The
current conventional wisdom about terrorism, Islamism, and the Middle
East is being bent, but not broken, by two events. On one hand, there is
the Boston bombing; on the other hand, developments in Syria and to a
lesser extent Egypt. What’s happening?
In
the Middle East, the misbehavior of Islamist movements is becoming more
apparent. In Egypt, there is the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood
regime, which may actually intend to create a non-democratic Sharia
state! Parallel behavior in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Turkey
is under-reported but occasionally surfaces.
The
most important single story at the moment, though, is Syria. Basically,
the Obama Administration
has woken up and recognized what was easily apparent two years ago:
They are helping to put radical, anti-American Islamists into power!
They are helping to provide them with advanced weapons which might be
used for activities other than what is intended!
When
the government wakes up it nudges the media to get up also. What is
quite startling is the extent to which the mass media is responsive to
government policy, at least this government’s policy. I want to explain
this carefully in order to be fair.
Take this article in the New York Times,
which can be summarized as saying that Islamist rebels’ gains in Syria
create a dilemma for the United States. Now this is an article about
U.S. policy so naturally it describes how that policy is changing.
Yet
at the same time, one wants to ask: Why haven’t the policy consequences
of this situation been described continuously in the past? If a big
truck is headed straight at you on the highway, might not the media
sitting in the front passenger seat shout out a warning? Does it have to
wait for the driver to notice and then it can say something?
And even so the diffidence is astonishing. It is good that the newspaper notices that the rebels are largely
comprised of, "Political Islamists inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood and others who want an Islamic-influenced legal code." But why even now one can say “Islamic-influenced?”
For
many years they have made it clear that they seek a total Islamic (in
their interpretation) state. It is the precise equivalent of describing
Chinese Communists more than sixty years ago, as they approached victory
in their country’s civil war, as “agrarian reformers.”
This story also parallels the much larger-scale debate about the Boston bombings. There’s a long piece in the New York Times about the Boston bombers. The lead gives the flavor of its argument:
“It
was a blow the immigrant boxer could not withstand: after capturing his
second consecutive title as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion of
New England in 2010, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, was barred from
the national Tournament of Champions because he was not a United States
citizen.”
The title of the piece is, “A Battered Dream, Then a Violent Path.” In other words, Tamerlan
Tsarnaev was not allowed to win a boxing championship because he wasn’t
a U.S. citizen. Blocked by bad treatment from America, he became more
Islamic and turned to terrorism.
The
balance is delicate here. On the one hand, it is vital to develop an
accurate picture of the terrorists’ background and explain the factors
providing a personal motivation. On the other hand, suggesting that if
the United States was nicer to Muslims and perhaps gave people
citizenship more easily, there would not have been terrorism in Boston.
Why
is this fundamentally dishonest in the way it is being presented here?
Because the authors of the piece focus in on the political theme they
want to have, excluding other factors in the context of their topic.
Where
to begin? The article includes a photo of the future terrorist as a
baby in Dagestan with his parents and his uncle. His uncle is wearing a
Russian army uniform. Now again in the photo he is a baby but the point
might be raised: Isn’t Tamerlan Tsarnaev more a product of Russian than
of U.S. conditions? After all, his family was involved in a conflict
against the Russian state; he and his brother were largely shaped by
that environment. He went back and forth to Russia and took instruction
from terrorist groups which had arrived at al-Qaida from that basis.
But
the authors cannot focus on this issue. Why not? Well, obviously they
want to blame America first but also there is a big land mine there.
Pointing out that immigrants—legal or otherwise—may bring with them
hatred, grievances, and cultural formations inimical to America that
makes a point in the immigration debate which would be the exact
opposite of what they want.
Of
course, different people bring different attitudes. It is the job of
the immigration system to profile the immigrants to decide who is going
to be a good citizen or even who should be let in. Was it a mistake that
Tamerlan’s brother did become a U.S. citizen pretty easily? No, it was
neither a mistake nor a conspiracy. It was the way profiling was defined
that made it possible.
To
have a serious discussion about why some immigrants become loyal,
productive
citizens and others become terrorists would be an important discussion.
But it cannot happen at present because it would have to include
factoring in such things as personal responsibility, gratitude to one's
adopted country, and even--totally unthinkable--the need to keep in mind
the immigrant's original home. The latter point is not to make it a
focus to block people from the Middle East.
On
the contrary, those who wanted to flee or had to do so were often
motivated because they wanted to live in a democratic, free country and
not under revolutionary Islamism. If you are in the United States, you
will be meeting a lot more such people,
especially from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria very soon.
A
second point would be to stress the benefits that the Tsarnaev brothers
and their family was given. Among them was welfare payments, a
scholarship, acceptance without bias into American society,
permissiveness even when they violated its tenets and laws
(wife-beating), not doing anything to them despite suspicion of being
potential terrorists (unlike what would have happened in Russia), and so
on. Against that long list of things, the article had to focus on the
one setback as they key to everything.
Here, too, however, the articles of the New York Times article
cannot go. For to step into this territory would require considering
the failure of a historic policy to assimilate immigrants that has been
replaced by Multiculturalism; the abandonment of patriotism and the
distaste for America and its society daily expressed by the citizens of
Boston met by the Tsarnaev; and the idea of entitlement and the welfare
state that pervaded their concept of America.
Yes,
there is ample material for biographical and psychological writing. But
what about, for example, this potential lead for the article:
Tamerlan
Tsarnaev found in America a society that did not require for him to
become loyal to the country, to understand how well it treated his
family, and how he could spend his time reading terrorist sites on the
Internet while his beaten wife worked 80 hours a week and his family
collected welfare. Spoiled by good treatment from America he became more
Islamic
and turned to terrorism.
Why
is such a theme inconceivable? Because of the reporters’ politics and
ideology. Deborah Sontag has won lots of awards. But in my neighborhood
she’s best known as the reporter who covered Israel at a time when it
was beset by the worst Palestinian terrorism. And then, after the
Palestinian leaders had rejected peace and a two state solution, when
they were fostering the deliberate murder of civilians she concluded
that they, “blocked by bad treatment from [Israel]…turned to terrorism.”
The
journalist Joan Walsh explained this ruling ideology from a different
angle. All this stuff about Islam and Chechens “In the end, it’s not
important.” She added:
“I
really do think that this whole discussion…proves once again that race
is entirely a political and social construct….We really don’t want to
acknowledge these boys have as much in common with Timothy McVeigh and
– actually, more to the
point, with school shooters. The Columbine killers, James Holmes then
really they do with hardened jihadis….They are a product of America as
well as a product of alienation.”
One wonders why Walsh didn’t say: They are a product of America as well as a product of alienation, Islam, and a radical revolutionary Islamist movement.”
She
couldn’t say that as that would transcend her ideology and make her
unpopular in her milieu. Her internal cultural-intellectual censor
wouldn’t let her do that.
Reducing
the motives for terrorism into psychobabble is to disarm one’s society
from being able to combat terrorism. It is amazing to see a democratic
society’s intellectual assets turn to the task of systematic obfuscation
as even the most ridiculous arguments flourish.
For
example, people who go on suicide terrorist missions don’t get to be
hardened jihadis because they don’t live long enough. And the whole
point is that they can behave that way because they don’t need to be
“hardened.” They can already:
(1) Settle into an identity that fits with revolutionary activity and terrorism;
(2) Get huge encouragement from an existing movement that even rules entire countries;
(3) Receive direct training from terrorist forces that operate in safe havens;
(4) Don’t believe that their
identities and grievances are mere constructs. One doesn’t fight and die for a construct.
I
am strongly reminded of a discussion many years ago with a brilliant
CIA psychiatrist who laid the foundation for understanding the thinking
of modern terrorists. One of the things he did was to divide them into
two categories. There were those whose parents would, at least
generally, approve of their violent acts and those that wouldn’t.
He
didn’t mean here that the individual parents would cheer
them—though that was possible—but that they were approved of by their
social-intellectual milieu. That’s why Islamist terrorists are numbered
in the tens of thousands and people like Holmes and McVeigh can be
counted on the fingers of your two hands.
A
few days ago I asked a first-rate, veteran journalist with much
experience in this area whether she had ever interviewed parents who
denounced their children’s actions. She replied, “No. And if they did
they’d know enough to keep their mouths shut.” Of course, that would be
because in Palestinian society they would be themselves isolated and
renounced for opposing jihad or at
least armed struggle.
In
the Boston case, the Tsarnaev brother’s mother cheered them and blamed
America. What is in play here is not alienation from America but hatred
of it based on a pre-existing template, combined with a willingness to
take its benefits as if they were owed to oneself.
Note:
The title of this article is drawn
from Oscar Wilde, "The Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name." That's a
phrase from his poem about homosexuality in Victorian England. Every
society has such things forbidden to discuss. The problem for American
society is that its official quarters act as if the country is still in
its Victorian Age and that race, gender, religious bias, and
homosexuality fall into that category. In fact, there are quite a
different set of unspeakable truths, taboo concepts for American
society, defined by a new version of intellectual repression called
Political Correctness.
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Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His next book, Nazis, Islamists and the Making
of the Modern Middle East, written with Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, will be
published by Yale University Press in January 2014. His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, also published by Yale. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog
is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
Forthcoming Book: Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press)
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
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