Other People's Wars - Caledonia Wake Up Call

Other Peoples’ Wars – Chapter Onerank and file (as well as the leadership) of many terrorist groups. It is hard to imagineany Police Force or Fire Department seeking to hire such people, although a few armieshave done so over the centuries.It might be an over-simplification, but the sheep dogs (firefighters, police, soldiers andsuch) might be individuals who seek authority and validation, but they also have an ethicof service, and an impulse to protect. This is something that seldom can be said aboutcoyotes or terrorists.The attraction towards a strong ideology also lies with internal characteristics. Theworld of terrorism is rife with “histories of childhood deprivation and narcissisticwounds … with a deficient sense of self-esteem, and inadequately integrated personalities… loners, alienated individuals who did not fit … extreme extroverts – the self centeredindividual with little regard for the feelings of others … neurotic hostility … projectingthe person’s own hostility onto the social environment.” 15The one sure lesson to draw from this is that the cause a terrorist espouses has little todo with the need to commit violence, but the cause they adopt will certainly shape theviolence that they undertake. A terrorist is someone already predisposed to violence andthe cause is secondary to its use as a justification. For example, among those who haveattacked Israelis with terrorism, a full spectrum of ideologies from nationalist, Marxist,leftist, radical right and religious sources have been pressed into service to shape andjustify their attacks.Admittedly, some terrorists do have causes that might justify violence, although theyusually first eliminated or suppressed all those who recommended a non-violent approachto the cause. Others have had to create a cause or adapt an existing ideology to excusetheir intended behavior. It is not so much that the ends justify the means for a terrorist, itis rather that the means are attractive enough to require the invention of an end.Hoffer discusses the mutability of belief in his book on ideologues and pointed out – forexample – that in the early 1930s, German Nazis and Communists regarded each other asan excellent source of recruits. 16 The ability of Al-Qaeda to recruit Hoffer’s “misfits” inWestern Society should not go unmentioned either, as they have recruited criminals andaimless youths from non-Muslim backgrounds in Britain, France and the United States,as can be evinced from John Walker Lindh (aka Abdul Hamid), the Courtailler brothers,Jose Padilla (aka Abdullah al-Muhajir) and Richard Reid.In the aftermath of the World Trade Centre bombing, Western attitudes and responses toit have largely gelled into the traditional camps that endlessly debated strategy andapproaches to previous ideological enemies in the 1930s and the Cold War. Those who14.Dr Jerrold Post, as cited in Invisible Armies (pg. 82) Dr Post is a psychologist whose papers onindividual and group dynamics in terrorism between 1985 and 1990 have attracted much attention. Alsosee his paper “Individual and Group Dynamics of Terrorist Behavior” In World Congress of Psychiatry,Psychiatry: The State of the Art, 6, New York, Plenum, 1985; or “Terrorist Psycho-Logic: TerroristBehavior as a Product of Psychological Forces”, Walter Re ich, ed., Origins of Terrorism; Psychologies,Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990.16 This relationship is also well illustrated by contemporary accounts from SA members – see KurtMassmann’s anecdote “A meeting hall brawl” in George Mossel’s Nazi Culture; Grosset & Dunlap, NewYork, 1966.10