As a reminder, here’s the first line of the quote with the money shot underlined:
"BOSTON, Oct. 16 — Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Monday"
To get to the real questions we have to do some deconstruction and define some terms. We’re going to chop this quote down to the real point. This is not going to be a easy read, but here goes. I know you’re up to it.
What I’d like to do is take out the buffoonery regarding the Internet. If there was no Internet, then Al Qaeda would be using faxes, telephones, surface mail, or human couriers.
Blaming the Internet is as logically valid as blaming the telegraph for Pearl Harbor. ("Those sneaky Japs perverting Samuel Morse’s noble invention to attack the US by sending telegrams, in code, to Tokyo telling the Navy when the ships were in Pearl. The bastards! Ban the Telegraph!) The Internet is a fast communications tool and nothing more. Chertoff is engaging in faulty logic and some scare mongering at the behest of the Terror Trust who don’t want to answer the real questions.
Our sentence now becomes "Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills."
Next on the chopping block is "may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills" Apply enough effort with creative storytelling using ‘holy’ documents as the basis, you could convince a cloister of Grey Nuns to become killers.
With enough quotes out of context and a bit of charisma we get the Fighting Nuns of the 174th Regiment storming Juno beach under a hail of machine gun fire in 1944. Or Jonestown. Which do you prefer? I prefer the image of Sister Mary Margaret leaping through barbed wire with a Sten gun blazing away, as it is wholly imaginary.
Jonestown was too real a proof that anyone can develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills. Radical ideologies and violent skills are two bullshit terms, especially married with ‘may’. Weasel words: Out they come.
We’re left with "Disaffected people living in the US." the implication being they will become terrorists.
Let’s ask the tough questions, more or less in order, and I’ll try to explain my take on it as we go.
First question: Why are these people disaffected? More correctly, why are these people disaffected enough to want to blow themselves up in a terrorist act?
It isn’t religion, broadly speaking, as all religions preach peaceful coexistence with others. For the religious scholars out there, don’t bother sending me quotes from this or that document that "proves" the opposite. I can find enough obscure quotes on my own; we’re still talking broadly, OK?
All the major brands and most of the minor brands have something along the lines of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I’m using the Christian version, as I know it best.
Do unto others is a core teaching of whatever brand of God/Supreme Being/Deity/Galactic Mothership you happen to believe in. Even atheists think that "Do unto others" is a good rule to operate your life by, leaving out the whole theology thing.
Religious extremism? I don’t like to use the word "extremism" as it poo-poohs someone else’s deeply held beliefs. What is ‘extreme’ to me, is panty-waist to someone else. How about religious intolerance? If the disaffected are not buying into a basic theological tolerance for everyone, then they’re being intolerant.
Religious intolerance is probably a good area to investigate. Some cement-heads think the Bible says it is a good thing to plant pipe bombs full of nails in Family Planning clinics, or that God will answer your prayers for a lottery win. The Quakers were so tight-assed they thought hard-core Presbyterians were sensation-crazed libertines. Early Buddhists got up to some weird stuff involving sealing devotees in large jars to see if their depth and sincerity of belief would protect them from the thirst and hunger of the mere human body. It didn’t.
Grant me that every religion has their slightly odd element, ok?
We come back to our original question. What did we (meaning the US in this instance, but Western folks in general) do to piss other folks off enough to take up self-destructive terrorism? It isn’t a lifestyle choice like being a vegan or voting Green, we’re talking serious commitment to blow yourself up.
Did these disaffected people try to get a piece of the American Dream at some time? The US might have a number of serious problems, but it is fairly safe, without death squads roaming the countryside. With some hard work (and a bit of luck) you might create a better life in the US than you had in Elbonia. You at least have a chance, which you probably didn’t have back in Elbonia..
So did these disaffected take a run at the American Dream and not make it? Now they’re bitter and twisted and figure revenge is as good an emotion as any? Is that what happened?
There is precedence for revenge. Timmy McVeigh was a straight-up revenge act. The Crusades were a revenge act gone bad over a couple of hundred years. The Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials and even WW II were acts of revenge. Humans can do revenge easily.
Combine revenge with some religious intolerance plus a bit of theological gymnastics and you can easily see how someone can become disaffected enough to blow themselves to bits, taking as many other people as possible.
I’m not saying that the American Dream is the only way: It is just one way to measure a life. I’ve done enough traveling around the world and talked with enough regular people to come to a conclusion regarding humans. Here’s my take on the Big Secret:
Humans want: A roof over their heads. A full belly. A bit of personal security. A better life for their kids than they had.
As best I can tell, these are the commonalities all humans share. Humans who can get, or get near enough, to all four commonalities are reasonably calm and behave in non-destructive ways. If the theology they choose to follow has something equivalent to "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" written in big letters, then the whole group of humans tends to get along.
Following the logic, the disaffected have lost hope of getting any of the four commonalities of all humans. Add some revenge anger, a couple of rounds of theological Twister and you get a potential terrorist. It makes sense.
In the next post we’ll nail down the second part of the quote.
RoadDave 