RSS 2.0 FeedThe Root Causes Of Terrorism
by Doug MataconisEver since September 11th, people have wondered what it is that can cause seemingly education men like the 9/11 hijackers to fall prey to an ideology so extreme that they are willing to commit mass murder. Some would argue that it is something inherent in the nature of Islam that causes this, but that misses the point. Every religion, every society, has extreme ideologies that could conceivably motivate people to kill others and themselves. The question is, what happens to cause someone to be receptive to that type of idea.
At least one Princeton economist thinks he knows the answer:
When Princeton economist Alan Krueger saw reports that seven of eight people arrested in the unsuccessful car bombings in Britain were doctors, he wasn’t shocked. He wasn’t even surprised.
“Each time we have one of these attacks and the backgrounds of the attackers are revealed, this should put to rest the myth that terrorists are attacking us because they are desperately poor,” he says. “But this misconception doesn’t die.”
(…)
“As a group, terrorists are better educated and from wealthier families than the typical person in the same age group in the societies from which they originate,” Mr. Krueger said at the London School of Economics last year in a lecture soon to be published as a book, “What Makes a Terrorist?”
“There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen,” he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia.
So if it’s not poverty, what is it then ?
So what is the cause? Suppression of civil liberties and political rights, Mr. Krueger hypothesizes. “When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed,” he says, “malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics.”
Which — ironically, given that Mr. Krueger is no fan of the president’s actual policies at home or abroad — is close to Mr. Bush’s rhetoric: “Liberty has got the capacity to change enemies into allies.”
And when you look at the Islamic world, what do you see ? Without exception you see repressive states ruled by cliques, royal families, or President’s-for-life. You also see near uniform repression of virtually any form of political and social expression. And some of these countries are our “allies”; Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are all repressive and all of them have been the home of men who have participated in the mass murder of Americans and Europeans.
Ironically, there is one nation in the Middle East that comes close to being a free state, and it’s the one that is targeted by the terrorists even more than the United States……Israel.
H/T: Mises Economic Blog
Of course, as Ron Paul and many others have continually pointed out, we often prop up these repressive states with foreign aid and interfere in their internal affairs, which ends up either linking us, in the terrorists’ minds, with the governments they oppose or creates an impression that we are directly to blame for their misfortune. Involve yourself in problems that have nothing to do with you, you end up looking like a villian to both sides. That’s why our foreign policy should largely stop at trade and enforcing international borders when it pertains to our interests…not micromanaging sovereign countries’ internal affairs or overthrowing governments who aren’t a threat to attack us.
As for the targeting of Israel by the terrorists, that’s got less to do with the relatively “free” nature of Israel today than with the U.N. dismissing Palestinian claims to title after World Warr II and giving the land away as reparations for the Holocaust (thereby essentially punishing the Palestinians for an event they had nothing to do with). The “freedom” of Israeli-style government is largely irrelevant to the conflict…the people who attack Israel do so because they see it as an invalid state created by Western tyranny (since Muslims weren’t particularly well-represented in the U.N. when the decision to gift Palestine was made). Although the Muslims’ tendency to adhere to the philosophy of collective rights (based around their religion) certainly plays a role, the conflict was largely caused by the U.N.’s land-grab of Palestine after WWII *
As for Islam being inherently repressive, you’re ignoring the exceptions of Turkey, pre-1973 Afghanistan, and Qatar (which has become significantly Westernized over the last decade). Islam is not necessarily incompatible with freedom or stable government, as long as those governments are willing to embrace the concept of individual (as opposed to collective) rights and freedoms. That’s the main sticking point for good governance in the Islamic world.
*Just to be clear, by attacking the U.N.’s decision to create Israel in 1948, I am not proposing that Israel should be abolished now (I think that would be as wrong as the 1948 partition) nor am I condoning the terrorist tactics of the PLO/Hamas/Hezbollah. I consider Israel to be a sovereign state and I consider their conflict with the Palestinians to be an internal matter that should be resolved between the Israelis and the Palestinians without the involvement of the U.N., the U.S., or the international community at-large. All those outside groups have done with their interference is prolong the conflict and usually make things worse for both sides.
Comment by UCrawford — July 5, 2007 @ 11:53 amUCrawford,
I didn’t say anything about Islam being inherently repressive, I was pointing out the fact that repressive regimes create an environment that allows terrorism to grow.
And Israel is cited not to argue that it targeted because it is relative free, it is cited because it is the closes thing in the Middle East to a free society.
Turkey may be a member of NATO, but its hardly a free country in a Western sense. Outward expressions of religious belief are banned. Minority groups like the Kurds are repressed. And the military has more than once overthrown civilian governments.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — July 5, 2007 @ 12:55 pmI totally agree with what Ucrawford said. You can’t blame Islam for everything that is going on even though it may be easy to do so but if you look closer and actually study the history of the religion you will notice that Islam used to be a very modern religion. The Islamic empire came up with a lot of inventions that the western world uses nowadays. The fact is that religion has been distorted and what is being taught in most of these religious school that create terrorists is not Islam at all.
Comment by Awai — July 5, 2007 @ 12:58 pmAwai,
I think you and UCrawford are both completely misunderstanding the point of the post and the point of the WSJ article I quoted. This isn’t about Islam per se. Its about how the existence of repressive regimes creates a breeding ground for the kind of radical Islamists who would consider it to be somewhere even approaching rational to strap explosives to your chest, walk into a pizza parlor and blow you and everyone else inside to kingdom come.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — July 5, 2007 @ 1:00 pmDoug,
I see your point and I agree with your assessment about terrorism being caused by repressive government, although I’d broaden that to say it’s applicable to all societies and not just Islam (citing as examples the IRA, the Basques, the Uighur, the Tamils, etc.). It’s become a common tactic by people in our society who don’t know much about the world (the key example of this being our current president) to associate terrorism exclusively with Islamic or non-Western societies, thereby labeling them an inherent threat, and to view actions by Western nations as inherently beyond reproach, and that’s a dangerous and ignorant mistake to make…as the events surrounding the creation of Israel clearly demonstrated. But I probably read more into your remarks than was there, I don’t think that’s the point you were trying to make, and I apologize for any misunderstanding.
I just thought that it was important to address and dispute that trend to label Islamic societies as the ultimate threat to freedom when really the issue of oppressive and overreaching government is something that encompasses all civilizations, even our own.
Comment by UCrawford — July 5, 2007 @ 1:22 pmI will, however, attack the article author’s comparison between Bush and Krueger. Bush’s concept of using “liberty” to stop terrorism entails the United States overthrowing “non-free” nations and imposing basic democratic reforms on those countries by force, whether those countries want (or are capable of supporting) democracy or not. Combine basic democracy with a dearth of protections for individual rights and statutory discrimination against Sunnis (through de-Ba’athification laws) and you’ve basically got mob rule and a tyranny of the majority, which is in no way conducive to a peaceful society free of terrorism.
Krueger’s position is that repressive government acting against the will of the people and stifling dissent is what causes violent acts by dissidents. So if we accept Krueger’s theory (which I do) it would indicate that Bush’s approach to liberty is one that will ultimately make the problem of terrorism worse because Bush’s approach merely replaces one repressive form of government with another. And that’s not what Krueger appeared to be in favor of, so the author’s comparison of Bush and Krueger’s philosophies is invalid.
Comment by UCrawford — July 5, 2007 @ 1:43 pmAnd the Kurds are repressed by Turkey currently (and Iran, and pre-war Iraq) largely because they’ve advocated the violent secession of southern Turkey (a major oil producing area) to form “Kurdistan”, and have conducted attacks that have killed tens of thousands of people in Turkey to achieve this goal. It’s kind of a chicken-or-the-egg argument, but it could be argued that nowadays the Kurds are being repressed for the violence they cause instead of causing the violence because they’ve been repressed. For example, Turkey’s provided clear evidence that Kurdish separatist groups have been attacking Turkey from northern Iraq, and I don’t think that you can argue that the Kurds are being repressed in northern Iraq right now…actually, the Kurds have been very active in forcibly purging and relocating Arabs and other ethnicities from northern cities. Heck, at this point the conflict’s been going on for so long that it’s pretty near impossible to determine where the original battles arose and who started them…the entire region’s just one big echo effect of retribution with no clear origin. Which is all the more reason for us not to be involved or taking sides there.
Comment by UCrawford — July 5, 2007 @ 1:59 pmA repressive regime causes dissidents to lash out violently, huh? That really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.
The million dollar question is: why are they lashing out at us instead of their oppressors and what, if anything, can be done to change that?
Comment by Jeff Molby — July 5, 2007 @ 5:18 pmJeff,
The million dollar question is: why are they lashing out at us instead of their oppressors and what, if anything, can be done to change that?
I think the answer lies in the fact that most of these repressive regimes use hatred of the West, and of the Jews, to distract their citizens from what’s really going on.
It is a standard part of the dictator’s playbook, really. Hitler told the Germans that all their problems were the Jews’ fault so that the German citizenry would stand by and do nothing while enslaved Europe and murdered millions. Stalin blamed the USSR’s problems on numerous ethnic groups.
Comment by Doug Mataconis — July 5, 2007 @ 6:06 pmDoug,
Here’s the million dollar question, why do they fall for it?
Comment by Kevin — July 5, 2007 @ 6:28 pmWould you also argue that repressive regimes creates a breeding ground for the radical Christians like the KKK?
Comment by js290 — July 5, 2007 @ 10:32 pmThe same reason the majority of Americans are more interested in Paris Hilton than they are about the government being a big crime syndicate? People in general are easily distracted.
Comment by js290 — July 5, 2007 @ 10:38 pmDidnt you notice that many tyrants were medical doctors? Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro. Medical doctors (and academics) resort to violence (or Jihad) because they are frustrated that their views are not accepted by the rest of society.
Medical doctors view the world as their patient -and by golly, only they can solve the ills of the world.
As to why Muslim men (particlarly those of middle class upbringing) are more prone to become sucide bombers/ terrorists is very obvious: It is not that they live in repressive societies. It is that they live in societies where the ytranny of the mind is the rule of the day.
That means that they have been brainwashed by their Mullhas to think that the West id decadent.
The irony, however, to them is that they envy the wealth and the glitter of the West – and these men are unable to reconcile why the thing that they hate the most is the one that they get attracted to, in fact are so envious about.
To me it is nothing but Envy.
Can envy kill ? are you kidding? Isn’t that the story in the bible ? About Cain and Abel? About the angels and the archangels who fought against Lucifer?
Comment by Abdul — July 5, 2007 @ 10:54 pmDoug,
Those despotic leaders are able to use a hatred of the U.S. on their people largely because our foreign policy in the Middle East has given them a reason to hate us, and they hate Israel not simply because the Israelis are Jewish but because it’s the prime example of Western policy in that region. Whenever we have an issue that arises that serves our short-term interest, we interfere in their internal affairs, we cause a lot of damage, then we leave them to clean up the mess. Whenever the locals don’t go along with a decision we make, we force them to accept it under the premise of the “rule of law”. There’s nothing moral or noble about using government institutions (such as the U.N.) to gift away land that doesn’t belong to you, there’s nothing democratic about using your military to force people who had no say in the matter to accept your decision. There’s a good reason libertarians usually hate our foreign policy.
Like I said before, I’m not at all in favor of the U.N. abolishing Israel and giving the land back to the Palestinians…same as I’m not in favor of our government giving the land we stole back to the native Americans. But before you dismiss the Middle Easterners’ gripes with the rationale that “It’s just because they hate the West and the Jews” you should keep in mind that this hatred didn’t start in a vacuum or at some Middle Eastern tyrant’s whim. This animosity was often well-earned.
Or, to quote Samuel Huntington from “Clash of Civilizations”:
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
Comment by UCrawford — July 6, 2007 @ 9:21 am