Fareed Zakaria describes a four-part strategy for dealing with radical Islamist terrorism:
Over the past few decades, this radical Islamist ideology has been globalized. Initially fueled by Saudi money and Arab dissenters, imams and intellectuals, it has taken on a life of its own. Today it is the default ideology of anger, discontent and violent opposition for a small number of alienated young Muslim men around the world. Only Muslims, and particularly Arabs, can cure this cancer.
That does not leave the United States and the West helpless. Washington and its allies can support Muslim moderates, help their societies modernize and integrate those that do. But that’s for the long haul. Meanwhile, Washington and its allies must adopt a strategy that has four elements: intelligence, counterterrorism, integration and resilience (ICIR).
I’m in mild agreement with his prescription but I think he’s missing a number of elements. For one thing I believe we’ve got to adopt a much lower profile in the Arab world than we have for the last several decades, particularly a much lower military profile. We need to end Saudi support for the radical imams in the United States which will be a particularly hard nut to crack and undoubtedly provoke heated debate about freedom of religion, prejudice, and so on. There are a few other elements, mostly dealing with matters in the United States that we could control if we had the will to do it.
However, I take grave exception with one of his points:
The Paris attacks were barbaric, as were those in Ottawa, Sydney, London, Madrid and Fort Hood. But one way to gain perspective might be to keep in mind the numbers. According to the Global Terrorism Database, in the 12 years between Sept. 12, 2001, and the end of 2013, the number of Americans who died on U.S. soil due to terrorism was 42. (And six of those were from the gruesome attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.) Meanwhile, in one year alone, 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 32,351 Americans died because of firearms. The number who died in traffic accidents was 33,783. So “keep calm and carry on†is more than a slogan to wear on a T-shirt.
The problem here is that people are not potatoes. They aren’t measured by the bushel but by the individual. There is no perspective to gain. If we were to place things in perspective perhaps we should consider that there are about the same number of traffic fatalities per year and the same number of homicides. There are far, far fewer killings of black men by police officers, the killing of just one provoked months of demonstrations and several days of riots and yet I didn’t hear Mr. Zakaria calling for perspective in that case.
Plus, there were several attacks thwarted in that time, including some attempts at bombing airliners.
Not to mention how many tens or hundreds of billions we are spending annually on stopping terrorists from attacking us here (which efforts have not always worked – the shoe & underwear bombers were thwarted by their own incompetence & the actions of individuals), how much man-power is being wasted in the effort (including some very high end mental labor at places like the NSA) which is a drag on the economy, how much aggravation we have to endure (such as at the airports), privacy surrendered, civil liberties infringedinfringed upon, etc.
Plus, Americans now, as in almost our entire history, are overseas doing business in substantial numbers, not to mention all the tourists. Despite talk, Americans have never been truly isolationist, even if our foreign policy has been somewhat so at times.
By Zakaria’s thinking, we should have only been a tenth as worried of terrorism on 9/2/2001 as we were from getting in our cars. Perspective is about more than just crunching numbers.
9/12/2001, that is.
One of the issues is that risk assessment can be extremely difficult and the method he’s proposing is pretty clearly too simplistic. Over the period of the last 25 years we’ve had two terrorist attacks with mass casualties. Too few to identify a pattern. It could be that we’ll never have another such attack or we’re overdue. Plus all of the factors you mention which may well have mitigated the risk. Or not.
Over the period of the last 25 years we’ve had two terrorist attacks with mass casualties.
just out of curiosity, what constitutes a mass attack? Obviously the Oklahoma City bombing and the attacks on 9/11/2001 constitute such. (Although one could argue that 9/11/2001 was actually four coordinated attacks, not one attack, but that’s quibbling.) But what about Fort Hood, which would be considered a mass attack if it were a civilian shooter, as at the elementary school a few years back, and the movie theater attack as well.
Just curious about how to think of a mass attack in this context.
I was referring to the two attacks on the WTC (1993 and 2001). The first attack had six fatalities and more than 1,000 injured. Whether the Fort Hood shooting constituted a terrorist attack with mass casualties is a matter for debate but I don’t think there’s much debate about the two WTC attacks.
The bombing in Oklahoma City was a terrorist attack with mass casualties but I don’t think it would fit into a pattern with the other two incidents. That’s the first question: is there a pattern?
I think any useful definition of “terrorism” needs to include as one element, that the action is ultimately directed to society at large or an identifiable group. This often means adapting to the dynamics of mass media, such as violence that is particularly heinous, novel or alarming. A common goal is to diminish trust in institutions, and create fear and anxiety among those not directly involved. See the movie, The Dark Knight.
I think there is an additional, related dynamic that sets the jihadist apart though. Their actions may be directed as much to fellow Muslims in using Islamic themes and justifications to either encourage other Muslims to join their cause or otherwise alienate them from the Westernized world. IOW, I think the Oklahoma city bombing can be described as largely negative in its terrorism, but jihadist latch onto an idealistic message of creating a just order as well.
Zakaria was permananently disqualified as a Mideast expert when he supported the Iraq War.
After his sentence about the numbers involved in the Paris attacks he would have done better to list the casualties of the innocents there and in Afghanistan and by droning for proper comparison.
But I guess he at that point would have had to turn his column over to Ron Paul.
“Zakaria was permananently disqualified as a Mideast expert when he supported the Iraq War.”
That disqualifies a lot of people, or are people not allowed to change their minds? Not that I usually agree with Zakaria, it’s just that I don’t think it’s prudent to wave away arguments because someone was wrong in the past or is wrong on some other issue or disagrees with me politically. Arguments should stand or fall on their own merits and not on opinions about those making the arguments.
Dave,
I would have to look up the links again, but there is a significant amount of cognitive science on human perception and risk assessment. IIRC, the gist is that people tend to inflate risks that are either not easily quantified or contain many unknowns above other risks, regardless of statistics.
A person can have been wrong, but they need to know why they were wrong.
Too many people change their opinions like their shit-stained drawers, and they think the clean smelling pair makes everything alright. The correct solution is to clean your ass better or become a more critical thinker.