Terrorist Attacks Americans
The devastating nature of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 put the subject of terrorism foremost on the American political agenda. While the attacks that day literally came out of the blue, terrorists had been threatening U.S. interests for nearly three decades. The difference being that with the exception of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the other attacks against U.S. interests were outside U.S. borders.
The acts of terrorism against Americans on U.S. soil in 2001 made it clear that the terrorists were sophisticated and at war with the U.S.. It signaled an important shift in the type of terrorism directed at U.S. interests. The primary difference was the nature of the terrorist organization. In order to formulate a credible response, the nature of terrorism must first be understood. Although no universally accepted definition of terrorism exists, it can be described as the illegitimate use of force to achieve political ends by targeting innocent people. From this central theme, terrorism can take many forms. Its source can be international or domestic and be motivated by political, nationalistic, revolutionary or even religious goals. It may be difficult to satisfactorily define terrorism, but the 19th century military strategist Carl von Clausewitz' insight and description of the nature of war is useful in trying to understand terrorism. Like war, terrorism is chameleon-like in character because its appearance changes in each particular case. When faced with terrorism, the first and most important decision to be made by the U.S. is to determine the kind of terrorism it is fighting. Before responding to terrorism, it should be clear what the U.S. intends to achieve and how it intends to conduct operations. This governing principle will determine the scope of response.
Although war and terrorism are conceptually similar, it is not entirely clear that terrorism can be successfully combated with only a military response. Proponents of classifying terrorism as warfare maintain that attacks on a nation's citizens, property and sovereignty are acts of war and as such, military force is required to defeat the terrorists. On the other hand, relying solely on a military response to terrorism in the past has had the unintended consequence of increasing terrorist acts.
Until recently, the U.S. was dealing with politically motivated terrorists. Generally, these groups had a relatively narrow political agenda and limited the level of violence they used to try to affect change. In contrast, the religiously motivated Muslim fundamentalists now plaguing the U.S. have a much broader political and social agenda and are relatively unconstrained in their use of violence to attain their objectives. Understanding the differences in motivation between these groups is necessary for the U.S. to devise an appropriate strategy to combat terrorism.
These Muslim fundamentalists, or Islamists, are more than terrorists; they are at the forefront of a larger political movement in Islam that is fundamentally a civilization wide insurgency against the established regimes in the Islamic world. They have struck a chord with Muslim populations throughout the world but particularly in the Middle East by justifying their acts of terror as part of a necessary struggle, or jihad, to free Islam from Western influence. Unfortunately, the terrorists are merely the fighters in this jihad. Millions of sympathizers and supporters play active even critical roles in the movement. While most perhaps are passive, they are nonetheless loyal adherents to the Islamist's cause.
Based on historical record, terrorism has been around in some form for centuries and probably cannot be eliminated. However, it can be dealt with and controlled. It is the greater acceptance and support of religiously motivated terrorism in the Muslim world that must be addressed to reduce the threat of terrorism to the U.S.. The U.S. will need to use all components of its power; military, diplomatic and economic to remove the greater Muslim populace's support of terrorism and reduce the terror organizations to a smaller cadre of more manageable dedicated actors.
MOTIVATION
According to Clausewitz, war is violence used to compel an adversary to do your will with the immediate object being to disarm that adversary. This description certainly applies to terrorism, which aims to coerce a state to respond to demands and attempts to “disarm” that state by destroying the will of its people to support the state and confidence in its ability to protect its citizens. Terrorism further undermines the people's confidence in the state by attacking its sovereignty, property and citizens. The aim of the terrorist organization is to extort support for its cause by convincing the people they can regain their safety if they get their state to comply with the terrorist's demands. The long-term strategy and coercive nature of terrorism aims to achieve ideological goals. One of the primary purposes of terrorism is to gain publicity for the terrorist's cause while generating fear among the state's citizens. In this manner, the terrorist tries to influence events merely by the threat of action.
A terrorist group's ideology and a variety of internal and external stimuli shape the tactics and targets of terrorist movements. For terrorists, the future rather than the present defines reality. These groups believe that real or perceived repression is preventing them from reaching their future. However, the future the terrorist looks forward to does not unfold from the natural sequence of events, but rather is contrived and ultimately achieved by violence. When attempts to resolve grievances have been unsuccessful, the frustration of being held back leads them to resort to violent measures as a means of conflict resolution. This burning impatience for the future and an unswerving belief in the usefulness of violence drives all terrorists. Violence or the threat of violence is used by all terrorists based on the belief that it is the only way to attain their long-term goals.
Although their particular view of the future and their use of are violence shape both politically and religiously motivated terrorist organizations, they differ substantially in both of these key areas. Politically motivated groups have a view of the future where they realize their limited political objectives. They commit violence to call attention to a political cause and influence people outside of their organization. The level of violence they use must be within the bounds of what the terrorist's target audience will accept and the target government will tolerate without taking massive repressive action the terrorists themselves. In their view of the future, they achieve their political goals by changing the current political system and then incorporating people who are currently outside the group. These groups tend to have relatively narrow political goals and broader acceptance of the general population as their constituency.
On the other hand, religiously motivated terrorist organizations have a very different view of the future. These groups tend to have broader political goals and a narrow recognition of who fits into their constituency. The only acceptable future for these religiously motivated groups is one where non-believers are eliminated. With a more open-ended, indiscriminate category of enemies, they have fewer constraints on their use of violence. Unlike the political terrorist, religious terrorists do not seek to appeal to any constituency or authority other than within their own religion and therefore feel little need to regulate the use of violence. They see violence not only as an instrument but also as a sacred duty executed in response to some theological imperative. These terrorist's use of religion shapes their view of the future and allows them to expand their circle of support by appealing to supporters who already share the same religious beliefs. This religious network of support gives the terrorist group access to resources and a worldwide population sympathetic to the cause.
INSURGENCY
Militant Islamic terrorists are not classically extremist in the sense of being at the margins of society and culture they wish to influence. At the center of both politics and civilization, Militant Islam represents a broader insurgency within Islam. It is a true civilizational insurgency in the sense that it is a conflict over the civic-religious basis of all Muslim societies. This insurgency calls for a universal change within Islam. The current scale and scope of religious terrorism is indicative of their perception that their faith and communities stand at a cultural and historical junction. It is a movement supported across Islam by many millions of Muslims who recognize its authority and contribute to its legitimacy.
The popular support, passive as it may seem, is the political basis for the very existence of the terror network. By fighting terrorism rather than the militant Islamic insurgency, the US fails to address the movement's source of authority, its religious leadership. To engage the enemy effectively, they need to be understood in the manner they see themselves. While the group's convictions may seem irrational or delusional to society in general, they nevertheless act rationally in committing violent acts to support their convictions.There is no distinction in Islam between religion and politics. This allows the Islamist to tap into a different political consciousness, one in which religious identity sets and determines the range of options open to terrorists who see themselves not as individuals but as symbols of Islam. The terrorists invoke the religious concepts of believers against unbelievers, order against chaos and justice against injustice to support the totality and uncompromising nature of their cause. By making political concerns sacred, the Islamists give them an aura of legitimacy that they did not previously possess. The result of sanctifying political demands is that religion then gives moral sanction to using violence in support of the cause. The Islamists justify their actions as defensive and reactive in nature to the threat of secularization as a catalyst for action. Framing events in this manner, they are able to portray U.S. involvement in the region as a form of neocolonialism through its unqualified support of Israel and regimes in the region, like Egypt, that Islamists consider un-Islamic and illegitimate. Using this rhetoric, Islamist groups have moved themselves to the forefront of political action by portraying themselves as the true protectors of the oppressed and the only means to defend Islam against the presence of Israel and Western influence, primarily U.S., in the Arab world.
In terms of persistence, authority and expectations, this is a very strong insurgency. It means that the movement is likely to stick around, that people will continue to believe in it and believe also that it will prevail. To win, insurgencies need the power of popular support. This takes the form of a collective perception that authority is shifting from the old regimes to the insurgent movement providing it with legitimacy.
POPULAR SUPPORT
Frustration over corruption at home and unrivaled U.S. power abroad, has grown immeasurably over the past few years. The heart of the problem is the large population of educated young people in the Middle East with no future. Western supported and educated regimes in the Middle East have failed to prosper and catch-up to the West. A sense of failure has suffused the Muslim world. They sense their own conspicuous lack of success in emerging from the humiliation of their current circumstances. The sense of failure goes far to explain the hostility toward the West that prevails in most Muslim societies. They are acutely aware that the Middle East has gone from being the crucible of world civilization to being on the margins of a world dominated by Western civilization. They see the West as an aggressive force that seeks to steal the Muslim's resources, exploit their labor and undermine their religion. This appears to them in the form of U.S. oil companies in the region, German guest worker programs and French policy to restrict Muslim schoolgirls from wearing headscarves.
As a result, a population that believes it has the education and means to progress rejects these Western inspired governments. One explanation for this rejection is Samuel Huntington's “second generation indigenization phenomenon” where non-Western peoples come to resent dominance of Western influence in their societies and succumb to the appeals of nativist opposition movements. Unfortunately, the nativist movement in this case is Militant Islam.
The allure of Militant Islam comes from the passionate support for the ultimate aims and a desire of the movement to restore Islam to what they believe is its rightful place in the world. Religious terrorism offers its increasingly suffering and impotent constituents more hope and a greater chance of vengeance against sources of their historical grievances than they would otherwise have. Violent acts give them a sense of power disproportionate to their size.
Indeed it is even possible that those who are well off and well educated perceive such feelings more acutely. This corresponds to the observation that well educated, high-income people are consistently more likely to vote then the less educated and poor people. If the primary payoff motivating people to join and support Islamic terrorist organizations is the potential to influence political change, then it would not be surprising if education and income have the same effect on participation in terrorism as they do in participating in voting. Better-educated individuals are more likely to respond favorably to the terrorist's message, support or even join the group. The middle class has an expectation of a future where they have more opportunities and they have the most to lose when their expectations are repressed.
Muslim terrorists particularly hope to elicit violent responses from their Western opponents to assist them in maintaining the support of their people. A terrorist group is the apex of a pyramid of supporters and sympathizers with a base composed of all those who sympathize with the terrorist cause even though they may disagree with the violent means used by the terrorist. In the Muslim world, the very large base of the pyramid is all those who agree that the West, and particularly the U.S., has been hurting and humiliating Muslims for years. Maintaining the pyramid is essential for the terrorists as a source of legitimacy and resources to support their operations.
RESPONSE
The first line of defense is to reduce the number of sympathizers and supporters of Militant Islam. Research in social psychology indicates that behavior of a group often differs markedly from the behavior of the individual. Additionally, individual opinions and attitudes typically become more extreme in a group context and the group generally hold opinions and attitudes that are more extreme than those held by the individual members of the group. Group members tend to see the behavior of the group and its members more positively and those outside the group as having traits that are more negative. This in-group/out-group bias can lead to stereotyping members of other groups and dehumanizing or demonizing anyone not in their group. This bias can also affect the group's perception of the outside world, external events and the actions of others. Moreover, individuals acting under the auspices of the group may feel that their personal accountability for the group's violent actions is diminished since they believe the responsibility is spread out over the entire group. As a result of this belief in reduced responsibility, the threshold of acceptable violent behavior is lowered.
This theory certainly goes a long way to explaining the dynamic involved between Militant Islam and the greater Muslim population in the Middle East that supports its actions. The people have a sense of obligation to an authoritative group that may elicit extreme behavior from individuals based on particular historical, political, social, and ideological contexts. These perceived contexts for terror support include a collective sense of historical injustice, political subservience and social humiliation.
Addressing such perceptions does not necessarily mean accepting them as reality but ignoring these underlying causes of the perceptions risks misidentifying the causes of terror support and missing the opportunity to identify real solutions.
Military force alone cannot deter terrorists or reduce popular support for terrorism. The misconception that terrorism is primarily a military problem underestimates the complexity of dealing with Militant Islam. Developing a response to terrorism should involve all facets of U.S. power, military, diplomatic and economic. This approach has a more achievable political objective of deterring popular support for terrorism while punishing the terrorists. One of the main problems with a military response is the likelihood that it will be too indiscriminate and injure or kill people not responsible for the original attack. Historical examples indicate that a military response may actually provoke attacks that are more serious and increase the level of violence such as the case where the 1986 U.S. airstrike against Libya probably led to numerous terrorist attacks against the U.S. in 1987-1988 that included the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Although an important tool in combating terrorism, the benefits of using military force alone are often overstated while their negative consequences are overlooked.
The West, led by the U.S., will need to directly address and lessen the sentiments of grievance and humiliation of the people in order to separate them from the group. Since support for terrorism will not simply evaporate, it will require finding the right level of pressure and inducements to get the people themselves to abandon support for terrorist organizations. While terrorist groups will not compromise, individuals might if the West meets some of their social and political needs. Taking advantage of the tendency for the individual to hold more moderate views than the group, this could create enough distance between them to cause the people to reject Militant Islam as the solution to their problems.
CONCLUSION
According to Clausewitz's understanding of war, the nature of the war being fought must be understood to avoid turning it into something else that more suits the immediate needs of the government. Understanding the characteristics of terrorism and dealing with it appropriately is necessary to avoid a strategy-policy mismatch. Politically motivated terrorist groups must actively work to call attention to the righteousness of their view of the future to gain recruits and support from a relatively limited politically aware constituency. By contrast, the resiliency of religiously motivated terrorist groups is a product of the relative ease with which they are able to draw support from an already existent constituency of like-minded believers who are already receptive to their view of the future. Militant Islam takes religiously motivated terrorism to the level of insurgency by claiming a moral authority to defend Islam that appeals to Muslims frustrated and threatened by Western civilization. Ironically, the threat faced by the Muslim population in the Middle East is from their own extremists who wish to trap them in theocratic dictatorships.
Due to the chameleon-like character of terrorism, responding solely with military force is not suitable for dealing with Militant Islam since it fails to deal with the ideological nature of terrorism. The most effective response to terrorism will be to reduce its base of support while working to apprehend and punish the terrorists. The political objective should be to reduce the impact of the terrorist's message in order to deprive the group of the legitimacy and propaganda value earned by claiming they are committing violence in support of some greater good on behalf of a large number of supporters. This works to undermine the terrorist's credibility with the people they claim to serve and significantly reduces the amount of violence this target audience will tolerate.
Since terrorists use violence for political reasons, the political system is a better means to control and eliminate their influence with the people and address the root causes for supporting terrorism. Social and psychological factors are more important than military force in reducing the impact of terrorist groups. Currently, the widespread support of the Islamists by vast numbers of Muslims makes it nearly impossible to distinguish between the actual terrorists and their supporters. However, addressing some of the social and political needs of individual Muslims in the Middle East should reduce the large base of support for terrorism. Once the terrorist organization becomes isolated from a large enough group of individuals, it will lose touch with its base of support. Without significant popular support, the Militant Islamic terrorist groups cannot survive.
While it initially makes sense to respond to attacks against the security of the U.S. with overwhelming force to show the government is taking action, declaring a war on terrorism implies that the aim is to remain at war until terrorism is defeated. Since terrorism can be disrupted and curtailed but not completely eliminated, it becomes an open-ended war. This type of unbounded conflict should be avoided since it can eventually lead the government to take more severe actions as the war continues unresolved making it difficult to maintain support at home and abroad. As the world's leading democratic nation, the U.S. needs to be at the forefront of the Western effort to address grievances in the Muslim world to reduce the appeal of Militant Islam as the solution to their problems. Quick fixes will not suffice. This will be a long-term effort to provide the Muslim people, particularly in the Middle East, with an alternative to Militant Islam. There can be no more daunting task since failure risks the freedom of Muslim people throughout the world and the security of Western civilization.
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