What most liberals can't seem to grasp

[jeskibuff]

Unfortunately, the article I'm linking to is rather lengthy, which means many people who need to read it and grasp the meaning of the words won't read it!. It is an excellent analysis of terrorist motivations entitled "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology"

Read it here: http://www.policyreview.org/AUG02/harris.html

Read it twice (or even more)

Okay, for those too lazy to read the whole thing, here's the Cliff Notes version:

• When confronted by a culturally exotic enemy, our first instinct is to understand such conduct in terms that are familiar to us
• in order to make sense of such strangeness, we must be able to reduce it to something that is not strange — something that is already known to us, something we know our way around.
• Others held...that the explanation of 9-11 was to be sought in what was called...the “root cause” of terrorism. Eliminate poverty, or economic imperialism, or global warming, and such acts of terrorism would cease.

• (think "Michael Mooron")
• This common identification of 9-11 as an act of war arises from a deeper unquestioned assumption...An act of violence on the magnitude of 9-11 can only have been intended to further some kind of political objective.
• Clausewitzian war, in short, is rational and instrumental. It is the attempt to bring about a new state of affairs through the artful combination of violence and the promise to cease violence if certain political objectives are met.
• A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest...My friend...was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington...My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration...what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy — a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors...when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props..in his private psychodrama.
• the fantasist has already projected onto us the role that we are to play in his fantasy; no matter what we may be thinking of his recital, it never crosses his mind that we may be utterly failing to play the part expected of us
• But what happens when it is not an individual who is caught up in his fantasy world, but an entire group — a sect, or a people, or even a nation?
• This theme of reviving ancient glory is an important key to understanding fantasy ideologies, for it suggests that fantasy ideologies tend to be the domain of those groups that history has passed by or rejected — groups that feel that they are under attack from forces which, while more powerful perhaps than they are, are nonetheless inferior in terms of true virtue.
• For the Sorelian myth to achieve its effect it had to be presented as theater. It had to grab the spectators and make them feel a part of the spectacle. The Sorelian myth, in short, had to be embodied in a fantasy — a fantasy with which the “audience” could easily and instantly identify.
• In all fantasy ideologies, there is a point at which the make-believe becomes an end in itself.
• The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves
• A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam
• in the fantasy ideology of radical Islam, suicide is not a means to an end but an end in itself. Seen through the distorting prism of radical Islam, the act of suicide is transformed into that of martyrdom — martyrdom in all its transcendent glory and accompanied by the panoply of magical powers that religious tradition has always assigned to martyrdom.
• it is a mistake to try to fit such behavior into the mold created by our own categories and expectations.
• If you attack your enemy with an act of terror — especially one on the scale of 9-11 — you must be prepared to follow up on it immediately. The analogy here to time-honored military strategy is obvious: If you have vanquished your enemy on the field of battle, you must vigorously pursue him while he is in retreat, i.e., while he is still in a state of panic and confusion...This al Qaeda failed to do. And the question is: Why?
• it should be obvious that if our enemy is motivated purely by a fantasy ideology, it is absurd for us to look for the so-called “root” causes of terrorism in poverty, lack of education, a lack of democracy
• Equally absurd...is the notion that we must review our own policies toward the Arab world — or the state of Israel — in order to find ways to make our enemies hate us less.
• There is no political policy we could take that would change the attitude of our enemies — short, perhaps, of a massive nationwide conversion to fundamentalist Islam.
• al Qaeda did not even claim to have made the attack in the first place! The U.S. and its allies were placed in the bizarre position of first having to prove who their enemy was — a difficulty that, by definition, does not occur in Clausewitzian war, where it is essential that the identity of the conflicting parties be known to each other, since otherwise the conflict would be pointless.
• we are fighting an enemy who has no strategic purpose in anything he does — whose actions have significance only in terms of his own fantasy ideology.
• we are at war with them, they are not at war with us — and, indeed, it would be an enormous improvement if they were. If they were at war with us, they would be compelled to start thinking realistically, in terms of objective factors such as overall strategic goals, war aims, and so forth. They would have to make a realistic, and not a fantasy-induced, assessment of the relative strength of us versus them...It matters not how much stronger or more powerful we are than they — what matters is that God will bring them victory.
• in al Qaeda’s collective fantasy there may exist the notion of an ultimate terror act...nothing comes closer to fulfilling this magical role than the detonation of a very unmagical nuclear device. That this would not destroy our society in one fell swoop is obvious to us; but it is not to our enemies, in whose eyes an act of this nature assumes a fantasy significance in addition to its sufficiently terrifying reality — the fantasy significance of providing al Qaeda with a vision of ultimate and decisive victory over the West.
• In the initial aftermath of 9-11, President Bush continually spoke of al Qaeda not as terrorists, but as “evildoers” — a term for which he was widely derided by those who found it offensively simple-minded and childish...Bush struck exactly the right note. The evildoer...is not motivated in his conduct by his wish to change the way other people act...other people exist in his eyes only as an opportunity to do evil: He doesn’t want to manipulate them for his selfish purpose; rather, his one and only purpose is to inflict evil on them
• Rather than interpreting 9-11 as if it were a Clausewitzian act of war, Bush instinctively saw it for what it was: the acting out of demented fantasy. When confronted with the enigma of 9-11 he was able to avoid the temptation of trying to interpret it in terms of our own familiar categories and traditions. Sound familiar, Bruno? The old "only tool is a hammer" issue?
• You do not make treaties with evildoers or try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers’ point of view. You do not try to appease them, or persuade them, or reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them.
• the victims and targets of such fantasy ideologies so frequently refused to see them for what they were, interpreting them as something quite different — as normal politics, as reasonable aspirations