It hasn't been a focus of this blog, but here and there a comment was dropped, usually tangential or peripheral to another discussion, that I had been an early opponent of war as a sensible response to terrorism. It had two apparent flaws: it wouldn't reduce terrorism and wasn't an appropriate response in any event.

So what is an appropriate response? In the broadest possible terms the need is for fewer angry people, but that's not a handy prescription that anyone can run to the pharmacy with and get relief. It a 10,000 foot view of society from a game theoretic perspective that provides a general goal and no help at all with policy.

Also, reality rears its ugly head and makes a mess of things. So long as large parts of the world, especially old Europe as well as significant bits of the US, approved of terrorism and would engage in it themselves, at least in theory, there was little hope of any plan short of war being able to make any difference at all in the near term. A more patient "root cause" approach would probably take decades if it ever worked.

So I couldn't propose an implementation of my theory that had any credibility, not even to me. My doubts that any good would come of war - though we would spill blood and treasure - were still vital but I had no alternative. Pathetic eh?

Still, this is nonsense.

Suicide bombers disturb us, in more ways than one. And this disturbance is reflected in the kinds of explanation some people grasp at, as they try to understand how others can come to do such horrifying things. It's a commonplace to say that they must have acted out of terrible despair, or crushing poverty. How else could one explain the horror of their acts? Certainly someone at the BBC seems to have been gripped by this line of thought in putting together the report of the recent Tel-Aviv bombing, which focused hard on the mourning relatives of the bomber while keeping his victims and their relatives firmly offstage. And this focus on the pity of it all from the bomber's perspective fits well with a general feeling about these acts widely shared amongst bien-pensants of various political stripes: it's all so terrible that we must explain it in terms of a response to terrible things which have happened to the bombers themselves. 'Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return' just has to be the only story in town.

These explanations are generally used in such a way as to excuse what the suicide bomber does. The thought seems to be that we can't unreservedly condemn those who act out of such motivations: so dreadful must be the poverty or despair that drive these terrible acts that we can't simply dismiss the bombers as vicious murderers of the innocent. From this position it's a fairly easy slide to thinking that what they do isn't, after all, entirely terrible - that the desperation out of which they act to some extent purifies and legitimizes what they do. And if we sympathize anyway with the political cause for which the suicide bomber acts, then all the more are we likely to think that what he or she did is, if not justified exactly, to be condoned.

Poverty does indeed breed vulnerabilities, need and despair, but that isn't the mechanism that results in terrorism. Poverty is more like a petri dish full of nutrients, fertile ground for any pathogen that might be introduced. And so it happened. Pathogens with wealth, education and ties to the bien-pensant west, as well as the intellectual comfort of selected bits of history to weave a world view of heroic freedom fighters and martyrs to a greater purpose, thrived in that fertile ground.

War is like an antibiotic that makes the whole petri dish deadly to not only the pathogens but any benign life that may land there. Not all die, since some are resistant, and in time they breed to produce a resistant population. You're right back where you began only now you have a less vulnerable opponent. Chronic war literally evolves a super strain of pathogen resistant to all known antibiotics.

The problem isn't the pathogens, they are ubiquitous in small numbers and new variants evolve continually. They are as normal and natural as every other life form, part of the overall system, as necessary for continuity as any other. The problem is the petri dish. In less fertile places the pathogens are kept in check by a healthy and prosperous community of more benign life forms. There are still problems, conflicts, but they don't take over.

It's important even for strident warriors to grasp these truths since war is never final. Europe has been continually at war for 1,000 years with lulls in fighting. Nothing has ever been "settled". The more peaceful parts of Europe are those that have the fewest pockets of poverty, where people are fat and complacent rather than thin and wild eyed, or old and tired after having lived through their bellicose years.

Poverty and despair are terrible things, with which we rightly sympathise and which we should strive to alleviate, but they don't explain suicide bombing. Other forms of explanation need to be appealed to, most obviously ideological and cultural specificities of the suicide bombers' milieux (and there are interesting reasons why such explanations aren't usually mobilised as excuses). It's a lack of moral and cultural imagination that leads some to suppose that the suicide bomber must be driven by poverty or desperation; they fail to realise how powerful other motivators can be, though history alone should remind them how ready men and women can be to give up their lives, and for how wide a range of causes.

Yes, they do explain suicide bombing. See above. It is not "lack of moral and cultural imagination" that associates poverty with terrorism in all its forms, it is familiarity with social dynamics. The lack of insight that leads to mean-spirited accusations of moral failing by advocates of war suggests that their preference for war may also lack moral grounding or at least intellectual wealth. You may disagree, fail to grasp the science involved, dispute the studies and theories, but if so then state valid objections rather than smearing those with whom you disagree. Look in the mirror.

Explanations of suicide bombing in terms of poverty or despair, or the lack of any other way of achieving political goals, seem to be empirically false - many, maybe most, suicide bombers are neither appallingly poor nor desperate nor unable to access other forms of political progress. But, so I've argued, even if none of that were true, poverty and despair would still be weak and unsatisfactory explanations and excuses for this particularly horrible form of murder. (Eve Garrard)

And so the body of knowledge and experiment that existed long before 9/11, and applies as well to "the troubles" and eco-fascism as it does to Palestinians and Islamo-fascism, is ignored. Morality is important, but not decisive. Morality is like locks of your front door: it helps keep your friends honest. Morality provides heuristics for social behavior in settled circumstances and so helps prevent special circumstances from developing where morality is usually the first casualty.

People are not machines and they are not all comfortably ensconced in plush surrounds safe from threat. Most of the humans on this planet - arguably most of the humans that have ever lived - are insecure, often having never known security of any sort, and have survived at least in part because their will to live burns stronger than any mere idea of propriety. They will do most anything when circumstances require extraordinary effort. It is only those who have more to lose than they have to gain who practice restraint. When you have nothing...

Many don't like humans. Don't respect their evolved animal natures and wish to deny that nature or somehow suppress it, send them all to charm school or reeducation camps depending on their zeal. This doesn't work. It can't work. The only workable approach is to diligently study the beast and learn its care and feeding needs. Though some are broken, insane by any standard, most are capable of domestication and relatively peaceful coexistence save for the excesses of youth and passion, a charming characteristic that no sane person would wish to correct, even though it has tragic consequences at times. Tragedy and comedy are useful too.

» Law & Power from Crumb Trail
Now that wars have been won and elections have been held pundits are jockeying for new positions on a changed playing field. Some of those who predicted doom in every phase are becoming converts, advancing "tipping point" explanations for......[read more]
Tracked: March 4, 2005 01:18 PM