SWC Poll: What Motivates Islamist Terrorism against the West?

[tequila]

I'd like to get a poll of what SWC Members think, especially in the wake of thought-provoking post by David Kilcullen.

What motivates Islamist terrorism against the West?

I'm not speaking about Islamist terrorism against, say, Shia marketplaces or Algerian parliament buildings, but rather against Western targets: the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, Madrid rail stations, and London subways.

1) Is it principally the foreign policy of the West? No ideological judgment about whether said policy is correct or not required here.

2) Or is it principally an inevitable cultural/religious/ideological clash?

3) Something else?

[Mark O'Neill]

Perhaps, there are a couple of problems with the questions as posed:

1. The "West" does not have cohesive unitary foreign policy. It is not a sovereign state. Just like the 'Islamic world' is not unitary or cohesive. Both are contructs that we use without thinking too much about what we really mean.

2. When we talk about 'ideology' what specifically do we mean? Islam is not Catholicism, with a centralised intepretation of dogma codified by the Vatican. There is even radical differentiation between the various strands of 'extreme' islamism? Similarly, which culture? Indonesia is vastly different to Iraq which is different to Nigeria etc etc

I have no doubt that the poll will generate plenty of opinion, a problem will be the broad interpretations by respondents of the underlying assumptions of the as questions posed.

[tequila]

Mark, I largely agree with you that the question has inherent flaws in that it is very broad. I will do my best to narrow by clarifying "Islamist terrorism" to be transnational terrorism committed by al-Qaeda and groups closely aligned with it. I think that we do need to dis-aggregate (to steal from Kilcullen) a lot of groups which are Islamist out of the equation and avoid making more enemies than absolutely necessary.

But I also believe that there is an international movement of very violent Sunni Islamism out there, led by al-Qaeda, which is principally targeting the West. The question I am asking is what is the prime motivator of this particular movement.

[Mark O'Neill]

Tequila, I think your qualification solves much of the problem - thanks.

Personally, I think many of Marc Sageman's conclusions about why the 'foot soldiers' join AQ are useful. To me, why these guys do it is far more important than what OBL thinks - if no-one chooses to follow him then he is literally just a lone voice in the wilderness (albeit it with frequent IT connections). Their reasons (ie how OBL's IO resonates with them) should be the object of our efforts.

One aspect that I found compelling in Sageman's work is that it is based on evidence gained from the terrorists themselves, rather than theories generated by beltway pundits.

Cheers

Mark

[SoiCowboy]

The management level of Al-Qaeda are fundamentalist Islams version of a military industrial complex. They've been fighting since Afghanistan and war is now a way of life.

The foot soldiers motivation varies. Three motives that stand out for me in showing motivation to fight is complex would be:

I can't remember the source but it went that 50% of Al Qaeda caught in Iraq were Yemenis who came to fight for the money rather than anything else.

Some of the Al Qaeda just seem to do jihad as a just another thing that you're expected to do as a 'man', go to stripclubs, drink, blow up a few hundred people. Not exactly your stereotypical jihadis; examples would be the 9/11 bombers and the bluewater bombers.

Others become jihadis because how else can the evil crusaders being directed by the Jewish ZOG machine be stopped?

[Steve Blair]

I lean more toward an "Other" response, because over time the reasons will change and will also be manipulated by those in the higher command ranks (as much as those may or may not matter for what develops on the ground).

I for one believe that over time the basic ideology of a terrorist group (in the classic sense) really doesn't matter. They become addicted to the cycle of revenge killing, or it becomes so institutionalized in their operations that the original reason(s) for the killing don't matter. They may always have an IO reason for their killing, but at the ground level that reason is more a slogan than an actual belief system.

That said, it is always important to make some fine distinctions with these groups. Some, especially the political wings, are obviously open to maneuver. Others, such as the hard-core jihadist/Provo IRA/whatever cells, are not.

For the upper ranks, I would say that motivations tend more toward a mix of response 1 and 2, with the shading depending on the group in question. There is always a cultural component, but that can be triggered by policy decisions as well.

[goesh]

scratch an X in the #2 category for me. The clash of cultures is just getting ramped up - the root and bones of contention go way beyond equitable resource allocation, despite the bantering of dime-a-dozen politicians, pacifists and Liberals to the contrary. What we got is an ontological smackdown with Allah in one corner and George Washington in the other corner, secular V theocratic, the Bill of Rigts V tenets of Shariah Law, Divine V Mundane.

[antonymous]

I'd also lean toward the "other" response...but the differentiation between terrorism "over there" and "over here" is valid.

Quickly:

1. Fighting in places like Afghanistan is now ingrained into the local culture. They have been fighting their own "long war" for decades now. Any structure imposed by the West will be fought until the bitter end.

2. Terrorism conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan is clearly meant to de-legitimize the state. Taking down infrastructure has no other purpose, but once the coalition leaves, it will be a free-for-all in terms of civil war (which will look like "the West's" mess), but also in terms of security and future reconstruction. The optimist in me says that their war of attrition will be over once ethnic groups fill the security niches and start building infrastructure from the ground up - it will give them an air of legitimacy that the coalition could not establish. Huge motivator.

3. Attacks on the West serve many purposes. The first that we think of is the vulnerability of our own infrastructure. Second - to draw attention to a cause or perceived injustice. Beyond that, I'm no expert - I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

4. Finally, I think the religious aspect creates a sort of false binary...globalization is capable of uprooting longstanding cultural traditions, and there's a definite loss of power for those who previously held it. If transparency, rule of law, and strong nation-states are required for prosperity, it means relinquishing power, and standing mini-powers want no part of that. Of course, there are many other nuances (esp. regarding religion) that I'm overlooking, but for me, power and perceived power are the real keys here.

[Stu-6]

Principle foreign policy. While there will always be some who are drive in by religious or cultural reasons or are just plan crazy, foot soldiers come from being able to point to a perceived injustice and convincingly say “they did this we must fight”. Of course cultural/religious/ideological differences make that easier to do.

[aktarian]

What is "West"? Or more precisely, who is "West"?

Al Qaida claims it targeted US because they had troops in Saudi.
Hamas targets Israel because Israel occupies Palestine. Is Israel part of "west"?
Madrid and London bombings were because Spain and UK had troops in Iraq.

You said that you will concentrate on Western targets. But attacks in islamic countries happen because their gov'ts are pro-US. Sharm el-Sheik bombings and GIA attacks were as much about killing foreigners (specially if they were Israelis) as they were about hurting Egypt by disrupting tourism and as such punishing its gov't for being pro-US. You can't separate the two, radical islamists rant against secular, pro-US gov'ts as much as they do against US/West.

[120mm]

I guess I like the "inevitable clash of cultures" argument, best. Most objections I've seen to that argument tend to go the "but it's more 'complex' than that" flavor, but I offer this question; What about a titanic, inevitable clash of cultures strikes you as "simple?" Of course it's complex. That's what very large conflicts are.

[Mark O'Neill]

Originally Posted by 120mm

I guess I like the "inevitable clash of cultures" argument, best. Most objections I've seen to that argument tend to go the "but it's more 'complex' than that" flavor, but I offer this question; What about a titanic, inevitable clash of cultures strikes you as "simple?" Of course it's complex. That's what very large conflicts are.

I go back to my previous point - what "culture(s)" are you referring to? we have several 'Islamic' cultures in the part of the world that I live in, and they are all quite different.

[marct]

Originally Posted by 120mm

I guess I like the "inevitable clash of cultures" argument, best. Most objections I've seen to that argument tend to go the "but it's more 'complex' than that" flavor, but I offer this question; What about a titanic, inevitable clash of cultures strikes you as "simple?" Of course it's complex. That's what very large conflicts are.

Originally Posted by Mark O'Neill

I go back to my previous point - what "culture(s)" are you referring to? we have several 'Islamic' cultures in the part of the world that I live in, and they are all quite different.

Honestly, I have never liked Huntington's argument. His basic unit of analysis is a "civilization", often expressed as "Arabs", "Chinese", "Westerners", etc. As an analytic device, this is reminiscent of de Gobineau's The Inequalities of the Human Races (1853-1856). It is also fatally flawed in its understanding of how humans form cultures and "civilizations" since it is based on a confusion between phenotype and genotype - i.e. he assumes that a group of people who form a phenotypicaly recognizable group are inherently different from other groups.

Marc

[120mm]

I liken it to WWII. The Allies fight the Aggressive Axis to the "glorious victory". That's the oversimplification.

In reality, that fails to address the complexity of who the "Allies" and the "Axis" really were.

History tells us that the Polish weren't completely "sweetness and light". Also, the Finns weren't on anyones' side but their own. Or the USSR, for that matter? And what about the Romanians? Or the Vichy French? Or the German-sympathetic Chinese who were also fighting the Japanese? Or the Danes & Swiss?

Despite its' complexity, can anyone then argue that WWII was NOT fought by the Allies against Axis Aggression?

Surely, this is not the same kind of conflict as WWII, with the well-defined (sometimes) nation state, but I think there is some utility in simplifying terms.

[Mark O'Neill]

Originally Posted by 120mm

I liken it to WWII. The Allies fight the Aggressive Axis to the "glorious victory". That's the oversimplification.

In reality, that fails to address the complexity of who the "Allies" and the "Axis" really were.

History tells us that the Polish weren't completely "sweetness and light". Also, the Finns weren't on anyones' side but their own. Or the USSR, for that matter? And what about the Romanians? Or the Vichy French? Or the German-sympathetic Chinese who were also fighting the Japanese? Or the Danes & Swiss?

Despite its' complexity, can anyone then argue that WWII was NOT fought by the Allies against Axis Aggression?

Surely, this is not the same kind of conflict as WWII, with the well-defined (sometimes) nation state, but I think there is some utility in simplifying terms.

The problem with simplification is that it creates 'certainty' where there is none. This in turn leads to generalisations.

Secondly it makes for wide margins. In 'conventional' ops, when a boundary can be discovered, a smart person exploits it. Similarly these wide margins are not helpful. - they are like unsecured philosophical flanks. They lead to misapprehension and misunderstanding. Not at all useful in the COIN fight.

I think that it would be far more useful for people to be disciplined and precise, that is, careful with terms, making the 'arguments' clearer.

Cheers,

Mark

[John T. Fishel]

When Huntington first came out with his clash of civilizations article I had 2 different reactions. First, he not only had oversimplified the issue and was simply wrong on some important details - eg Latin America is, in his view, not part of the West. Second, this theory predicts. Indeed, that is what theory is supposed to do. Science tends to disprove theory when its predictions are incorrect. The Ptolemaic cosmos predicted well enough until Copernicus showed it to predict wrongly.

So, how does Huntington's theory do as a predictor? So far, it is pretty good at identifying what he called "fault lines." Despite my friend Marct's correctly stated objections, I think we have to take this Huntington theory seriously and seek to test it on its own terms - that is, how well does it predict future events/explain (macro) past events.

[marct]

Hi John,

Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

So, how does Huntington's theory do as a predictor? So far, it is pretty good at identifying what he called "fault lines." Despite my friend Marct's correctly stated objections, I think we have to take this Huntington theory seriously and seek to test it on its own terms - that is, how well does it predict future events/explain (macro) past events.

On the whole, I would agree with you about testing out. I do think we have to make a distinction between predictive validity and post-dictive validity (i.e. "explanation"). The lack of such a distinction was one of the main problems with the Sociology of Tacott Parsons during the 1950's and 1960's - great at post-diction (if you could get through the language!) and terrible at prediction.

Given the time scale implicit in Huntingtons' model, we may have some trouble with checking its predictions. I think Marks' question was bang on - "Which Islamic culture?".

How do we operationalize a "civilization" so that we can test it? Let's look at Huningtons' definition

What do we mean when we talk of a civilization? A civilization is a cultural entity. Villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, religious groups, all have distinct cultures at different levels of cultural heterogeneity. The culture of a village in southern Italy may be different from that of a village in northern Italy, but both will share in a common Italian culture that distinguishes them from German villages. European communities, in turn, will share cultural features that distinguish them from Arab or Chinese communities. Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations. A civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity people have short of that which distinguishes humans from other species. It is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people. People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies. People can and do redefine their identities and, as a result, the composition and boundaries of civilizations change.

Let me highlight a few phrases

Arabs, Chinese and Westerners, however, are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilizations.

and

It [a civilization] is defined both by common objective elements, such as language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people.

To the first point, I would note that there are cultural commonalities arising out of the shear fact of humanity. To the second point, I would note that his so-called "civilizations" actually do not all share the same language - Chinese and Westerners being good examples, or necessarily the same religion. His definition of civilization in severely flawed not only theoretically but, also, operationally.

One of the reasons why I compared it with de Gobineaus' work was to highlight part of these problems. But there is another problem that also ties back to de Gobineaus' successors and shows up in Huntingtons' work - when you assume an absolute break between taxonomic categories, there must be

1. some point of absolute, essential difference between the members of those categories, and
2. this point of difference must act as a causal explanation for the observed differences.

This just isn't the case. None of the factors he lists ("language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people") is an essential difference since each of these factors is subject to individual choice and/or circumstance. The classic example of this is simple: take a new born child from any culture and raise them in another culture. Unless Huntington wants to postulate the existence of a "race memory" that operates at a "civilization" level, or the existence of some type of super-organic "civilization consciousness". his definition just won't hold water and can't be operationalized.

The only part that does hold any validity to my mind is "the subjective self-identification of people", and this is flawed because it misses its complement - the "definition of people by other people".

Marc

[John T. Fishel]

Hi Marc--

My buddy Max Manwaring liked to use that term; personally I prefer explanation. I think you are right about Huntington's weakness being explanation (at least I think you cited that as one weakness). It was what I found I didn't like the first time around. But, I was struck with how applicable his identification of the Islamic/Western faultline was and its usefulness as a predictive tool.

I also think you are dead on with regard to the flip side of self-identification - identification by others. That said, I don't think Huntington would dispute the notion that culture, and indeed, civilization, is learned. As one of my anthro profs, David Bidney, put it: Man invented culture; man can change it. (One of the very few memorable things he said in an otherwise disappointing class he taught with politcal scientist Fred Riggs. (Riggs, I should note, said nothing memorable in the class.)

Clearly, Huntington does NOT have a testable theory. And his model is flawed. But, I maintain that there is the core of something there that could be salvaged with promising results.

Cheers

John

[aktarian]

And same way as you have broad spectrum in islamic civilisation (pro- and anti-US seculars, pro- and anti-US islamists and everything in between) there is no unified "west" either. US, Germany and Spain are all "west" yet they hardly react same way to things or share same views on clash-of-civilisations matters.

[marct]

Hi John,

Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

My buddy Max Manwaring liked to use that term; personally I prefer explanation.

LOL - most of the time, I do too, since they are usually used synonymously . It might be interesting to see if his theory was actually post-dictive - we could run it through an historical data set and see how accurate it was at "predicting" historical events. My gut guess, since I still can't find a way to operationalize it , is that it wouldn't be that good.

Originally Posted by John T. Fishel

Clearly, Huntington does NOT have a testable theory. And his model is flawed. But, I maintain that there is the core of something there that could be salvaged with promising results.

Honestly, what is at the core of his theory? The fault lines are readily observable, I agree. Do you think it would be possible to salvage a core concept or, rather, observation that could then be recast into a testable form? I would think that that is quite possible to do.

Marc