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Terrorism is a tactic. It is nonsensical to talk about the causes of superior firepower, the causes of ambush, or the causes of propaganda. Islamic Fundamenta

Terrorism is a tactic. It is nonsensical to talk about the causes of superior firepower, the causes of ambush, or the causes of propaganda. Islamic Fundamentalism is an ideology. It is likewise nonsensical to talk about the causes of Buddhism, socialism, or libertarianism. But just for kicks, in your view, what exactly are the "causes" of terrorism? They are central to the claim you are making, but you don't say what they are. Why?

andrewcooke 17y ago
i would guess that the original poster meant something like "we need to look at what causes people to use terrorism". just like you might ask "why do people think socialism is a good idea?" or "why do people become islamic fundamentalists?" to be honest, it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant, unless you're just trying to be difficult.
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant And yet, you're the second poster on this topic to mention what is meant without being explicit about it. As if everyone is already supposed to know the one right answer to this very complicated question. I think that this kind of carefully circumscribed rhetoric makes people think that opinion on such questions is less diverse than it really is. The result is dull posturing and the inevitable partition into camps with binary opposite positions, incapable of compromise or a shift of perspective. So. I gave my opinion on the causes of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism above. What's yours?
  - andrewcooke 17y ago
    what do you not understand? what can i be more explicit about? if "terrorism" is a problem, then it seems like it would be a pretty smart idea to look at the causes. is that better? i don't know how to make it clearer. or are you asking me to answer the questions i raised? how on earth would i know? but either someone has done the work and found out, or the work could be done. or are you just looking for a fight?
    - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
      With sincerity, I'm not looking for a fight. Just a frank exchange of views. I agree it would be nice to prevent Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism by understanding its causes, but that approach doesn't seem likely to work. My opinion, as above, is that the thoughts of suicide murderers will be messy, hard to understand, specific to individuals, and not terribly useful for preventing terrorism. This is because people are complicated, and because, legally and practically, suicide bombers are crazy. They're a threat to themselves and others. I don't think there's any coherent argument against trying to understand the psychology of terrorism, but I find the enthusiasm for that course of action slightly ominous. This is an armchair discussion for me, and I suspect most people here, so the line between "Trying to Understand" and just wishing the problem would go away without our doing anything about it looks pretty thin. That mindset has to be fought, in spite of the stupid posturing and overreaction after 9/11, because it's possible to overcompensate. If a bunch of murderous lunatics jump onto the world stage by killing a few thousand people and then claim they're the Next Great Existential Threat to the USA, it's not right to ignore them because they don't live up their own hype.
      - andrewcooke 17y ago
        i agree that life is complicated. but, at the same time, i think there are more similarities than differences in the attacks so far. for example, i understand that engineers are way over-represented amongst bombers. i have no idea what that means, but if it's not some strange statistical fluke then it's evidence that there is some commonality. and i don't disagree with what you're saying about lunatics jumping on a bandwagon. as far as i'm concerned that's quite possible - but that doesn't mean you can't ask questions about what makes bandwagons work. for example, completely random thought: if the usa became much more of a federation, and emphasised the role of central government much less, then perhaps "america" as a target becomes less attractive (much like people don't try to "attack europe" to anything like the same degree - and when it does happen it's interpreted largely as an attack on american allies). maybe the above are really stupid ideas. it wouldn't surprise me - i thought of them in 5 minutes. but i am seriously starting to worry that no-one at all is brainstorimg about this where it matters. another example, that got me a pile of downvotes in another thread, is american funding of israel. the usa pays a huge amount to israel and seems to be getting pretty poor value for money: the us president asks them to do something and they just laugh in his face. again this seems to be entrenched ideas (big government if you like) resisting market forces - wouldn't you get more security per dollar spending that money on better airport screening? i'm rambling and drifting off topic here, but my more general point is that "america" doesn't seem to be thinking much at all. and i think there should be a lot more thinking - that includes but is in no way limited to the minds of terrorists.... edit: and to put that in perspective, i don't think it's sufficient to just bullshit (as i have done above). spend some money and study the problem. can't some kind of science be used here rather than the "armchair discussions" you mention? this is why i avoided putting forward ideas earlier in this thread - because i don't know the answers. what worries me is people are not looking for answers because they're not even bothering to ask questions, and/or they don't think answers can be found. if as much effort was put into the minds of terrorists as was put into the minds of consumers.... why is selling us crap that we don't need a science, but saving the world just a big debate?
e40 17y ago
Since no one else wants to, I'll take a stab. Meddling. We meddle in other people's affairs (in the Middle East). Iran and the Shah, where we supported a brutal dictator. We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East. Of course, the thing that increase terrorism the most was invading Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. The second thing was invading a country (Afghanistan), rather than just sending in a squad to arrest Bin Laden. We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target.
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  the thing that increased terrorism the most was invading Iraq... 9/11, USS Cole, Kenyan/Tanzanian Embassies? Also, while the war in Iraq has not made the US popular in the region, it has given the people of the Middle East a very good look at the practice of terrorism. Surveys show that groups like Al Qaeda have suffered an even greater loss of esteem than the US has: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/17/saudi.poll/ http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/17/saudi.poll/ We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East. This was the theme of GWB's second inaugural address. Thanks to him, Iraq's government is now the most liberal in the region. The idea was to create pressure for change in neighboring countries like Syria and especially Iran. That nobody was ecstatic about the Stalinesque Hussein regime's ouster and subsequent replacement with a constitutional democracy is a bright sign that "oppression" is a lot more complicated than the victim-villain narrative that predominates in the media and public discourse. Did I mention that Israel is one of the world's most open societies if you ignore all the stuff they do to the Palestinians? The point is that this issue is full of contradictions. But it's hard to see how the oppression of the Middle East's huddled masses would elicit murderous, self-immolating rage from the son of a Nigerian bank chairman living at a tony London boarding school (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), or an Egyptian studying architecture at a German university (Mohammed Atta). We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target. Superpowers are not nice. But they are even less popular than they are nice. They get blamed for all the good they could do but don't, doubly blamed for their screwups, triply blamed for their vices. And when they do something right, nobody pays attention: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1211/Iraq-oil-fields-European-Asian-firms-win-first-contracts http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1211/Iraq-oi... So I absolutely agree that the US has a big PR problem in the Middle East that to some extent is structural and can't be gotten rid of. But that doesn't really tell us much. Any project undertaken by an actor as big as the US is going to be a mixed bag. Because of the PR problem, people will see the bad and not the good, making the US less popular and giving it more of a PR problem. I think people stop thinking about problems like terrorism too early. They quit in a funny way though. Rather than just declaring the problem impossible, people tend to settle on some really unrealistic solution that will never fly in the real world, and then complain that it isn't happening. So for example, people go on about how the US should consume less oil (which would add major unemployment to the region's problems), stop backing Israel (which would destroy trust of other allies, threaten a high-tech trading partner, free up Syria and Hezbollah, and piss off a chunk of the Florida electorate), or stop being a superpower (Riiight). There have to be better solutions, though.

andrewcooke 17y ago

i would guess that the original poster meant something like "we need to look at what causes people to use terrorism". just like you might ask "why do people think socialism is a good idea?" or "why do people become islamic fundamentalists?" to be honest, it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant, unless you're just trying to be difficult.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
it's hard to see how you can not understand what was meant And yet, you're the second poster on this topic to mention what is meant without being explicit about it. As if everyone is already supposed to know the one right answer to this very complicated question. I think that this kind of carefully circumscribed rhetoric makes people think that opinion on such questions is less diverse than it really is. The result is dull posturing and the inevitable partition into camps with binary opposite positions, incapable of compromise or a shift of perspective. So. I gave my opinion on the causes of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism above. What's yours?
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  what do you not understand? what can i be more explicit about? if "terrorism" is a problem, then it seems like it would be a pretty smart idea to look at the causes. is that better? i don't know how to make it clearer. or are you asking me to answer the questions i raised? how on earth would i know? but either someone has done the work and found out, or the work could be done. or are you just looking for a fight?
  - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
    With sincerity, I'm not looking for a fight. Just a frank exchange of views. I agree it would be nice to prevent Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism by understanding its causes, but that approach doesn't seem likely to work. My opinion, as above, is that the thoughts of suicide murderers will be messy, hard to understand, specific to individuals, and not terribly useful for preventing terrorism. This is because people are complicated, and because, legally and practically, suicide bombers are crazy. They're a threat to themselves and others. I don't think there's any coherent argument against trying to understand the psychology of terrorism, but I find the enthusiasm for that course of action slightly ominous. This is an armchair discussion for me, and I suspect most people here, so the line between "Trying to Understand" and just wishing the problem would go away without our doing anything about it looks pretty thin. That mindset has to be fought, in spite of the stupid posturing and overreaction after 9/11, because it's possible to overcompensate. If a bunch of murderous lunatics jump onto the world stage by killing a few thousand people and then claim they're the Next Great Existential Threat to the USA, it's not right to ignore them because they don't live up their own hype.
    - andrewcooke 17y ago
      i agree that life is complicated. but, at the same time, i think there are more similarities than differences in the attacks so far. for example, i understand that engineers are way over-represented amongst bombers. i have no idea what that means, but if it's not some strange statistical fluke then it's evidence that there is some commonality. and i don't disagree with what you're saying about lunatics jumping on a bandwagon. as far as i'm concerned that's quite possible - but that doesn't mean you can't ask questions about what makes bandwagons work. for example, completely random thought: if the usa became much more of a federation, and emphasised the role of central government much less, then perhaps "america" as a target becomes less attractive (much like people don't try to "attack europe" to anything like the same degree - and when it does happen it's interpreted largely as an attack on american allies). maybe the above are really stupid ideas. it wouldn't surprise me - i thought of them in 5 minutes. but i am seriously starting to worry that no-one at all is brainstorimg about this where it matters. another example, that got me a pile of downvotes in another thread, is american funding of israel. the usa pays a huge amount to israel and seems to be getting pretty poor value for money: the us president asks them to do something and they just laugh in his face. again this seems to be entrenched ideas (big government if you like) resisting market forces - wouldn't you get more security per dollar spending that money on better airport screening? i'm rambling and drifting off topic here, but my more general point is that "america" doesn't seem to be thinking much at all. and i think there should be a lot more thinking - that includes but is in no way limited to the minds of terrorists.... edit: and to put that in perspective, i don't think it's sufficient to just bullshit (as i have done above). spend some money and study the problem. can't some kind of science be used here rather than the "armchair discussions" you mention? this is why i avoided putting forward ideas earlier in this thread - because i don't know the answers. what worries me is people are not looking for answers because they're not even bothering to ask questions, and/or they don't think answers can be found. if as much effort was put into the minds of terrorists as was put into the minds of consumers.... why is selling us crap that we don't need a science, but saving the world just a big debate?

e40 17y ago

Since no one else wants to, I'll take a stab. Meddling. We meddle in other people's affairs (in the Middle East). Iran and the Shah, where we supported a brutal dictator. We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East. Of course, the thing that increase terrorism the most was invading Iraq when Bin Laden was in Afghanistan. The second thing was invading a country (Afghanistan), rather than just sending in a squad to arrest Bin Laden. We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
the thing that increased terrorism the most was invading Iraq... 9/11, USS Cole, Kenyan/Tanzanian Embassies? Also, while the war in Iraq has not made the US popular in the region, it has given the people of the Middle East a very good look at the practice of terrorism. Surveys show that groups like Al Qaeda have suffered an even greater loss of esteem than the US has: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/17/saudi.poll/ http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/12/17/saudi.poll/ We give money to many oppressive governments in the Middle East. This was the theme of GWB's second inaugural address. Thanks to him, Iraq's government is now the most liberal in the region. The idea was to create pressure for change in neighboring countries like Syria and especially Iran. That nobody was ecstatic about the Stalinesque Hussein regime's ouster and subsequent replacement with a constitutional democracy is a bright sign that "oppression" is a lot more complicated than the victim-villain narrative that predominates in the media and public discourse. Did I mention that Israel is one of the world's most open societies if you ignore all the stuff they do to the Palestinians? The point is that this issue is full of contradictions. But it's hard to see how the oppression of the Middle East's huddled masses would elicit murderous, self-immolating rage from the son of a Nigerian bank chairman living at a tony London boarding school (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), or an Egyptian studying architecture at a German university (Mohammed Atta). We are seen in the Middle East as bullies that only care about oil. This is grist for the mill of terrorism, where we setup ourselves as an easy target. Superpowers are not nice. But they are even less popular than they are nice. They get blamed for all the good they could do but don't, doubly blamed for their screwups, triply blamed for their vices. And when they do something right, nobody pays attention: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1211/Iraq-oil-fields-European-Asian-firms-win-first-contracts http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2009/1211/Iraq-oi... So I absolutely agree that the US has a big PR problem in the Middle East that to some extent is structural and can't be gotten rid of. But that doesn't really tell us much. Any project undertaken by an actor as big as the US is going to be a mixed bag. Because of the PR problem, people will see the bad and not the good, making the US less popular and giving it more of a PR problem. I think people stop thinking about problems like terrorism too early. They quit in a funny way though. Rather than just declaring the problem impossible, people tend to settle on some really unrealistic solution that will never fly in the real world, and then complain that it isn't happening. So for example, people go on about how the US should consume less oil (which would add major unemployment to the region's problems), stop backing Israel (which would destroy trust of other allies, threaten a high-tech trading partner, free up Syria and Hezbollah, and piss off a chunk of the Florida electorate), or stop being a superpower (Riiight). There have to be better solutions, though.