All terrorism is rooted in fanaticism

Think about it - 9/11, Timothy Vey, Madrid, the IRA, London, the Japanese subway gassings, and anything else you care to mention.

The War on Terror should be a War against Fanaticism in all its many guises. Most, but not all, fanaticism seems to have as it roots a religious intolerance. Ergot, intolerance leads to fanaticism leads to terrorism. Bill Maher once said something incredibly profound in my opinion - "you cannot tolerate the intolerant". That given, I have no idea how one actually goes about battling fanaticism.

I'd say let the filth kill each other; except they'll take the rest of us down with them. THAT'S WHAT GETS THEM OFF.

And I can never tolerate the intolerant. It's not an original statement, despite its paradoxical nature.

. . . . or deflation in some cases, probably.

Either explosion or implosion of self.

Puns un-intended, please don't throw things at me!

I'm not sure how much that has to do with terrorism.

ALthough perhaps not in the way you are thinking - I mean I don't know that al-Qaeda or our own homegrown abortion doctor assassins are thinking "He's not a member of my faith, so I can't tolerate his existance."

What they can't tolerate is divergent views on their particular pet project. It's their way or it's the highway. It's that sort of mentality, being 100% sure you are right and the rest of the world is going to hell, that justifies taking more extreme actions.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

and then religion comes into play by assuring them that they truly should have that land.

Although more recently the terror networks on each "side" have degenrated into organised crime syndicates, at the start religion was vital to the Troubles.

Religion is used as a tool by those clever enough to understand its power and those smart enough to know how to manipulate it.

Most fascists use some form of terrorism or another weather it is at home or against other countries.

IMHO

Terrorism is often the last resort of the powerless against the powerful. When you can't get your grievances heard or addressed any other way, extreme measures are all that's left. When those measures include bombing civilians in London, we call it terrorism. But when the US, being one of the powerful, bombs homes and wedding parties full of civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, that's just "unfortunate collateral damage."

In these jingoistic times, it isn't popular to say this but if you want to eliminate most terrorism, you have to step back from the emotion of the attacks and put yourself in the place of the people that feel so strongly that they are willing to strap bombs to their bodies or die in the process of flying planes into buildings. Anyone who pulls a line like "They hate us because of our freedom" or "They want nothing but to destroy our way of life" or "They want to take over the Western world" is someone who has no idea what they are talking about.

I recommend reading this diary at DailyKOS: Terrorist Strategy 101 - A Quiz

On edit...

This Robert Fisk column is pretty good too: http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles517.htm

Bottom line: Desperate people do desperate things. Writing them off as mere "fanatics" without any effort to understand their motivation is not a winning formula.

actually their strategy is to try to batter them into submission, cloaked in the same phony "altruistic" line that all would-be conquerors use.

they have a common goal...

see
"The Power of Nightmares" (BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

I add as an alternative and/or addition to your proposition.

Of course, there a different kinds of terrorists, as well. Those who are privileged and sociopathic power-mongers. Those who are just plain nuts. Those who perceive that their lives have been subjected to persistent injustice and oppression leading to desperation. Those whose identities are dependent upon others' radical definitions.

Not always, but most of the time. When facing prolonged injustice (or perceived injustice), a minority of irrational zealots will be led to extreme actions. It usually occurs when there is no outlet for them to express their grievances.

Terrorism can be seen as a form of asynchronous warfare. It is war declared by non-state actors who have no hope of taking on the military of the nation-state on its terms in conventional warfare.

I'm not justifying terrorism; just trying to understand it in its context. One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Justice and tolerance on all sides is the most effective defense against terrorism.

Much of the theoretical basis for pro-democracy foreign policies is the institutionalist argument that people who live in marginal circumstances and have no way of productively channeling their frustration into personal economic development, participation in civil and/or political society, expressing themselves through a free and open media, etc., etc., are effectively left with no place left to go other than to religious fundamentalism. Religion becomes the one place in which even the poor and noninfluential can feel like they have a use on this earth and a way of improving their lot, either in this life or, at the very least, in the afterlife. Since the people turning to religion under bleak circumstances are, by definition, the disenfranchised and discontented, religion naturally becomes an outlet for expressing that dissatisfaction and turns militant. And there you have your terrorist recruitment pool.

The hope of democratization theory is that, if such individuals have opportunities to improve their circumstances, be it economically, socially, or politically, without recourse to fundamentalism, intolerance, and violence, the majority will avail themselves of those less risky avenues for mobility instead of hefting a Kalashnikov. It takes a desparate person, whose assessment of the value of their own life is low and the ills of society is high, to conclude that it's worth risking their life to effect social change. Democratization advocates believe that, if you can alter that rational-choice cost/benefit analysis by increasing the value of an individual's life through opening up channels for participation in society and its rewards, and decreasing the perceived flaws in society, you can reduce the level of terrorism to the inevitable, tiny, lunatic fringe splinter elements.

But is there a unitary definition of 'injustice' that isn't relativized with respect to culture and belief system?

If not, aren't we playing semantic games and using one poorly defined term to substitute for another equally poorly defined term?

Of course there are few absolutes when dealing with people's perceptions and human nature.

However it's a poor argument to use if you want to dismiss the thoughtful and cogent insights posted in this thread.

The first is when you see somebody earning more than you make, significantly more, in spite of no greater education level. You lack for little, but they're opulent.

The second is when you see somebody earning more than you make, but you differ greatly in skill and education level. Education wasn't something you wanted, and so you had other priorities; they spent time and money honing their skills. You barely survive, with a lower life expectancy; they have more than enough.

The third is when you believe that you are the best of peoples because of your adherence to a set of principles or a deity, or your bloodline. Others, by the natural order of things, are to be subordinate to you. But they don't act like it, and, in fact, regularly put you to shame by their prosperity, innovations, and words.

The commonality isn't so much a principle, as an emotion: jealousy, envy, and the like. For injustice to work, logically you must have a sense of justice, of what is right. That differs so much that I'm hard pressed to find a reasonable definition. (And while I can't see the post that started this thread, I vaguely remember from earlier that I could couch almost every example of injustice I could come up with in those terms, as well, with few changes--making the terms essentially fungible.)

I apologize for having been intentionally mean. It was a gut reaction to what I perceived as your dismissal of the argument that there are objective injustices done to these groups that could explain what led them to fanaticism.

While I believe there are objective instances of injustice to which the vast majority of humans can agree, an individual's perception of injustice will always be to a large degree subjective. There will always be a small minority of fanatics in any society who take to violence that injures innocent lives. The problem becomes how do we take actions that minimize the widespread adoption of fanaticism.

We have fanatics and terrorists in the US: we have our Timothy McVeighs, Eric Rudolfs, KKK, etc. Their influence is contained and does not generate a large following because our society allows for alternate outlets of expression. We provide methods for redressing grievances. Our society, while not perfect, has shown that it is capable of allowing groups to pursue their agenda through non-violent means.

These social/political mechanisms work to contain the emergence of fanaticism to such a large scale that it endangers society. We can therefore look to an outcome-based approach to defining injustice and fanaticism. There will always be injustices and perceived injustices: it is the complex mixture social/political/economic structures that determine whether they will reach a critical mass that expresses itself through multiple large scale acts of terrorism.

Reading Bin Laden's letter, we see a large list of grievances and goals. Some points reflect objective injustices, some are highly subjective, and others are fanatical ravings. For each objective injustice you can take off the list you can reduce the number of new recruits by x percent. A better foreign policy could likewise reduce the number of people who are influenced by the "perceived" injustices. Little by little we can reduce the influence of his rhetoric to point that is below the critical threshold point and begin to reverse this tide of extremism.

come from V.S.Naipaul more than thirty five years ago. In his book, AMONG THE BELIEVERS, AN ISLAMIC JOURNEY, Naipaul pointed out that people in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan fell victim to the delusion that all their problems stemmed from the West and the only refuge for them from this Western onslaught on their cultures and traditions was to embrace their religious orthodoxies ever more tightly.That made the common people of the Islamic countries prey to the religious fanatics who were only too glad to suppress the flowering of intellectual curiosity and the liberation of women.Naipaul also contrasts the reaction of China and India, which have equally strict orthodox traditions but embraced the Western concepts of reason and logic and have seen their countries emerge from many centuries of backwardness.

So, yes, fanatics are the problem but fanaticism has its roots in an inability to cope with the complexities and demands of the modern world.

:evilgrin:

Sorry I wasn't more clear. :spank:

to your obvious humor. :dunce: