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When nobodies are the enemy
We
all now know that at least three of the four suicide bombers, who
killed more than 50 Londoners and wounded scores more, were born in
Britain and lived in the English Midlands. They are described as
"British nationals of Pakistani origin." One was only 19, another was 30
with an 8-month-old baby. The third, 22, loved cricket.
These facts inject new urgency into the debate about whether we are fighting an organization or an idea. Last year, Jessica Stern observed in a USA Today op-ed piece that "we are continuing to swat at yesterday's threats with yesterday's tools and, in the process, aiding the terrorists' cause. If the United States continues to prosecute a war on terrorism without thinking about what motivates new recruits, we, as a country, will lose."
These facts inject new urgency into the debate about whether we are fighting an organization or an idea. Last year, Jessica Stern observed in a USA Today op-ed piece that "we are continuing to swat at yesterday's threats with yesterday's tools and, in the process, aiding the terrorists' cause. If the United States continues to prosecute a war on terrorism without thinking about what motivates new recruits, we, as a country, will lose."
Many
Americans find the concept of suicide bombing not only repulsive but
baffling. That's because few of us can conceive of any idea or ideal so
dear that we would wake up one morning, strap on explosives and walk out
of the house to our self-inflicted deaths, as the four London bombers
did. Our revulsion and confusion are functions of our time and place in
human history. Anonymous nobodies, leading lives of quiet desperation
until moved by the power of a radical idea to act, fill the pages of
modern Western history.
In The Proud Tower, a 1966 history of the West just before World War I, Barbara Tuchman wrote of Anarchism (with a capital A) during the late 19th century and early 20th century. "So enchanting was the vision of a stateless society . . . that six heads of state were assassinated for its sake in the 20 years before 1914." Her list included President William McKinley, shot by a lone assassin. After the murder of the Spanish premier in 1897, a British magazine opined, "The mad dog is the closest parallel in nature to the Anarchist," while another writer wondered how you could protect civilized society from "a combination of crazy people and criminals."
Whether you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald also was a lone assassin or the patsy of a broader conspiracy, read Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale. In it you'll meet a lonely young man who yearned to make his mark, and who was drawn first to Soviet-style communism and then to Castro's Cuba as sources for his half-baked ideas. That he first took a potshot at a right-wing general before being caught up in the Kennedy assassination suggests that his choice of victims was as much a matter of opportunity as it was the selection of specific targets.
Just as 19th-century lone killers were motivated by the writings of Anarchist intellectuals they had never met, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is said to have been heavily influenced by Leaderless Resistance, a 1962 doctrine by Ulius Louis Amoss. A former U.S. intelligence officer and Cold Warrior, Amoss founded the Baltimore-based International Service of Information Inc. When McVeigh and Terry Nichols did their dirty deed in 1995, Amoss had been in his grave for decades. His ideas had been kept alive primarily by an apostle named Louis Beam. McVeigh and Nichols never knew Beam either.
The Amoss/Beam idea is chillingly simple. In the words of one scholar, Simson Garfinkel, "Leaderless Resistance is a strategy in which small groups (cells) and individuals fight an entrenched power through independent acts of violence and mayhem."
This sounds a lot like what happened in London two weeks ago. In the words of one Fox News commentator, recalling the Madrid train bombing of a year ago, "both point to an al-Qaeda evolving into a movement whose isolated leaders offer video or Internet inspiration - but little more - to local 'jihadists' who carry out the strikes."
If this is how it is, then all of America's expenditures of lives and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq are so many wasted soldiers and dollars. In some sense we actually are repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, even though our modern armed forces were designed never to repeat our errors in Southeast Asia. As we tried for a decade to fight a conventional war against what was essentially a guerrilla force in Asia, now we once again are deploying our military might against far-flung nations.
Meanwhile, the real terrorist threat turns out to be an anonymous nobody lurking right next door.
James Ottavio Castagnera is a Philadelphia lawyer, writer and university administrator.
Contact James Ottavio Castagnera at castagnerac@aol.com.
http://articles.philly.com/2005-07-20/news/25432921_1_suicide-bombers-assassin-radical-idea
In The Proud Tower, a 1966 history of the West just before World War I, Barbara Tuchman wrote of Anarchism (with a capital A) during the late 19th century and early 20th century. "So enchanting was the vision of a stateless society . . . that six heads of state were assassinated for its sake in the 20 years before 1914." Her list included President William McKinley, shot by a lone assassin. After the murder of the Spanish premier in 1897, a British magazine opined, "The mad dog is the closest parallel in nature to the Anarchist," while another writer wondered how you could protect civilized society from "a combination of crazy people and criminals."
Whether you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald also was a lone assassin or the patsy of a broader conspiracy, read Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale. In it you'll meet a lonely young man who yearned to make his mark, and who was drawn first to Soviet-style communism and then to Castro's Cuba as sources for his half-baked ideas. That he first took a potshot at a right-wing general before being caught up in the Kennedy assassination suggests that his choice of victims was as much a matter of opportunity as it was the selection of specific targets.
Just as 19th-century lone killers were motivated by the writings of Anarchist intellectuals they had never met, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is said to have been heavily influenced by Leaderless Resistance, a 1962 doctrine by Ulius Louis Amoss. A former U.S. intelligence officer and Cold Warrior, Amoss founded the Baltimore-based International Service of Information Inc. When McVeigh and Terry Nichols did their dirty deed in 1995, Amoss had been in his grave for decades. His ideas had been kept alive primarily by an apostle named Louis Beam. McVeigh and Nichols never knew Beam either.
The Amoss/Beam idea is chillingly simple. In the words of one scholar, Simson Garfinkel, "Leaderless Resistance is a strategy in which small groups (cells) and individuals fight an entrenched power through independent acts of violence and mayhem."
This sounds a lot like what happened in London two weeks ago. In the words of one Fox News commentator, recalling the Madrid train bombing of a year ago, "both point to an al-Qaeda evolving into a movement whose isolated leaders offer video or Internet inspiration - but little more - to local 'jihadists' who carry out the strikes."
If this is how it is, then all of America's expenditures of lives and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq are so many wasted soldiers and dollars. In some sense we actually are repeating the mistakes of Vietnam, even though our modern armed forces were designed never to repeat our errors in Southeast Asia. As we tried for a decade to fight a conventional war against what was essentially a guerrilla force in Asia, now we once again are deploying our military might against far-flung nations.
Meanwhile, the real terrorist threat turns out to be an anonymous nobody lurking right next door.
James Ottavio Castagnera is a Philadelphia lawyer, writer and university administrator.
Contact James Ottavio Castagnera at castagnerac@aol.com.
http://articles.philly.com/2005-07-20/news/25432921_1_suicide-bombers-assassin-radical-idea
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