September 11, Crisis Resolution

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Notes From ICAR Teach-In at George Mason University, September 18, 2001

Richard E. Rubenstein
Prof. of Conflict Resolution and Public Affairs

1. People want to know how any remotely normal human being could commit acts as atrocious as the Sept. 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They want to know, but, in a way, they don’t, since they fear that "to understand is to forgive." They therefore describe the terrorists either as satanic or insane. But they are neither. And we must understand their thinking if we are to counteract this threat.
   

2. Most terrorists are sociologically and psychologically "normal." (Cf. reports of how the perpetrators in this case lived.) They tend to be young adults of higher than average economic status and education. Very often they are strongly idealistic and inclined to take matters of political ideology or religious belief very seriously. It is the circumstances that produce terrorism that are unusual and that need to be described. Three factors seem particularly important:
   

3. First, terrorists strongly identify with a people that is oppressed, divided, and subjected to economic deprivation, political exploitation, and intense violence. Often there is violence in their own backgrounds — they have friends or relatives who have been killed or tortured. And it is not just oppression that enrages them, but cultural, religious, or personal humiliation. They are seeking not just to avenge a defeat but to vindicate their honor. And they are not defending their "interests" but their identity.
   

4. Second, the enemy that has defeated and humiliated them is both an outsider — a foreign power wielding fearsome weapons and promoting alien cultural values — and an insider — a ruling class that collaborates with the outsider and that many "patriots" consider a traitor. The Saudis who may have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks saw their own government cooperate with U.S. efforts in Iraq that killed 75,000, and then watched the soil they consider sacred occupied by U.S. forces allied with the Saudi royal family. Extreme Islamists from Palestine to Pakistan feel the same way about their own leaders.
   

5. Third, the terrorists are seldom represented by an organized mass movement. Either because their people won’t follow them or because state terror makes it impossible to organize openly, they form decentralized networks and take the burden of the struggle upon themselves. It is important to note that this situation of relative isolation dictates a typical strategy. Terrorists commit highly provocative, atrocious acts that will tempt their enemies to over-react, and by over-reacting, to force the oppressed people to choose between them and the "traitors."

Whether or not he ordered this attack (I doubt that he did), Osama Bin Laden wants a war between the West and Islam that will last 100 years and generate multiple terrorist attacks on the technologically vulnerable industrial nations. Shall we give Osama what he wants? That is a question of short-term policy. But a rational long-term policy to counteract terrorism must deal with its underlying causes, including U.S. imperialism in the Islamic world. A reevaluation of our policies toward non-Western peoples is now an absolute necessity.