6 ms·

The Case for Calling Terrorists Nitwits

74 points by inmygarage 16y ago

stretchwithme 16y ago
the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. It takes intelligence in many forms to recognize and practice virtue, to recognize the influence of the crowd over one's thinking and to resist knee jerk reactions and grudges
- angstrom 16y ago
  Agree completely, but it only takes a few insane recurring thoughts to justify that what one is doing is virtuous. I take solace that there are few Ted Kaczynski individuals deluded enough to fall into this category. Even then, they tend to be targeted killings, not random mass murders.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  > the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. As proven by the existence of one of my favorite logical adages- Hanlon's razor.
  - sesqu 16y ago
    to wit, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
    - stretchwithme 16y ago
      ha ha. love it
kmfrk 16y ago
Someone relay this to TSA.
kyleslattery 16y ago
That's the trouble with getting someone to be a suicide bomber: you need someone stupid enough to think that killing themselves is a good idea, yet smart enough to pull it off.
robak 16y ago
How does it feel to be an Empire and lose a war(s) lasting almost a decade with just a FEW fools?
knowtheory 16y ago
This article really pisses me off. Who cares how smart your enemy is? You don't need to be intelligent to be dangerous. The author clearly doesn't understand the point of asymmetric warfare. Even if people want to laugh at the fact that 50% of Afghani suicide bombers don't kill people, 50% DO kill people. Suicide bombers aren't doing a cost benefit analysis of their efficacy and then deliberating on whether they're going to blow themselves up or not. Their job is to sow terror, and pierce the idea of safety. In spite of any of the points mentioned in the article, it's still possible to recruit suicide bombers to go blow themselves up for an ideology that's insane. ------------------------------------ I do honestly believe that we should point out the absurdity of suicide bombing. But the absurdity is not a question of their efficacy, which is undeniably a winning strategy if you've got the man power to throw at it. The absurdity of suicide bombing lay in the ideology, and the goals one seeks to achieve by blowing oneself up. This article is at best naïve, and at worse, dangerously ignorant and besides the point. Fight ideas.
- mquander 16y ago
  Your comment doesn't appear to have anything to do with the article. Apparently you skipped the part where the author actually makes his point (understandable, since it's one paragraph in a sea of crap.) Current U.S. public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers...Even small investments in training for police and airport-security personnel can make a big difference, as these are the people most likely to encounter—and have a chance to disrupt—an unskilled attacker.
- petewarden 16y ago
  You're completely missing the point. Terrorism is about spreading terror, killing people is just a technique. Finding reasons to laugh at these jackasses makes them a lot less terrifying. The best way to fight their ideas is to avoid buying into their romantic self-image as heroic martyrs, and reveal them as the sad losers they really are.
dtf 16y ago
I was half expecting to see a reference to Chris Morris's recent film Four Lions. That film has been dubbed "controversial" here in the UK precisely because its protagonists are portrayed as nitwits, albeit nitwits with bombs.
GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
I liked this part of the article "... it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. " It's hard to find suicide bombers with a good resume of successful attacks.
- gaius 16y ago
  Yeah, but you don't just wake up one morning, strap on a bomb and go. Rather you spend a few weeks or months at a jihad training camp in the mountains first, and then get sent off to blow yourself and maybe some infidels up. So there will be suicide bomber training mullahs who have a track record of training martyrs to be effective suicide bombers, and those whose graduates more often than not fail.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 16y ago
When your field is "suicide bombing", it's hard to retain good talent.
jrockway 16y ago
It seems that "the terrorists" just don't have careful leadership. With good leadership, average people can do amazing things, like hijack four planes at the same time and crash three of them into buildings. Pretty scary. Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn? Really? People still think that?
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  I'm pretty sure they were referring to the sexual encounters involving barnyard animals. I think that qualifies as perverted.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    But the word was used explicitly in the context of the discussion of the contents of seized laptops.
    - roc 16y ago
      Not all porn is created equal. I don't find it at all unlikely that the same sorts who would resort to the most intimate form of animal husbandry might have truly perverted pornography.
- jerf 16y ago
  "Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn?" Perverts on their own terms: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443678,00.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443678,00... Whether those opinions are utterly universal in the Muslim world I can not attest to, but surely they are popular. I've always understood this to be a real part of the strategy we've been pursuing; indeed, understanding that our primary goal is to disrupt leadership and prevent "competence" and "leadership" from coming together means suddenly you can decode an awful lot of American strategy pursued over the past near-decade, and especially in the past three or four years (and ongoing). I think perhaps history will not record this effort anywhere near as "incompetent" or "misguided" as those of us stuck in the moment may be tempted to think. You can't destroy the hatred, you can't destroy leadership, you can't destroy competence, but the intersection of all three is in fact rather targetable.
techiferous 16y ago
"The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises." http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-notes.html#timebomb http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-notes.html#t...
arohann 16y ago
Only fools underestimate their enemies.

74 points by inmygarage 16y ago

the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. It takes intelligence in many forms to recognize and practice virtue, to recognize the influence of the crowd over one's thinking and to resist knee jerk reactions and grudges

angstrom 16y ago
Agree completely, but it only takes a few insane recurring thoughts to justify that what one is doing is virtuous. I take solace that there are few Ted Kaczynski individuals deluded enough to fall into this category. Even then, they tend to be targeted killings, not random mass murders.
sliverstorm 16y ago
> the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. As proven by the existence of one of my favorite logical adages- Hanlon's razor.
- sesqu 16y ago
  to wit, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    ha ha. love it

kmfrk 16y ago

Someone relay this to TSA.

kyleslattery 16y ago

That's the trouble with getting someone to be a suicide bomber: you need someone stupid enough to think that killing themselves is a good idea, yet smart enough to pull it off.

robak 16y ago

How does it feel to be an Empire and lose a war(s) lasting almost a decade with just a FEW fools?

knowtheory 16y ago

This article really pisses me off. Who cares how smart your enemy is? You don't need to be intelligent to be dangerous. The author clearly doesn't understand the point of asymmetric warfare. Even if people want to laugh at the fact that 50% of Afghani suicide bombers don't kill people, 50% DO kill people. Suicide bombers aren't doing a cost benefit analysis of their efficacy and then deliberating on whether they're going to blow themselves up or not. Their job is to sow terror, and pierce the idea of safety. In spite of any of the points mentioned in the article, it's still possible to recruit suicide bombers to go blow themselves up for an ideology that's insane. ------------------------------------ I do honestly believe that we should point out the absurdity of suicide bombing. But the absurdity is not a question of their efficacy, which is undeniably a winning strategy if you've got the man power to throw at it. The absurdity of suicide bombing lay in the ideology, and the goals one seeks to achieve by blowing oneself up. This article is at best naïve, and at worse, dangerously ignorant and besides the point. Fight ideas.

mquander 16y ago
Your comment doesn't appear to have anything to do with the article. Apparently you skipped the part where the author actually makes his point (understandable, since it's one paragraph in a sea of crap.) Current U.S. public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers...Even small investments in training for police and airport-security personnel can make a big difference, as these are the people most likely to encounter—and have a chance to disrupt—an unskilled attacker.
petewarden 16y ago
You're completely missing the point. Terrorism is about spreading terror, killing people is just a technique. Finding reasons to laugh at these jackasses makes them a lot less terrifying. The best way to fight their ideas is to avoid buying into their romantic self-image as heroic martyrs, and reveal them as the sad losers they really are.

dtf 16y ago

I was half expecting to see a reference to Chris Morris's recent film Four Lions. That film has been dubbed "controversial" here in the UK precisely because its protagonists are portrayed as nitwits, albeit nitwits with bombs.

GiraffeNecktie 16y ago

I liked this part of the article "... it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks. " It's hard to find suicide bombers with a good resume of successful attacks.

gaius 16y ago
Yeah, but you don't just wake up one morning, strap on a bomb and go. Rather you spend a few weeks or months at a jihad training camp in the mountains first, and then get sent off to blow yourself and maybe some infidels up. So there will be suicide bomber training mullahs who have a track record of training martyrs to be effective suicide bombers, and those whose graduates more often than not fail.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

philwelch 16y ago

When your field is "suicide bombing", it's hard to retain good talent.

jrockway 16y ago

It seems that "the terrorists" just don't have careful leadership. With good leadership, average people can do amazing things, like hijack four planes at the same time and crash three of them into buildings. Pretty scary. Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn? Really? People still think that?

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
I'm pretty sure they were referring to the sexual encounters involving barnyard animals. I think that qualifies as perverted.
- abalashov 16y ago
  But the word was used explicitly in the context of the discussion of the contents of seized laptops.
  - roc 16y ago
    Not all porn is created equal. I don't find it at all unlikely that the same sorts who would resort to the most intimate form of animal husbandry might have truly perverted pornography.
jerf 16y ago
"Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn?" Perverts on their own terms: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443678,00.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443678,00... Whether those opinions are utterly universal in the Muslim world I can not attest to, but surely they are popular. I've always understood this to be a real part of the strategy we've been pursuing; indeed, understanding that our primary goal is to disrupt leadership and prevent "competence" and "leadership" from coming together means suddenly you can decode an awful lot of American strategy pursued over the past near-decade, and especially in the past three or four years (and ongoing). I think perhaps history will not record this effort anywhere near as "incompetent" or "misguided" as those of us stuck in the moment may be tempted to think. You can't destroy the hatred, you can't destroy leadership, you can't destroy competence, but the intersection of all three is in fact rather targetable.

techiferous 16y ago

"The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises." http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-notes.html#timebomb http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-notes.html#t...

arohann 16y ago

Only fools underestimate their enemies.