If you know the enemy and yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. – Sun Tzu
Advertisement
While serving in the US Special Operations Forces, I supported counterterrorism. While serving with the United Nations, I worked in antiterrorism. While in Baghdad, Iraq in August of 2003, I became an actual victim of terrorism in a vehicular jihadist suicide bombing attack. These varied experiences forced me to think more critically about the people labeled terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11.
To begin, and simply put, terrorism is a tactic — among others — used by what could also be called fanatics in the attainment of group goals. But everyone has a different take on the meaning. The UN alone has identified over one hundred wildly differing definitions. The problem is that terrorism is, and always has been, part of the human condition, perhaps more correctly terrorists should be labeled extremists instead.
Multiple violent extremists are no doubt high on the scale of sociopaths. Among the modern groups that have adopted terrorist tactics, the sociopathic and worst are no doubt drawn to violence. This explanation is a long way from the whole story though.
There are others, the majority, who fall within the normal range of empathy that feel driven to terrorist acts because they have experienced repeated traumatic injustices. Yes, normal people can be driven to killing innocents when there appears to them that there is no other recourse. The utterly human response is the thoroughly understandable desire for retribution against those who have repeatedly wronged them. I wonder, and to use a current example, would Palestinians qualify given this understanding?
Almost anyone can make the terrible choice to kill when there seems no other way to achieve a semblance of justice for themselves and their group. A constant state of despair can have a role in the choice to become extreme in thought and deed. It is also important to note that terrorist acts are usually the weapon of the weak.
Terrorists are supposed to be irredeemable, but Robert Pape of the University of Chicago makes a powerful case that suicide bombers can be otherwise normal, driven to horrendous acts that will cost them their own lives to serve their community. From the suicide bomber’s perspective, their death is an act of altruism. Hence, the term martyr is often used to describe them by their ethnic and/or religious group in the aftermath.
Of course, and if the above paragraphs capture anything approximating an essential truth, they also present a conundrum. For if terrorism is part of the human condition, then the American Global War on Terror is a conflict that will never appear in the win column. The strategy undergirding the program is based on a false assumption, that victory is definable in the military sense. This suggests that US Foreign and Defense Policies both require in-depth reassessment.
Over two decades of body counts have more than proven the point. Keeping tally of those killed is not now, nor has it ever been, a viable marker of success. I would only remind everyone that the US military won all the battles in Afghanistan and still lost that war. Why? The US Military’s civilian commander-in-chief in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attack failed to understand the nation’s adversaries and our limitations.
The costs are measured in hundreds of thousands of lives lost on all sides and trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted. The American military fought bravely and well in the vain attempt to achieve Oval Office selected political objectives that proved to be unrealistic. This means that the ultimate fault lies with the chief executive and a Congress which has not formally declared war since WWII, leaving their Constitutionally mandated task repetitively to successive White House residents that have not done well by it.
The US can continue killing those labelled as terrorists, or narco-terrorists, by the thousands. However, and if my assertions reflect actuality, there will always be more waiting in the wings. In other words, a lack of comprehension and flawed strategy only results in the creation of more of those who would do the country harm. It took over twenty years of conflict in Afghanistan to finally conclude that the Taliban could not be defeated by military means. The nation might consider concluding the American Global War on Terror and then begin the search for more feasible alternative strategies.
