religious doctrine is the first step in shedding faith and dealing with life as it is, rather than wrestling with absurd legalistic requirements and fantasies. Most of the world’s faiths have co-opted and subsumed ethics, however, claiming that we must be good because some imagined deity requires it of us (or else). That claim cannot be validated.
The problem we have with Muslim terrorists today is simply that they really, really do believe the Koran (which point Bay does not note). It’s a problem with faith; faith causes gullibility that pushes reason aside.
If you can honestly believe that an angel provided Mohammed with some instructions from the divine creator, you can believe that dying a martyr will get you and your family into heaven. The truth and the implications of that horrifying fact are impossible for many non-Muslims to grasp.
Apr 10, 2008 - 9:56 am 11. Geoff:Hi Benson,
Re: your first question - No, I don’t think faith and ideology can exist independently, but then, neither can reason and ideology… as you say, ideology gives form our experience/reason/faith/whatever.
But it seems to me that therein lies the struggle: Since all human thought and activity is somehow tied together, then the path to error actually begins with thought and activity. The danger in ideology lies in forgetting this truth. I don’t mean to sound pessimistic, but to exist, it seems, is to be in error. And I’m not as convinced as you apparently are that “reason” will change that.
I think even a cursory look at history and human experience shows that reason is an unreliable guide. It certainly provides much that is valuable, but it also leaves us with many dilemmas and new problems. Certainly the same can be said of faith, but my original point was that faith/reason/etc become positive or negative depending upon the ideology to which they are connected.
For example, Christianity in the 14th Century not only spawned corruption and the horrors of Inquistion, etc, but also the rise of Scholasticism and the Franciscan orders, both of which are generally seen as very good things. How can the same religion have such good and bad results? Because of its connection to differing ideologies - one humble, the other arrogant.
So I guess I would change the statement you made from “whenever you have faith, there is much you can get wrong” to: “If you are human, there is much you can get wrong.” To me, that suggests we ought to include both faith and reason in living our lives, trying to keep both in perspective and avoiding the arrogance that often comes with ideology.
Apr 10, 2008 - 10:02 am 12. Austin Bay Blog » What powers terrorist organizations?:[...] An article of mine at PajamasMedia.com. [...]
Apr 10, 2008 - 10:42 am 13. kenb:A minor point on section 3: Armenia is definitely not a Muslim country. I don’t think Ethiopia is either, but maybe.
Apr 10, 2008 - 12:19 pm 14. Al Fin:Unless you discuss the young male “youth bulge” demographic, you will not really understand contemporary Islamic terrorism in all its different forms.
Ideology plays a big role, sure. So does “cradle to grave” hate-mongering against targeted groups by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. Hatred becomes an unbreakable weave wound through every aspect of life. For excess young men, terrorism becomes a logical expression of their entire lives.
Apr 10, 2008 - 12:19 pm 15. What Powers Terrorist Organizations? « Civilian Irregular Information Defense Group:[...] Austin Bay, via Kat. [...]
Apr 10, 2008 - 2:35 pm 16. Benson:Geoff: yep, that’s life! This is earth, not heaven. Goethe: “Man errs, as long as he strives.”
Then regarding the Franciscans, and without debating their worth (!), please recall my words, above: “That’s not to say that from our fetid imaginations no good can possibly come.” Though I still maintain that taking anything on faith is always a mistake, you are right: the facts show that error lies in wait, whichever path we choose.
I am just terribly impressed by the insane recklessness of faith, by the enormities it has produced — and I can’t think of anything at all comparable that proceeded from rational, empirical ethics. When scientists run amok (as in the Tuskegee syphillis study), it’s from moral blindness, not an excess of either faith or reason. Yet reason and spirituality dictate, IMHO, a humane ethic. Faith seldom does — witness Islam and its hundreds of millions of believers.
And as I said, the ethics of today’s Christianity and the Hebrew faith are mostly the result of Christians and Jews simply ignoring large parts of the OT. Of course we still have some Christians who believe in witches and the death penalty for those who work on the Sabbath (Ex. 31:15), curse (Lev. 24:16), or commit adultery (Lev. 20:10).
I submit that the comments here have indeed refined and expanded Bay’s criteria. This is a valuable contribution to understanding terrorism in all its forms.
Apr 10, 2008 - 7:22 pm 17. Geoff:I realize I’m going completely off-topic here, but I am curious: I don’t normally visit blogs for anything more than a cursory scan of what’s being called “news”, but if I can just ask a question:
Are all politically-related blogs (the current thread being the exception, thankfully!) filled with such smarmy, hypocritical people?
I’ve been reading some of the other “headlines” on this site and I can’t understand how so many people think it makes any sense to condemn some politician for their [insert flaw here], while posting rude, flippant, and sometimes downright hateful comments about the people they dislike. Am I the only one who sees the blatant hypocrisy in this kind of behavior? Just wondering.
Apr 11, 2008 - 10:20 am 18. Benson:Geoff: that’s life!
Apr 12, 2008 - 8:25 am 19. Pajamas Media » What Powers Terrorist Organizations? (Part II):[...] Part one of of this two part series showed you how to set up a terrorist organization. Part two explains how you can counter your creation. May 1, 2008 - by Austin Bay [...]
May 1, 2008 - 2:08 am 20. Governance and Growth « Zeal and Activity:[...] of counterinsurgency. It demonstrates the government’s capabilities, reduces grievances (as Austin Bay would say) and absorbs accelerants (military-aged men). Therefore, our Provincial Reconstruction Teams have [...]
May 6, 2008 - 12:48 am