Real Kato Blog: World: Fighting Terrorism

Terrorism is like cancer. Cancer spreads rapidly, and if cells are left to proliferate, they kill their host organism, and thereby kill themselves. There is no reasoning against it. So what do we do about it?

There is an innate need in people, I think, to belong to a group, and to believe in a cause. It is the reason we join churches, it is the reason we belong to political parties, it is the reason we root for the home team. We want "us" to beat "them". It's a need that's rooted in the deepest parts of our evolutionary biology and our social consciousness.

So in that sense, I understand Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. They often live in desperate circumstances with little to hope for. They have no football team. So what cause do they have that can unite them? They have jihad, the "struggle of the Islamic state against the Zionist oppressors". It doesn't have to make sense. You know, there's no fundamental reason that the University of Michigan is better than every other school, but I'm going to root for them loudly all the same, no matter who the opponent is.

We actually have something similar to terrorist organizations, right here in the U.S: we have gangs. They are organizations that give a sense of belonging and membership to people who otherwise live in despair, and they operate violently and outside the law. You might note that you rarely find a gang made up of rich suburban white kids. That's because such kids can get their sense of belonging elsewhere.

Now, here's the problem with most terrorist groups: they can never succeed at anything. Terror is not an achievement in itself; with the exception of the supremely insane, I don't think anyone gets a thrill out of just randomly killing people. Rather, terror is supposed to be a means to an end. Terrorists are usually trying to influence policy or make a statement of some kind. It usually backfires: opposition becomes stronger, the statement is associated with lunacy and is lost, and the terrorists are usually killed.

The danger with Islamic terrorists is this: they claim to desire death, because martyrdom is seen as a goal. And so it is easy for them to succeed, even if they are unable to influence world policy. Their own death is sufficient reward. And with Iraqi terrorists, it's even worse: the object of their terrorism is their own country. They blow up police stations and oil pipelines. They make conditions for their countrymen more desperate, and thus increase the temptation for others to escape traditional society in favor of radical extremism.

So what does one do about terrorists who desire death? I think killing them is the last thing we want to do, because it only feeds the cycle. That's the thing the Bush administration is doing now, and that's what the hard-line Israelis do, and everything just gets worse and worse. No, I think the better solution is to keep the terrorists alive, but isolate them somewhere, and then leave them be. Let them spout off all they want, on al-Jazeera or whatever. If someone wants to join them, let them go. Then, we should build up the peaceful law-abiding remainder of the Islamic society as best we can. (Hey, we can build a Wal-Mart in Baghdad... make globalization useful for a change.) Eventually, people will see that terrorists and fundamentalists do not give them a better option, and so their message will be exposed as hollow. Death might be a noble goal, but it'll be hard to convince people that a life of totalitarian misery is just as desirable.

But here's the rub: the U.S. can't do all this, because we've developed a reputation of being evil invaders and oppressors. (Thanks, Dubya.) So it's got to be the Muslim governments that initiate this action. As a country, we should influence them through diplomacy and money, not by force. More carrot, less stick.

If Bush stays in office, the chances of this happening are practically nil, and so we will be doomed to an ever-escalating cycle of terrorism and counter-strike. If that's what Bush means by "being a leader against the war on terror", I'm really, really afraid.

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