Recent readings: "What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat"

What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat by Louise Richardson, Random House, New York 2006, 312 pages

In her book Ms. Richardson makes a strong argument for not being carried away by fear and loathing of terrorists’ atrocities in the United States on 9/11 and in other countries around the world. She is a lecturer at Harvard and is dean of Harvard’s affiliate the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Rather, she says, we of the western world should make a genuine effort to understand the motivations of the terrorists and to devise rational ways to protect ourselves from them. She talks not only of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists but also of other terrorist organizations in other places and times: the Shining Path in Peru, the FARC in Colombia, the Basque ETA in Spain, the Japanese cult that released deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, the Irish Republican Army, the Red Brigades in Italy, and others.

First, she makes the argument that terrorists are not greatly different emotionally from the rest of us.

...terrorists...are, by and large, not crazy at all...the one shared characteristic of terrorists is their normalcy, insofar as we understand the term...Some are introverted, some extroverted: some loud, some shy; some confident, some nervous...Terrorists see the world in Manichean, black-and-white terms; they identify with others and they desire revenge. They have a highly oversimplified view of the world in which good is pitted against evil and in which their adversaries are to blame for all their woes. (p. 41)

Most of the leaders of the Islamic militants are well educated, many with advanced university degrees. Three conditions are usually required for the making of an individual terrorist: dedication to a cause, an enabling structure (an organization for him to join), and an overarching ideology.

The author discusses the question of the extent to which states sponsor terrorist organizations–she argues that generally “terrorism is the behavior of substate groups”. But she does contend that some countries do, at certain times, sponsor terrorist groups; the Soviet Union and Cuba did so in the 1970's, Iran and Libya in the 1980's, and Iraq and Syria in the 1990's. And the USA would, in the opinion of those in the world who dislike us, also fall into that category given our support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahedin in Afghanistan, those who would overthrow Castro in Cuba, and those who did overthrow Allende in Chile.

More and more impoverished people in the world resent the USA because of our wealth:

With global mass communications and American TV shows broadcasting American affluence around the world, it is not difficult to mobilize a sense of resentment of American wealth. Previously one compared oneself to others nearby, but the contrast between American wealth and Arab poverty is now being broadcast daily into people’s tiny homes. (p. 56)

In a chapter entitled “Why the War on Terror Can Never Be Won” the author comments:

When the history of the immediate post-9/11 years comes to be written, it will be seen as a period marked by two major mistakes and two major missed opportunities. The mistakes were a declaration of war against terrorism and the conflation of the threat from al-Qaeda with the threat from Saddam Hussein. The missed opportunities were the opportunities to educate the American public to the realities of terrorism and to the costs of our sole superpower status and the opportunity to mobilize the international community behind us in a transnational campaign against transnational terrorists. (p. 170)

Far from trying to educate the public, U.S. leaders played to their fears…Rather than attempting to put the terrible atrocity of 9/11 into perspective, it fanned the outrage. Rather than countenance the possibility that certain of its actions might have fueled resentment toward it, it divided the world into good and evil, and those who were not with the United States were with the terrorists. (p. 193)

In the concluding chapter “What Is to Be Done?” she sets out “Rules.” Rule 1 is “Have a Defensible and Achievable Goal.”

…had our government declared its goal on the evening of September 11 simply to be to capture those responsible for the attacks, it might very well have been successful. The goal would have required a different political and military strategy in Afghanistan and it would have kept us out of Iraq…The particular brand of terrorism that currently poses a threat to us is terrorism used by Islamic militants; therefore, our goal today should be to stop the spread of Islamic militancy. In order to contain the spread of Islamic militancy, we must isolate the terrorists and inoculate their potential recruits against them. (p. 204)

Other “Rules” are:

“Live by Your Principles.”
“Know Your Enemy”
“Separate the Terrorists from Their Communities”
“Engage Others in Countering Terrorists with You”
“Have Patience and Keep Your Perspective”

In considering U.S. counterterrorist policy since September 11, it is very clear that we have not followed these six rules. We set ourselves an unattainable goal, we have been seen to abandon many of the principles that have guided our democracy, the inadequacies of our intelligence have been exposed, our actions have served to strengthen ties between terrorists and the communities from which they come, we have failed to engage others in the campaign against terrorists, and we have failed to demonstrate either patience or a sense of perspective. (p. 234)

And she is outspoken about our misadventure in Iraq:

Whatever the virtue of the other arguments in favor of the war in Iraq, from the point of view of counterterrorism the invasion of Iraq was a calamitous mistake…the Iraq war, far from being an effective policy against terrorism, immeasurably strengthened the hand of our adversaries and weakened our own. We have alienated the international community and united our enemies against us. We have provided a training ground for our adversaries, spawned a new generation of terrorists convinced that we are at war with Islam, and failed to bring security to the country. The inadequacy of our postwar planning was grossly negligent. We appear never to have taken the time to challenge the assumptions on which we based our policy; instead, we simply assumed that the policy would be effective and never inquired as to the cost. (p. 236)

Ms. Richardson’s ideas for dealing with terrorists—trying to understand why they hate us (“know your enemy”), maintaining our own principles, working with others in the world to defend against terrorism, etc.—make sense if it can be assumed that those who oppose us are rational, people who will not want to harm us if they sense that we are fair and just in all that our government does that affects them. But she seems not to consider that there are times when madmen are at large and can only be dealt with by force--Neville Chamberlain and the world finally saw that with Hitler. It may be that, with all the hateful teaching in the Islamic madrassas and the hatred of the modern world preached to the masses by radical Moslem clerics, we will have to one day conclude that we face an implacable enemy who can only be dealt with by force.