Lean Left

Salon has a look at three books that deal with the question of why terrorists become terrorists. The author is semi-dismissive of Pate’s Dying to Win because the statistical set is probably too small to support the claim that he has proven anything. I have purchased the book and will be reporting on it as I go through it, but even if the case isn’t statistically proven, the numbers certainly are suggestive.

I also noticed today that the so-called Bull Moose and the DLC (this is a link to Digby’s masterful dismantlement of the latest DLC nonsense) are trashing anyone who tries to actually figure out why people become terrorism. There can be no reason beyond “they are evil”, in their minds. That is, too put a fine point on it, like saying that water is wet, ice is cold, or the sky is blue. The point is not that the sky is blue but why the sky is blue. The question is not whether or not terrorism is evil. The question is why people do evil things.
But the people who call people who try to better understand what is going on “excuse makers” or who dismiss evidence that causes are at the heart of suicide terrorism are shutting down that discussion. It is as if no one was allowed to provide and answer for why water freezes other than “God said so.” They are deliberately choosing to know less than they could about their enemy. It is the celebration of ignorance over intelligence, and it will do nothing to stop terrorism.

Lets try it this way: why did Eric Rudolph commit terrorism? And, more importantly, why did so many people cheer him on when he did his deeds? Are all those people irredeemably evil? Is there something in Christianity that warps otherwise decent people? Or do they believe that abortion is murder and are acting out in the only way the weak and the desperate can? The answer is pretty obviously a mix of the two: Rudolph is an evil man, but his evilness was given a focus and an outlet in the anti-abortion cause. The people who cheered him on, who probably helped hide him in Appalachia for years, are a lighter shade of evil who believed that they were doing the right thing in the service of a higher cause. If you are anti-abortion, does it make you a terrorist sympathizer to argue that abortion is morally wrong?

Because it must, if the logic of the Bull Moose and the DLC is to be believed. Because in their mids, understanding is the same thing as justification. Most anti-choice people believe that abortion is morally wrong, and most would admit that they understand the anger that helps drive people like Rudolph and his supporters even if they deplore the tactics and aquiesence in those tactics. The world is divided much like the anti-abortion movement. There are a few who will do evil things because they hate the world as it is with respect to abortion. There are a few who will never do evil things in the current climate because they can resist the temptation. And there are the vast majority in the middle, who will be tempted by the notion of doing evil things to further a good — to them –cause. To an anti-choice advocate of the second type, the grievance is legitimate even if the methodology is abhorrent. And there is nothing morally wrong with working to address the grievance.

Terrorism is much the same: some people want a fundamentalist government and will kill for it. Some people do not want such a government. And some people, the majority, are open to being tempted by the notion that only a fundamentalist government can protect them and justify the wrongs in their lives. Those are the people who we need to reach, and we cannot do so by ignoring their legitimate grievances.

Of course, not all grievances are created equal. I, for one, do not believe that anti-choice people have legitimate grievances . Nor did the KKK have legitimate grievances during the Jim Crow and Civil rights eras. But I did not come to those conclusions because terrorism was associated with both causes — I came to those conclusions because I understood the logical and moral reasoning behind those grievances and rejected them. But some grevances are legitimate. The Irish Catholics in Norther Ireland, for example, really where treated as second class citizens. The African-Americans in this country really did have reason to be furious at the way they were treated in thsi country. Addressing thos legitimate grievances helped keep people away from the support of violent methods.

But the know nothings steadfastly refuse to admit that. They prefer to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that the very concept of grievances is ridiculous. And thus they abandon the largest portion of the Muslim world to the propganda of the terrorists. By refusing to admit that things like ignoring Abu Gharib, or supporting dictators who boil people alive, or turning a country withno connection to terrorism itot a charnel house are legitimate grievances, the know nothings turn their backs on a perfectly moral means of removing temptation and desperation from the Muslim world – thus making it easier for the terrorists to work their propaganda.

The choices in this debate are simple: do you want to know nothing, or do you want to do something effective? Because you cannot do both, and it is a shame that the Moose and the DLC do not recognize that simple fact.