Anthropologist Scott Atran published his study on suicide bombers in the journal Science, in which he claims that it is a dangerous misconception to call these people “desperate” or “crazed”: (Hat tip: Josh)
Atran, who has lived in Jerusalem and who did his own research as well as reviewed the work of others, noted that many suicide bombers are relatively affluent and well-educated, and so cannot be seen to be acting out of desperation. Instead, they are manipulated by leaders who know how to tap into instincts on par with the need to eat and reproduce.
“They do so very effectively,” Atran said.
“My feeling is that people have been barking up the wrong tree completely in dealing with this. They are often thinking these people are crazed, which they are not. They have no suicidal tendencies, no split families,” he added.
“There is no evidence whatsoever of poverty. On the contrary, they are usually better off than the surrounding population.”
This cuts against the propaganda that pro-Palestinian apologists for terror want people to believe – that suicide bombers are fringe extremists, acting out of poverty and desperation.
Atran then goes on to criticize the Western – namely American – response to Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings:
“(President) Bush has been saying the way to fight terrorism is by raising education and fighting illiteracy but he is just whistling in the wind.”
It is also impossible to ‘sell’ American values to these groups, Atran maintains. [ . . . ] “If people are already convinced of an ideological position that is antagonistic to your own, then bombarding them with information relating to your own only increases their antagonism,” he said.
Atran believes a better approach would be to sideline the extremists. “I think the United States and its allies should try to empower moderates from within the community,” he said.
So far so good. Sideline the extremists. Empower the moderates. Gotcha. In other words, exactly what Israel has been insisting on all along when it refuses to negotiate with Arafat’s leadership and wants to wait for a real partner for peace to emerge. Right?
But then Atran goes out into left field:
Atran, who addresses these issues in a recent book entitled “In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion”, said attacking Iraq will only worsen ill-feelings against the United States.
“We know from polls in Israel and Lebanon that when force is used to go after what people consider to be Arab terrorists, and usually miss the mark, that increases support (for those groups),” he said.
In other words, the U.S. shouldn’t go to war in Iraq because it might piss off the terrorists?
Do I even need to explain what’s wrong with that statement?
Interesting — and very good points. The Orientalist European and American splinter ‘left’ and, of course, their agenda-setters in the sensationalist and racist Arab media — and the clueless Western media (“speak Arabic? No, why would I need to speak Arabic to cover the Middle East? I have translators”, etc.), have been spewing propaganda that borders on the fanatical on how Palestinian suicide bombers do what they do cause, really, they have no choice.
As though Palestinians were crazed animals who, unlike poor and desperate people everywhere else in the world, react to adversity by going out and blowing themselves up. That such things can be said publicly, and people who call themselves ‘progressive’ can actually support them (!), is evidence to just how much, eons after Rousseau was around, the noble-savage-ism persists. Edward Said makes a habit of saying some pretty stupid things these days, but one of the things he got right in his book on Orientalism was about how both in the West and in the Arab world alike, an image of Arabs as one-dimensional noble-savage stereotypes persists, for all kinds of reasons.
The real reason for suicide bombing, of course, is an elaborate, well-structured, and well-funded campaign which combines all the techniques of advertising, propaganda, and proselytism with intense social pressure and highly-placed political power, in what’s become a winning combination for the anti-peace forces in Palestine.
Not that we’d ever hear about it in the news — I mean, it’d be scary for Western reporters to get inside Fatah and Hamas and so on and actually report who uses what tactics and why, or at least to do some TV report on the actual gamut that a recruit goes through. Hell, just a segment on popular music in Palestine — you know, who’s listening to what and what the lyrics say — would go a long way towards demonstrating how vicious hatred is cynically deployed and propagated in a bid to manipulate the Palestinian people.
In an environment, I need not add, which is all too ripe for it. And don’t exactly count on Arabic media to do any better: their job is to report on the evils of the Jewish-Zionist entity and its masked agents, extreme close-ups of dead Palestinians, and avoid anything that bears even a whiff of investigative reporting, exposition of the political forces behind the actual events, or simply doing what journalists are supposed to do, which is to ask why.
I wouldn’t say exactly that going to war might piss off terrorists. The point is that so-called collateral damage increases antipathy against the US because they have a habit of killing innocent people in the process of looking for terrorists. Under the Geneva convention, that is a war crime. Many German commanders were hanged or shot after WWII because in looking for partisans, which was legal under international law, they would make mass arrests, conduct mass shootings and burn down villages. It was accaptable to fight and even execute people who took up arms against the occupying Germans, or any other occupying force, but in searching for partisans or terrorists, it is illegal according to international law, to destroy houses and kill others, simply bby saying “Well, we don’t know who the partisans are, so we have to use force to find them, and sometimes innocent people get in the way.” That defence resulted in many executions, perhaps rightly so. If the US accidentally kills innocent civilians in
going after Saddam, then it may be excused, but they cannot disregard their discretionary powers and blatantly attack and arrest civilians or destroy houses and villages. If the US kills civilians in looking for terrorists, regardless or the justification in capturing them, it is no wonder other resent the US for it. It is exactly that, and their callous and indifferent attitude that does create hostility towards them. In a way, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
On what exactly are you basing the claim that the US military has a “callous” and “indifferent” attitude towards civilians?
If anyone is callous and indifferent towards civilians, it’s Saddam Hussein. I’d like to know what your basis is for making that claim about the US.
“We must appease angry fanatics who seek our destruction otherwise they might get angry and seek our destruction”
-Ann Coulter
I think the argument is that collateral damage and ‘accidentally’ killing innocent woman and children without any regard is what MAKES regular people start to support terrorists. When anyone bombs innocent civilians without any regard for their lives, it tends to increase hostility towards whoever is making the attack. Not everyone around the world is a terrorist or a supporter, but indifferently killing innocent people might push them in that direction. The implication of the aforementioned quote is that everyone else is a terrorist, but I do not know where they get that from. Thus if the US accidentally kills a few children in the Middle East, those children were terrorists anyhow? That is what you must assume if the sarcastic quote about angry fanatics is true. Ultimately, I think what Atran is saying, if his quote wasn’t clear, is that going after terrorists and mistakenly killing innocent people, will make those innocent people turn fro innocent, into terrorist supporters.
The US, or any country, can actually do things that make people dislike them. One cannot assume that all animosity is merely the result of irrational hatred. One ought to rule out any rational basis first, and then conclude that the hatred is unfounded.
Regardin American indifference, the tale of Afghanistan is an indicative example. Before 9-11 there was virtually no mention of the poor plight of Afghanistani people under terrible repression of the Taliban. After 9-11 all of a sudden, there was great deal of concern. Of course after ousting the Taliban, and America took care of its enemies, no one seems to care anymore about the continuing conflict that is tearing the country apart. The president and vice-president of Afghan. had several attempts on their lives, the country has divided into warring factions and inoccent people are being ‘accidentally’ killed not only in military conflicts, but also because of starvation. Where exactly is the concern for them now? When Americans are murdered the whole world must accede to the US’s wishes in their ‘war on terror’ but when others die, most Americans really don’t seem to be concerned. The media made little affair of the civilan casualties in the war in Afghanistan. Americans, and Canadians and most Westerners would rather buy jet-skis than spend money on helping others around the world. There is, in the media, very little concern for suffering peoples around the world, except when its convenient to use it as some sort of pretext. All of sudden, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, Americans became concerned with his ‘human rights violations’? He was brutal while he was allied by the US and Britain, yet they got along with him seeking “closer diplomatic relations”. Only finally they decided he was no longer serving their interests, so they became semi-concerned with his crimes against civilians. They still do not care that their sanctions are not, in fact, hurting Saddam, but rather killing civilans, which, for any rational pragmatist, would make what they were doing questionable. If they wanted to hurt him, it wasn’t working, but they had little regard for Iraqi civilians then, but now, all of a sudden, they cannot stop talking about Saddam the threat and the murderer. Both the US and Saddam are callous toward civilians. Saddam may be outwardly more cruel, but the US is not exactly a real campaigner for human rights. They care when it suits their purpose. If you would like further specific evidentiary examples, I would be happy.