Speedkill

Sam Harris has an op-ed in the LA Times attacking liberal responses to terrorism. If you know anything about Harris, you know where he’s going with this. Let’s look a little closer:

But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.

On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.

This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.” It is, and they are.

That’s quite an introduction. The evidence?

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

This is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims. But we are absolutely at war with those who believe that death in defense of the faith is the highest possible good, that cartoonists should be killed for caricaturing the prophet and that any Muslim who loses his faith should be butchered for apostasy.

Are we? There are a lot of people who die defending their faith and aren’t particularly dangerous. It all depends on what “defending the faith” constitutes. Dying for your right to practice a certain religion isn’t dangerous. We’re at war with people who think someone like me deserves to die for no discernable action on my part.

Unfortunately, such religious extremism is not as fringe a phenomenon as we might hope. Numerous studies have found that the most radicalized Muslims tend to have better-than-average educations and economic opportunities.

Given the degree to which religious ideas are still sheltered from criticism in every society, it is actually possible for a person to have the economic and intellectual resources to build a nuclear bomb — and to believe that he will get 72 virgins in paradise. And yet, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, liberals continue to imagine that Muslim terrorism springs from economic despair, lack of education and American militarism.

I’m all for dropping the despair and lack of education arguments, but American militarism is still a factor. Notice how Harris sneaks that in, without actually presenting an argument, as he did for economic despair and lack of education. More on that in a bit.

At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government “assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East;” 16% believe that the twin towers collapsed not because fully-fueled passenger jets smashed into them but because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode.

Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization. There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.

Pathetic. 9/11 conspiracy theorist are liberals? Hardly. It’s as much a phenomenon of the extreme right as it is of the extreme left. Harris is really grasping at straws here.

I’m going to go in a different direction now. You’ve probably noticed that I’m a fan of Robert Pape’s work on suicide terrorism. I think his explanation is pretty solid. It also doesn’t say it’s an outgrowth of Islamic doctrine. What does Harris think of that? He says here:

In his influential essay, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” (American Political Science Review 97, no. 3, 2003) and in a subsequent book, Robert Pape has argued that suicidal terrorism is best understood as a strategic means to achieve certain well-defined nationalist goals and should not be considered a consequence of religious ideology. In support of this thesis, he recounts the manner in which Hamas and Islamic Jihad have systematically used suicide bombings to extract concessions from the Israeli government. Like most commentators on this infernal wastage of human life, Pape seems unable to imagine what it would be like to actually believe what millions of Muslims profess to believe. The fact that terrorist groups have demonstrable, short-term goals does not in the least suggest that they are not primarily motivated by their religious dogmas. Pape claims that “the most important goal that a community can have is the independence of its homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence or control.” But he overlooks the fact that these communities define themselves in religious terms. Pape’s analysis is particularly ill-suited to explaining the actions of Islamists. Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups define their “strategic goals” entirely on the basis of their theology. To attribute “territorial” and “nationalistic” motives to Osama bin Laden seems almost willfully obscurantist, since bin Laden’s only apparent concerns are the spread of Islam and the sanctity of Muslim holy sites. Suicide bombing in the Muslim world tends to be an explicitly religious phenomenon that is inextricable from notions of martyrdom and jihad, predictable on their basis, and sanctified by their logic. It is no more secular an activity than prayer is.

There are quite a few problems here. Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s cycle of suicide bombing campaigns are directly linked to those concessions. As in, they stop when the recieve them, then continue on later to extract more confessions. Harris also ignores Hezbollah. They stopped suicide bombings once Israel left Lebanon. They’ve since transformed themselves into a different sort of group and hardly a more effective one. The impetus for those attacks disappeared. Another of Pape’s points is that the distribution of suicide terrorists’ countries of origin doesn’t correlate with the amount of religious extremism, but with U.S. involvement in the country. Next, Pape certainly doesn’t ignore that such communities are defined by religion. That’s a major point of this argument: the clash of religions is a major factor in suicide bombings. Nothing radicalizes believers like being attacked by infidels (or perceiving such a thing). Finally, bin Laden’s goals are pretty clear. He wants unbelievers out what he considers Muslim holy land. That’s exactly what Pape is talking about. Al Qaeda recruits people not by harping on the fact that it’s their duty to God, but by harping on what they believe infidels in their land to be doing. That’s the driving force. That fits with what Pape is saying, not with what Harris believes.

Several readers followed Pape’s and put forward the Tamil Tigers as a rebuttal to my claim that suicidal terrorism is a product of religion. But it is misleading to describe the Tamil Tigers as “secular,” as Pape often does. While the motivations of the Tigers are not explicitly religious, they are Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of life and death. The cult of martyr-worship that they have nurtured for decades has many of the features of religiosity that one would expect in people who give their lives so easily for a cause. Secular Westerners often underestimate the degree to which certain cultures, steeped as they are in otherworldliness, look upon death with less alarm than seems strictly rational. I was once traveling in India when the government rescheduled the exams for students who were preparing to enter the civil service: what appeared to me to be the least of bureaucratic inconveniences precipitated a wave of teenage self-immolations in protest. Hindus, even those whose preoccupations appear to be basically secular, often harbor potent religious beliefs.

The Tamil Tigers don’t appear to motivated by messianic religious goals. They simply don’t mention religion in their explanations of why they do what they do. They stopped suicide bombings when they worked out a tenative agreement with Sri Lanka. That’s consistent with their stated aims of independence. Harris’s vague claims that they’re religiously motivated are simply not supported by what we know.

In the end, Harris has to deal with the power of Pape’s theory. All suicide bombing campaigns are explainable in terms of territorial goals. Suicide bombers come from many different religions. Who needs Harris’s special pleading?

Perhaps a little perspective is in order after not forgetting yesterday. Wired tells us how likely we are to die from certain things. Falling down, hernias, etc. Oh, terrorism is on there, too. Second from the bottom. It was beaten by falling down, walking down the street, and driving off the road.

Granted, no one is ever going to fall down and kill in the six figures, which is quite possible with terrorism, but it’s worth realizing that terrorism shouldn’t necessarily be our number one concern.

(via Hit and Run)

Wacko Lib sees one of the gang at WRiM giving a different justification for the Iraq war than we heard pre-war.

You’ve heard it before: Saddam supported terrorists, so we had to take him out. What terrorists? Palestinian terrorists.

There are a myriad of problems with this. First is the sleight of hand the President and his supporters have used in defining our current “war on terror.” It’s not a war on terror. We aren’t taking domestic terrorism seriously, we aren’t trying to stop the Tamil Tigers, etc. We’re trying to stop terrorism used against us by Islamist terrorists. Regardless of how broad the term “war on terror” is, this is what we’re doing. Are we threatened by Palestinian terrorists? Absolutely not. There simply isn’t much crossover. Al Qaeda, an anti-American group, generally attacks us and those who directly support our policies. Hamas, for example, attacks Israel exclusively. Hezbollah, the only anti-Israel group to target Americans, is the exception that proves the rule. We were directly supporting Israel in Lebanon when they attacked our Marines.

That still leaves a lingering justification, of course. Can’t we justify attacking Iraq as supporting our ally, Israel? Some of the more paranoid among us think that is what we did. In any case, attacking Iraq in support of Israel is about the stupidest strategic move possible. Saddam provided funding for the families of suicide bombers. Does anyone actually think the pool of potential suicide bombers is going to shrink significantly without Saddam’s funding for their families? I hope not. If only it were that easy.

Now, it’s inarguable that Iraq is now a front in the war on terror. I think most liberals (Tester included) recognize this, but have been sloppy in expressing it. Iraq had nothing to do with our war on terror before it was attacked. Now it does because we made it so.

I’m not sure that’s an argument for staying in the country, though. Insurgent terrorism is driven by our presence, consistent with almost every other suicide bombing campaign. If we withdraw it will stop. We will also stop creating new terrorists. The flip side is that Iraq will continue to devolve into a failed state like Afghanistan and will be a safe haven for terrorists motivated by other policies of ours. That may happen anyway, of course. We also have to consider the continued loss of life and the obligation we have to rebuilding something we destoyed. I haven’t decided exactly how I weigh these things. I sympathize with the proponents of withdrawal, but I’ve always leaned towards staying and making the best of it. It’s a hard decision that deserves careful thought.

Of course, we get partisan bickering instead. What a pity.

Peter Beinart’s The Good Fight is an interesting, but flawed, book.

Beinart’s book breaks down into two parts. The first half of the book is a history of cold war liberalism and its influence on American foreign policy. Beinart lionizes Harry Truman as a model for hawkish liberal foreign policy, as would be expected from a hawkish liberal. As others have pointed out, his portrait of Truman and his history of the cold war is oversimplified and a bit contrived. Beinart attemps to paint Truman as more of a multilateralist than he may actually have been, using NATO as an example of deference to foreign countries. Just how much influence other countries in NATO had or wanted is debatable, though it does look like Truman made some statements in the direction of allowing other countries to have a say. More than you can say for the current administration, but it doesn’t make Beinart’s examples any more convincing. In all honesty, I wonder about the point of this half of the book. Beinart wants to make some points by analogy, but is 100 pages of history necessary? It feels like an extended introduction more than a necessary portion of the book. Given the short length of the book (just over 200 pages), I’m inclined to think it’s just padding.

The second half is a critique of Bush’s approach to the war on terrorism and an argument for what we should actually be doing. Beinart makes a powerful argument for taking the war on terrorism seriously. Instead of seeing actual harm from terrorists as the main worry, he points out that further attacks will almost certainly curail our freedoms more than they already have been. So while terrorists will likely not cause a lot of actual damage, they’re still a threat to our country due to the fear they create.

Beinart continues with an explanation for terrorism. This is where he begins to go off course. He correctly notes that it is who we are that causes terrorism, but what we do. He correctly notes that our presence in Saudi Arabia is a major contributor to terrorism, but also argues that the poverty of the region is a significant cause.

Now, we know suicide terrorists are not poorer and less educated than the societies they come from. It’s the opposite, in fact. The data we have shows that. Beinart argues that this is a result of skimming off the top:

Terrorist groups are, after all, like any other employer: They accept the best candidates who apply. The University of Pennsylvania’s Marc Sageman estimates that only 10 to 30 percent of the people trained at Al Qaeda camps in the 1990s were invited to join the organization. And of those, an even smaller number were selected for spectacular attacks like 9/11, which require living undercover for years in the West. By design, these jihadist elites are more cosmopolitan, and better educated, than the movement they represent.

This is decent enough as an explanation of why terrorist organizations pick more upscale people. It doesn’t help Beinart’s argument much, though. He wants to claim that improving the Arab world socially and economically will solve our problems. First, it shows al Qaeda’s goals have a significant political attraction to people who are doing pretty well in life. Second, what makes al Qaeda so deadly is the competence brought by more cosmopolitan recruits. Shouldn’t we be focused on that? Without the people to organize, direct, and carryout complex operations, the threat just isn’t so impressive. Beinart’s claim is that the poor and uneducated masses in the Middle East provide crucial support to groups like al Qaeda. This is true enough. The nature of suicide terrorism is such that it depends on a replenishing pool of recruits along with popular support in order to hide among a population. Now, improving the living conditions of the Middle East isn’t going to decrease the pool of important recruits for al Qaeda. If anything, it increases them, as there will be more competent educated people in the region. What about the overall support of a community? Even if the poor are more likely to join a group like al Qaeda, we know that al Qaeda attracts the non-poor in significant numbers, as I said above. What guarantee do we have that the political attraction will diminish enough that the low level support of communities will disappear? None. I think Beinart fails to provide a full argument that his proposed remedies will do enough. His only example is the tsunami that devasted Indonesia. The citizens of that region became much less hostile to our war on terrorism after we reversed ourselves and offered a great deal of aid to them. However, Indonesia is hardly a significant source of recruits in the first place. Places that meet Robert Pape’s criteria (occupation by a democracy of a different religion) would be a real test.

Beinart’s proposed solutions are good in and of themselves, but I’m skeptical about their efficacy in eliminating jihadist terrorism. Sure, if we make Saudi Arabia look like Germany, it’s hard to imagine it spawning a significant number of bin Ladens. But how long is that going to take? 30 years? 50? We’re at rock bottom and we have the overwhelming hostility of the region to deal with. Perhaps we should be pursuing such policies, but I’m not sure we should be thinking it’s a good solution. Certainly we can’t abandon the region (which would, in all likelihood, solve our problems), but going the opposite direction is likely to take a long time and probably make things worse before they get better.

Beinart makes solid arguments that Bush’s policies are wrong and the ideas of the Michael Moores of the world are not much better. Beinart’s solution is more palatable than either of them, but I wonder if it’s really what we need. I’m all for national greatness liberalism and promoting reform in the Arab world, but I have my doubts about it being the solution.

You know what’s kind of interesting? Osama bin Laden’s OFAC file. It has the many aliases of al Qaeda (also found in the document linked here):

AL-JIHAD
EGYPTIAN AL-JIHAD
EGYPTIAN ISLAMIC JIHAD
INTERNATIONAL FRONT FOR FIGHTING JEWS AND CRUSADES
ISLAMIC ARMY
ISLAMIC ARMY FOR THE LIBERATION OF HOLY SITES
ISLAMIC SALVATION FOUNDATION
NEW JIHAD
“THE BASE”
THE GROUP FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE HOLY SITES
THE ISLAMIC ARMY FOR THE LIBERATION OF THE HOLY PLACES
THE JIHAD GROUP
THE WORLD ISLAMIC FRONT FOR JIHAD AGAINST JEWS AND CRUSADERS
USAMA BIN LADEN NETWORK
USAMA BIN LADEN ORGANIZATION

My personal favorite is “The Base.” “The Jihad Group” sounds sort of distinguished, even. “New Jihad” is a nice name for an online magazine.

The Democrats released a security plan a week or so ago. It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly specific. Especially this part:

Eliminate terrorist breeding grounds by combating the economic, social, and political conditions that allow extremism to thrive

And those are? First off, there aren’t any economic conditions that lead to suicide terrorism. Suicide bombers are all over the economic spectrum. Social conditions? I can only assume this means combating religious extremism, but that doesn’t work either. Suicide bombers are all over the religious spectrum, too. Ok, political conditions? Now we’re there. Except, I just don’t think the Democratic party is advocating the removal of our troops from Saudi Arabia. Because, you know, suicide bombing campaigns are almost always linked to the occupation (however strange calling it that may look to us) of country by a democracy of a different religion. They’re likely thinking of addressing the fact that wealthy dicatators rule nearly all of the Middle East. As nice as that is, there’s no evidence to suggest that it would solve our problems with suicide terrorism.

Of course, this is still better than what the Republicans have come up with, which is apparently screaming “freeeeedom!” and killing a bunch of brown people.

Not bad:

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

I can’t really find anything to disagree with, as it’s pretty broad. I don’t think we really have to take seriously them taking over the world in any form, but other that it’s pretty much dead on.

(via Dispatches)

1. Bush says we’ve been fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them here.

2. Bush says we’ve foiled ten major plots since 9/11.

Doesn’t (2) mean that (1) isn’t really working? Ten major plots seems like a lot. Or was it twenty or thirty before 9/11?

Matt and Wulfgar have put up posts answering a questionnaire for Democrats posted over at Rabid Sanity. I thought I might give it a shot as well.

1. What is going right with our country right now? This question is necessary because if we all agree on what is working, we won’t have to reinvent the wheel and waste time.

Generally, things are going fine. Our system of government is works well enough, civil liberties are generally respected, most people are getting by, etc. I don’t think there’s really a need to agree on what’s working, as there are fewer things that aren’t, so fleshing them out is easier and less time consuming.

2. What are the top three issues that need to be addressed in order of priority. You can’t say everything, because then nothing is a priority.

1. Our current war on terror strategy. This includes things like the war in Iraq, the Patriot act, the NSA spying conundrum, etc. Iraq is obviously the biggest part of this. It’s costing us trillions and has rolled back some of the gains made by the war in Afghanistan (which could have been prosecuted better in places, but we can’t underestimate the value of depriving al Qaeda of essentially their own country). A lot of blood has been shed already there, with the potential for more. The potential for success (defined as a stable and democratic regime) seems low, but I still have some hope left. At home, civil liberties are being sacrificed in the name of the Patriot act (as a caveat, the whole act is not bad, but has quite a few worrying provisions) and warrant-less wiretaps.

2. Our national discourse. I’m young, so I can’t really say if it’s always been like this, but our national discourse is pathetic. The media is a major part of this. Being more concerned with making money than informing us, they put vacuous pundits on television to scream at each other and demonize the other side. When they aren’t doing that, they’re doing pointless horserace coverage or engaging in unenlightening he said-she said reporting. Don’t get me wrong, there are good reporters (print, mostly), but we’re steeped in these worthless human interest stories and mind-numbing pundit shows that get us nowhere. To get more, we can turn to ideological opinion magazines, but the content is uneven. It’s not all the media’s fault, though. There’s obviously a market for this crap. Too many people just don’t care. Voter turnout is pathetic. How many people can name their Congressional representatives? The people that do vote have problems as well. Rather than voting based on policy, they’re swayed by looks, emotion, or appeals to a shared faith. Some think their religion is a sound basis for policy. Perhaps worse, some lazily vote for whatever party they decided they were a part of long ago. No one’s perfect, but it’s not that hard to educate yourself. It’s not that hard to learn about how politicians manipulate voters and try to correct for it. Then there are the partisans of both sides. Godless hippies who hate America vs. corrupt corporate fatcats bent on turning this country into a theocracy? I don’t think so. Oh, but I can’t blame the people who have turned off politics for doing so. Look at who they have to vote for. Politicians who care about their special interest checks more than the people they serve. Cynical manipulations of the voting public. The belief that they should intervene in private family tragedies. Principle thrown to the wind to get elected (or the misguided belief that it will get them elected). This is something of a catch all, but it’s all related and it’s something we need to fix (of course, I don’t have the answers).

3. Health care. I hesitate to put this here because I have recurring philosophical questions about this side of liberalism. Still, our current system is bloated and inefficient. It works for the rich, but leaves out the poor. Whether this means getting government completely out of it or moving to a system of universal government care, I’m not entirely sure. Something has to change.

3. We have been fighting the War on Poverty for 40 years. Have we made any progress? A follow up; What is working, and what isn’t working?

I’d say we have. As Wulfgar pointed out, our definition of poverty is much higher than third world definitions. That’s excellent. We still have many homeless and others who are struggling. I honestly don’t have strong opinions here. Things like unemployment insurance, welfare, etc are good programs, but they won’t pull people out of poverty on their own. I’m still unsure of exactly how much help we should give to people, but I think helping people who want to make a better life is a noble goal.

4. Is terrorism (as identified with Osama bin Laden) a threat to this country? What should we do about it if it is, and if it is not, why not?

In the sense that it could cost us a significant number of lives, yes. I can’t recommend Dying to Win enough. I think we have solutions, but they’re not simple to carry out. We need to get out of Saudi Arabia and stop pointless ventures like the one in Iraq. To do this, we need to be energy independent. The current generation of al Qaeda isn’t going to be swayed by those remedies, but it’s creating more terrorists that’s our biggest problem. Like Matt said, keeping them away from more destructive weaponry than commercial aircraft is a priority. It’s also pretty clear that we need to engage the people of the Middle East and explain ourselves better. Debate, not propaganda, can help them understand us and hopefully get them on our side.

5. Are there any Republican programs that you agree with? If so, which ones?

Opposition to gun control and affirmative action are generally Republican ideas and I agree with those to a certain degree.

So, there we have it. For all I write about religion on here, you might think I put something to do with that in my top three issues. Science policy, too. Certainly I think secularizing our political discourse is good and that fits in number 2. Global warming and science policy in general are probably number 4.

I’m not in the mood for posting anything significant, so I’ll direct you to Mike’s post about ANSWER. There’s not a new outrage to highlight, but it’s useful to remember that they are an offensive group and should be condmended harshly and consistently. Any influence they have is too much.