While deployed to Iraq, I worked with Iraqi police. My primary function was to oversee the development of a professional and stable police force in my area of operations and toward that end I developed training for them and conducted regular evaluations. I also worked with American Soldiers and one of the things I emphasized time and time again with BOTH the Iraqi Police and our own Soldiers was not to make the problems in Iraq worse by mistreating civilians. Despite my reputation as something of an ogre here, I am intimately familiar with what it takes to develop and maintain positive relations with a community.

I tell you guys all that to lead into this...The proper treatment of the community is essential in any effort to stop terrorism or to wage what we in the military term COIN, or counter-insurgency operations. I used to run update a thread here that raised issues about the Palestinian-Israel conflict from Palestinian perspective. Rather than dig that thread up and revive it, I have decided to start fresh here. Take a look at the next posts and feel free to jump in with your own comments. This will be a closely moderated thread.

On June 8th, the B'Tselem group captured video of Israeli settlers attacking a group of Palestinian shepherds. The settlers, masked and armed with batons or sticks, approached the shepherds and began beating them. No apparent provocation was evident.

Such actions have an obvious impact on the conflict between the Palestinians and the israelis. When you attack and beat innocent people, you make them frightened and angry. Frightened and angry people are liable to lash out at those who make them frightened and angry. When they cannot do so opening, they will do so in secret. One such way is to support or even engage in terrorist activity. None of that justifies terrorist activity. Certainly a beating, even one with a stick, does not justify a bombing. And yet...it is easy to understand how people might resort to violence when confronted by abuse they are otherwise powerless to prevent. As I said...none of this justifies terrorism and arguments to that effect will recieve short shrift.

Was it difficult to determine the civilians from the enemy? Did they at anytime change roles...the insurgents becoming the nice guy and civilians becoming the enemy? If so that must have been very hard work and taxing on the psyche.

During post war Japan, MacArthur understood the need to treat the Japanese with respect. This has paid off as our relations with Japan has been very good.

On July 7th, a young Palestinian girl captured video of an Israeli soldier firing a rubber bullet at the feet of a bound and blindfolded Palestinian man being held by another soldier. The Palestinian was struck in the toe. What is the point of such abuse? Who among us would not be moved to violence or to the support of violence against those who treated us in similar fashion? I would hope we are all rational enough not to resort to a homicide bombing against an innocent target but I think we could all understand anger among the victims of such mistreatment.

And I think we should all understand anger among the Isrealis when two of their soldiers are kidnapped, murdered and have their bodies held in ransom for a 'prisoner exchange' by Hezbollah.

My older brother did much the same as you did, Law, only he did it in Viet Nam. It's a usually unrecognized and unrewarding job.

While we were stationed at Ft. Benning, my parents hosted the Viet Namese officer contingent. They opened our home to those officers and allowed them to cook their favorite foods--anything they wanted. Shortly after that, my Father became the Military Attache to French Indo-China. The Viet Namese officers then became 'the enemy.' When my brother was sent over, he also had to deal with those friends who had then become the enemy.

Where does it stop, Law? This is my question to you.

Indeed. Israeli anger is also understandable. When you do the above or when you support those who blow up school buses, you invite a heavy handed response by those in power. It is completely understandable. One might even point out that a beating or a broken toe pales in comparison to blowing up a bus full of school kids. of course, that is not really the point. All sides feel justified in their actions and to an extent are indeed justified.

What all sides need to understand is that there are consequences, often unintended and unanticipated ones, to their actions. This is something COIN tries to emphasize to individual Soldiers. For instance, if an Iraqi vehicle comes too close to an American convoy the Soldiers in that convoy are going to fire at it. In a perfect scenario, they will fire warning shots and the vehicle will stop. In a less perfect scenario, they put some rounds through the engine block and disable the vehicle. In an even less perfect scenario, they kill the driver and/or passengers. The intended result is to protect the convoy from a possible VBIED (vehicle borne improvised explosive device aka car bomb.) However, consider the unintended consequences. In the warning shot scenario, perhaps the driver is angered by the encounter and feels frustrated that he cannot even drive his produce to market without the Americans shooting at him. He decides to make a modest contribution to the local JAM chapter as they are one of the more evident groups working to get the Americans out of Iraq. Perhaps the vehicle was destroyed. Consider those consequences. Now the man, a small farmer, has no way to get his produce to market. He has no way to get fertilizer for his fields. He cannot go and get parts for his irrigation equipment. His livelihood is ruined and yet he still has two wives and six kids to support. Along comes the local AQI (al Qaeda in Iraq) pitchman who offers him a few hundred dollars to plant an IED targeting the very same Americans who shot his truck.

The point to all this is, actions have consequences and when engaged in counterinsurgency ops, as we are in Iraq and as the Israelis essentially are in the West Bank and Gaza, one must remain constantly alert to the potential consequences of one's activity. THat is not to say one cannot take action. Far from it. Rather, one most mitigate those consequences that cannot be avoided. For instance, if you shoot at a vehicle, even just warning shots, you need to stop that vehicel and make contact with the driver. Verify he is uninjured. Provide an explaination as to why the shots were fired and how to avoid such in the future. If the vehicle was damaged, provide the person with a means to recieve compensation for his loss. Demonstrate the necessary modicum of respect for the individual so as to reduce the hostility he might rightly feel as a result of your actions.

It is easy to make a terrorist. The mistreatment by soldiers of civilians is the easiest. Some times it is caused by untrained and ignorant soldiers who let their hatred of the other side dictate their actions. When they see the enemy is less than human it is possible to torture, rape or kill them. This has happen in every war. Today with new types of camers this will most likly appear on video.

Sometimes just sheer arrongance of a foreigner in another country will cause recentment. Thus the arabs and persians now hate Israel. They did not hate them before.the occupation. So Americans will be hated in the Middle east for centuries.

If it not surprizing that most Vietamese turn against the Americans.This hatred is still fourty years after war. So will it be in Iraq. Terrorist in these cases are just freedom fighters.No matter how true the crimes of the occupying forces are they will still fuel hatred years after the war

Aus, ancilliary political comments are not what this thread is about. It is incorrect to claim the Arabs and Persians did not hate the Israelis before the Occupation. Moreover, it is unrelated to the topic...which is how terrorists are created. Similarly, your comments about Viet Nam are misplaced as there are vanishingly few examples of terrorist activity by the Vietnamize directed against America. Terrorists are NEVER just freedom fighters. It is not perspective that accurately defines terrorism and terrorists but rather the specific activity in which the terrorists engage.

The behavior of soldiers on the battle field and off certainly has potential to breed terrorists. That was one of the points in launching this thread. I provide some brief commentary on US activity in Iraq and discussed two specific examples from Israel. I could as easily discuss specific examples from the British presence in Northern Ireland. However, it is not just the actions of soldiers that breed terrorism.

Consider the Oklahoma City Bombing carried out by McVeigh and Nichols. The motivation for their activity was not the conduct of soldiers ont he battle field but rather the conduct of the civilians in the US government. They felt they had a legitimate complaint against the US Federal government and this spawned a bombing. Similarly, we might consider the activities of the Aum Shinrikyo-Aleph group responsible for the sarin gas attack in Tokyo. Their motivation was not the behavior of soldiers but rather a perception that they were being persecuted by the Japanese establishment and therefore sought to lash out at that establishment.

In all these cases, we see some sort of trigger or motivating factor that caused the individuals involved to express their dissatisfaction with the status quo by engaging in terroristic acts of violence. The behavior was the consequence of the activities of others, typically those in positions of authority from which they could impact the actors. None of that suggests the terrirstic activites were justified but only that it is possible to divine a precipitating factor for the activity after the fact. The key here, and the point of this discussion, is to try and divine such factors BEFORE they trigger a terroristic act.

One of the difficulties in divining and preventing terrorist attacks is the fact that there are some people who perceive any sleight they may receive as bombworthy, another is the fact that there are some people who just like to blow things up. I have long maintained that some types of beheaders and bombers get off sexually on such activity, and having it legitimized is 7th heaven for them.

However, once a terrorist is created by real or perceived actions against him and his family/religion/country, I believe it is almost impossible to "cure" him, or get him to stop terrorist activities.

While criminals may have a slip, or a youthful bout with the law and then reform, I believe a terrorist is forever.

And when the terror is government sponsored, and made to appear glamorous, when puppet characters in childrens' shows exhort their little viewers to kill Zionists (for example), then it is almost impossible to get to the root causes and there is little hope for cessation of terrorist activity.

Dax you are right there are some sort of terrorists that you can not stop, they are either born to resent others or with bloodlust to hurt others.

However the majority of terrorists are made by the actions of the enemy forces. You only have to go to the musuems of Vietnam or Isreal to see why ordinary people became terrorists.

It is also true that propangada by the leaders of one side like the pupett shows in Gaza. The cowboys and Indian shows in the early 50s in the USA,and the portrayal of aboriginals at the same time in Australia can lead to misunderstanding and a sterotype of the enemy that leads to terrorism .Only education and respect for others can stop the majority of terrorists.

Your comments are not especially valid, Aus. They need to be refined. This is twice now that you mentioned Vietnam in connection with terrorism. Yet...just how much international terrorism has come from Vietnam? Even after the Vietnam War (or the American War as they call it there) how many Vietnamese terrorists have attacked America or American interests? You can count them on the fingers of both feet...Similarly, just how much Aboriginal terrorism is there in Australia, Aus? I suspecct it is about as common as Vietnamese terrorism...that is to say nonexistent. So, where does that leave us? It certainly suggests your linkage is flawed.

On the other hand, we do see considerable terrorism in Israel and the broader Middle East. We have seen terrorism in Europe and in the United States. Domestic terrorists in the US are rather uncommon. Native European terrorism has almost vanished and been replaced by islamic terrorism. There seems to be a commonality in terrorism those. While the individual decision to engage in acts of terrorism is likely multifaceted and cannot be pinned down to a single common cause there seems to be a requirement for some sort of strong idealogical component.

In the Middle East that component seems to frequently have its underpinning in Islam. In European terrorism during the 1970s and early 1980s the idealogical component was political. The Troubles in Ireland seemed to involve both religious and political components and one must maintain awareness that the involved groups typically possessed one or the other idealogical foundations.

Lawmage, All I said about Veitnam is that they have war musuems similar to the Jewish Halacaust musuems.This dwelling on the injustise of the past can lead to Terrorism. At the moment Vietnam is not engage in terrorism but the Anti American nature of these musuems has led to hatred and resentment. As with the aboriginals and Indians.

I am not saying that there should not be displays of past injustice but we must be careful that we do not put all the blame on one group.

Is terrorism inspired by quintessential, archetypal fear or is it inspired by being shot in the toe with a rubber bullet? If it's being shot in the toe with a rubber bullet, which can certainly result in fear, that's easy--JUST DON'T DO IT NO MORE.

If it's the result of archetypan fear, shouldn't we (I sing the body female) not try to understand and assuage those fears through our actions?

Aus, certainly blaming another group provides a target for terrorism. However, does it provide the essential motivation necessary to spawn the act? You seem to suggest it does. I would argue it does not. Again, using your own examples...We do not see any Vietnamese terrorism directed against the US as a result of the museums you mentioned. Nor do we see Israeli terrorism directed against Germany as a result of the Holocaust museums you mentioned. Nor do we see Native American terrorism inside the United States as a result of the museums you mentioned.

You did however touch on something that seems relevant...injustice. It seems to me terrorism requires a number of conditions and one such condition is the possession of a profound sense of injustice among the actors. This ties in with what Liz asked about some sort of Jungian archetypal fear or being shot in the toe. I personally do not think fear alone is the motivating factor. However, a sense of powerlessness that leaves the individual with a sense that nothing else can be done may serve as a motivation toward terrorism. The sense that no other remedey toward justice is available. In short, a sense of injustice.

Consider...the Palestinians arguably believe that Israel is essentially unjust. They beleive it was foisted upon them, it supplanted their ancestral homeland, and exists only with the assitance of powerful outside forces. The Palestinian terrorist groups argue they sought a peaceful solution to their grievances through the UN and the world community and were rebuffed. In short, they claim to suffer from a profound sense of injustice and that sense of injustice seems to create a powerful rage. That rage, rather than fear, seems to be expressed through terroristic activity. SImilarly, if we consider the Oklahoma City bombing we see something similar. McVeigh, and too a lesser extent Nichols, seemed to envince a profound alientation from the federal government. McVeigh seemed to think it had treated him and others like him unjustly and refused to repent its treatment. He seemed to think he had no other recourse toward justice and so he lashed out with violence.

So...the suggestion of "just don't do it anymore" is not of immediate utility but it does hint at something. Perhaps it is important to consider justice and the perception of justice in our activities so as not to leave an already at risk demographic with the sense of injustice that seems to correlate with terrorist activities. We must of course bear in mind that the issue is not truly injustice but the perception of injustice. In some cases in may be sufficient to present a farcical version of justice and satisfy the potential terorrist. In other cases, even the availability of true justice may not dissuade the individual who has, for whatever reason, already decided injustice reigns.

As long as we have people in the world who are poor and live in atrocious conditions, who feel trampled on, who feel they have no voice in the world, we will alway's make terrorist.

Since a lot of these people don't know any better, they only know one way people will pay attention to them and that's with a gun or a bomb in someone's face.

Until we provide all people with good education, healthcare to take of their sick families, and decent homes ( instead of shacks ) to live in, there will alway's be terrorist and unrest in our world, it's just a fact of life.

And even if by some miracle we were able to feed, house and clothe every human being on earth, terrorists would still exist. There would still be religious terrorism, and tribal terrorism, and terrorism for its own sake by people who like killing people and blowing things up.

That's very true, it's a shame that some people have nothing better to do with their lives than to find reasons to kill others.

May we take this into the abstract, since the Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli reprisals and Timothy McVeigh are all different? Before doing so, however, may I give my understanding of Palestine, Israel and McVeigh?

Palestine was never a country. It was an area of the Land of Israel originally populated by Europeans called Philistines. Palestine is a latinization of Philistine. Following WWI, England partitioned Israel and allowed the Jewish people to, once again, live there. Those Jews were the remnants of the Diaspora Hebrews who left Israel as the result of Roman conquests and the destruction of the first temple. Following the Holocaust and WWII, Britain moved survivors into the Land of Israel.

What is Semitic and who are the Semites? Firstly, Semitic is a languange group linked by related languages including Arabic. So, Arabs are Semites--supposedly the descendants of Shem, one of Noah's sons. So are Israeli's, since Hebrew is a Semitic language.

As I recall, Timothy McVeigh was protesting two things: the Waco Massacre and gun laws. Bringing him into The Making of a Terrorist thread brings in another possible characteristic of a terrorist.

So now we have fear based on the loss of something, perceived injustice, rage and obsession--all of which can lead to terrorism, particularly given that progression. Given this, Law, is it possible to teach either an American soldier or an Iraqi policeman that,



What is the 'proper treatment of the community,' in this situation?

How should a War Against Terrorism be fought? How do we right perceived injustice when that 'injustice' may only exist in a possibly obsessed mind? And who are we to say what or what is not an injustice?

There's one more thing. How can we prepare for terrorism if we don't recognize terrorism?

That is not exactly the case, SPM. Consider the European terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s. Groups like the Italian Red Brigades and the German Bader-Meinhoff Gang all had access to quality education, quality government provided healthcare, and decent rent controlled homes. Their membership was solidly upper middle classs. Contrast those examples with the teeming poverty stricken masses in India or Bangladesh. We see almost no terrorism spawned from those demographics. Similarly, though to a much lesser scale, we can consider the rural poor of America...I am speaking of those who truly do live in shacks, have no access to health care, and seldom progress into much less through high school. Places like the back hollows of Hazard County, Kentucky. those places similarly fail to spawn terrorists. Why is that?

This is why we have laws that clearly define terrorism.

Because there is a difference between being poor and having your liberties taken away.

Americans enjoy American freedom at whatever economic level they exist. While the poor get screwed over more than the rich, it still isn't enough to justify a rebellion or terrorist activity.

When they find out their telephones have been tapped, their tv viewing habits registered and logged, their bank accounts, if any, looked at...that's when the guns come out.

Defining the cause of terrorism in terms of the poor, ill fed and clothed, etc. may not be entirely accurate. It is true that terrorism and revolution are often led by the upper middle class, as Lawmage pointed out, and that the teeming poverty stricken masses in countries such as India or Bangladesh do not seem to have spawned terrorism. The poverty stricken masses can be useful pawns, however, when led by the upper middle class intelligentsia. (see Russian and French revolutions, and the last three Chinese attempted and actual revolutions. The first Chinese revolution is interesting in that it was a rural peasant revolt that failed as a result of the government's brutal massacres in Nanking.)

I'm inclined to think that terrorism is a tool used by any 'class' that feels that their potential future power is being taken away--that their future happiness, as they define it, is in jeopardy.

Take, for example, the actions of the rich against their striking workers 100 +/- 50 years ago. One, of many, instances is calling in the Pinkertons to put down a strike (if I remember correctly at a coal-mine in Colorado) by raiding their tent city and throwing buckets of water on the strikers' families in sub-zero weather, leaving them to freeze to death.

Terrorism of the mid and lower classes by the rich and powerful is a response to a perception that their power may be slipping away rather than growing in accordance with their plans.

To be truthful LM, I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that American poverty is way better than poverty in let's say Africa.

well, SPM, you are correct in that we in America have a different idea of what constitutes poverty. However, I think a great bit of the difference in reaction has to do with perception. Dax touched on it a little. Even the most impoverished Americans do not chafe under a profound sense of injustice. Here is an interesting tidbit I have discussed previously in this forum. Even in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the bulk of the Palestinian terrorists are NOT poor uneducated people. They are what passes for upper middle class Palestinians. The psychologists who study these things through interviews with captured terrorists and failed homicide bombers have found that socio-economic status is not per se a motivator for terroristic activity but rather unmet expectation is a motivator. In many regards, these upper middle class palestinians are reacting to foiled expectations for their future and are lashing out at what they see as the source of that foiling. bad Bird touched on this from the other side when he spoke of power slipping away as a motivator for terroristic activities. In so far as it goes his observation is correct. It does tie in with the idea of unmet or foiled expectation though.

Terrorism is caused by even real injustice or preceived injustice. It is true that most injustice is expeienced by the poor uneducated classes. Yet most successful terrorist movements have been led by the educated middle class.

Surely this is not a contradiction, the poor have the cause for terrorism but the Middle class have the means to make terrorism successful.

I think your history is inaccurate, Aus. In truth, most terrorism IS NOT committed by the poor and uneducated. generally, the poor and uneducated provide soldiers for revolutionary causes and in the early stages such causes are sometimes called terroristic. However, most acts of terrorism have historically been committed by the middle classes NOT the lowest socioeconomic demographics. You are however correct in that real and percieved injustice is a component in terrorist motivations.

There is a very simple reason for this. The actual commission of terrorism requires a certain level of commitment to an ideological perfection. Poor people don't have time for ideology; they're too busy trying to figure out where the next bowl of rice is coming from.

This isn't in contradiction to Lawmage's general message regarding terrorism being more of a middle-class phenomenon rather than a reaction to mass poverty, but:

According to al-Jazeera ( http://tinyurl.com/blu6 ) there were 17 separate bombings yesterday in Ahmedabad India--resulting in 29 deaths--and 7 bombings the day before in Bangalore resulting in 2 deaths. Non-fatal casualties were very high as the bombs were shrapnel encased. During May, 8 bombs killed at least 63 people and injured hundreds more in Jaipur.

Speculation is that these were Pakistan-based or Muslim vs Hindu, but who knows for sure. More important is the driving force behind them; international politics, religious intolerance, or something else? Without "--the teeming poverty stricken masses in India--" would this be occurring?