Thinking about the Insurgents Posted by Michael Signer

One silver lining in the stormclouds of the public outcry about American policy in Iraq might be a public push to make our leaders think harder, and more accurately, about just what's going on in Iraq.  Just last week, Donald Rumsfeld explained the motivations of the insurgents in Iraq as religiously motivated: 

"These people aren't trying to promote something other than disorder, and to take over that country and turn it into a caliphate and then spread it around the world."

But it looks like Rumsfeld just might be dead wrong about the motivations of the insurgents.  Is it any surprise that a faith-based Administration would make the mistake of assuming our enemies are motivated solely by faith?

A caliphate is defined as an Islamic polity led by a caliph, who is "regarded as a successor of Muhammad and by tradition always male."

If Secretary Rumsfeld had this right, we would be battling inflexible religious fanatics in Iraq, insusceptible to reason, incapable of diplomacy, unresponsive to perceptible shifts in strategy or policy. 

With such a foe, the only option, really, would be to destroy them--because how else do you deal with people so warped by a radical violent religiosity they have become, essentially, irrational actors?

Right?

Well, it feels right.  Many Americans received training in rational choice analysis, whether in undergraduate economics or political science classes.  We're accustomed to assuming that an adversary weighs choices rationally with an eye to self-interest--and if they don't, they're not only irrational (a social science sin) but something worse than that--differently human, or even subhuman.  If someone isn't motivated by rational concerns, then they cannot be reasoned with. And if they're fighting against you, the only thing these subhumans will respond to are primal, animal implements--like brute force.

But what if this is all wrong?  What if the fighters are instead motivated by political concerns--not faith?  What if a political ideology motivated by resentment of occupation; hatred of Western culture; annoyance at the serially detrimental effects (from lack of electricity to prevalence of looting) of American administrative and military mistakes; dislike of individual personalities (like Paul Bremer); and, simply, revenge?

While these all may be noxious and valid for attacks from us based on America's self-interest, a political conviction presents a fundamentally different target than a warped heart.

An article in this month's Atlantic by Nir Rosen reveals the fundamentally political nature of the insurgents' ideology.  Rosen spent 16 months reporting from Iraq after the invasion.  His interviews with insurgents yield some findings that shouldn't be surprising, but sadly are:

Most insurgency groups view themselves as waging a muqawama--a resistance--rather than a jihad.  This is evident in their names and in their propaganda.  For instance, the units commanded by the Association of Muslim Scholars are named after the 1920 revolt against the British.  Others have names such as Iraqi Islamic Army and Flame of Irawq.  They display the Iraqi flag rather than a flag of jihad...

When I asked Sunni Arab fighters and the clerics who support them why they were fighting, they all gave me the same one-word answer:  intiqaam--revenge.  Revenge for the destruction of their homes, for the shame they felt when Americans forced them to the ground and stepped on them, for the killing of their friends and relatives by U.S. soldiers either in combat or during raids.

This basic insight is confirmed in a similarly illuminating article in the New York Review of Books by William Dalrymple.  Dalrymple's article is about the wrongheaded focus on the Pakistan's madrasas -- cleric-run religious schools.  He leads in with another quote from Rumsfeld in 2003 (he's the gift that keeps giving):

"Are we capturing, killing, or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrasas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training, and deploying against us?"

Dalrymple argues instead that, while the madrasas do have some dangerous tendencies, they're not responsible for fueling Al Qaeda-style terrorism:

The men who planned and carried out the September 11 attacks have often been depicted in the press as being "medieval fanatics." In fact it would be more accurate to describe them as confused but highly educated middle-class professionals. Mohamed Atta was an architect; Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's chief of staff, was a pediatric surgeon; Ziad Jarrah, one of the founders of the Hamburg cell, was a dental student who later turned to aircraft engineering; Omar Sheikh, the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl, was a product of the London School of Economics. As the French scholar Gilles Kepel puts it, the new breed of global jihadis are not the urban poor of the third world so much as "the privileged children of an unlikely marriage between Wahhabism and Silicon Valley, which al-Zawahiri visited in the 1990s." 

It's the same basic point--if we continue to think that religious fanaticism is driving the military conflict, we will continue to misunderstand how to defeat our enemies.  Dalrymple's conclusion?  We need comprehension of their differences with our policy:

All this highlights how lacking in intellectual sophistication the debate about al-Qaeda still is. Again and again, we are told that terrorism is associated with poverty and the basic, Koranic education provided by madrasas. We are told that the people who carry out this work are evil madmen who hate our wealth and our freedoms, and that no debate is possible as they "aim to wipe us out" (as one British cabinet minister told the BBC after the attacks on London). That the hostility of the Islamists may have links with US foreign policy in the Middle East, especially the Anglo-American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, is consistently denied, despite the explicit video testimony to the contrary by both al-Zawahiri and Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the London bombers. 

This is not to say that we should alter our policy, whether in Iraq or Palestine.  Those are bridges that come later.  To even get to the point of figuring out whether to reason with terrorists and insurgents, we have to understand how they think. 

But I don't see Secretary Rumsfeld, or much of the American leadership, evidencing the slightest interest in that basic goal.

I don't even really want to think about it.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Thanks for posting this Michael.

And as important as it is to distinguish political from religious motivations of the insurgents, it is just as important to distinguish different kinds of political and religious motivations. Much of the best reporting from Iraq, including Rosen's, has stressed the sheer diversity of insurgent groups.

I wonder if Rumsfeld really believe what he is saying, or is just engaging in a dishonest propaganda campaign?

[Laurila]

Articles from journalists who have met and spoken with the concerned civilians in Iraq, and not only with allied troops, have existed for quite some time. Their authors seem to have been judged to have gone native, and thereby become unreliable if not irrelevant.

Has the climat changed after the hurricanes, so that articles as this by Nir Rosen are less likely to be repudiated?

(I do by the way not really know if it's possible or meaningful to try to make a distinktion between "resistance members" and civilians.)

[FredW]

"If Secretary Rumsfeld had this right, we would be battling inflexible religious fanatics in Iraq, insusceptible to reason, incapable of diplomacy, unresponsive to perceptible shifts in strategy or policy.
...
so warped by a radical violent religiosity they have become, essentially, irrational actors?
"
This is a very prejudiced view of religious people. Religious wars between Christians don't usually trigger such stereotypes in us. Read about the 30-Years War.

Many religious leaders have espoused the idea that anything for God is okay -- that the ends justify the means. Forced conversion results in generations of pious followers, and so on. So why can't they be as flexible as nationalists, imperialists, the vengeful and the defenders of home and hearth?

Do you really think the war between Hitler and Stalin showed greater flexibility of outlook or rationality on both sides?

Inventing suicide bombing is was a reasonably creative thing to do. Likewise IED's...

And the category has fuzzy edges. How do you classify the fanatic kamikaze Japanese of WWII ?

[bob mcmanus]

This post switched from the Iraqi insurgency to al-Qaeda,
I guess trying to show that in the two largely distinct "wars" we are fighting, the administration is misjudging both enemies. I found the conflation undortunate and confusing. It also seems the the Taliban (or someone like them?) is intensifying the conflict in Afghanistan, with two helicopters downed this week. Are we fighting three wars, against three enemies?

I don't mean to be snarky. I just spent a half-hour studying counter-insurgency theory. It does not appear to me that we have a mere insurgency in Iraq. Kervick mentions multiple players, and although al-Qaeda may not be a large problem in Iraq, there may be, and may arise religiously-motivated violent groups. From both Sunni and Shia. Dan Kervick separatist political solution may be too simple.

[william]

The Administration being ‘faith-based’ is irrelevant to the article and the situation at hand (Unless evidence is provided).

But in Iraq, the lower end, ground fighters—the suicide bombers--‘insurgents’ are motivated by faith, because they are not motivated by politics, partly because no brand of politics espouses blowing yourself up for the cause.

Someone mentioned the Japanese kamikaze, and well, kamikaze means: "Divine wind". Remember the emperor was suppose to be a god. So, that answers that question.

[Jeff younger]

Arab culture (by-and-large) makes no distinction between religion, the state and politics. Patai's "The Arab Mind" is indispensable on this point.

I am unaware of anyone claiming that the terrorists are not motivated by US foreign policy. Indeed, our foreign policy is precisely the bugbear they seek to tame. We do not have a dichotomy: the terrorists can be opposed to US foreign policy and be brought to that view by an immoderate religious ideology, which ideology is not amenable to negotiation.

I can’t see Signer’s point here.

[william]

I can’t see JY's point either. U.S. policy can motivate any nation to any action, but is the prime movement political or religious or a complication of the two.
Now, again, the fighter on the ground tends to be motivated differently from the upper level hierarchy, i.e. the leaders. There is no evidence to show that the insurgents are not religiously motivated. The Allah is great slogans are telling. To someone who listens.

[ephriam]

the will of jesus. or aolhometown

[Jeff younger]

William, do you disagree with me, or with Signer, or both? Why?

[J Thomas]

This sounds like one of those things where the argument is about how to look at it.

Like, consider ProLife terrorists who bomb abortion clinics. Are they motivated by intense religious feeling or by the actions of the US government which allows abortion clinics to exist and to advertise publicly?

Can the two causes even be separated?

[Jeff younger]

J Thomas, you have pointed out another contradiction of neo-liberalism. While liberals exhort us to "understand" the terrorists, we hear no exhortations to "understand" domestic terrorists like abortion-clinic bombers.

We don't read liberals clamoring for the US to change its abortion laws to accommodate the "interests" of abortion-clinic bombers, yet liberals want the US to consider changing its foreign policy to accommodate the "interests" of foreign terrorists.

In reality, unlimited goals imply unlimited means. There can be no negotiation with terrorists, including abortion-clinic bombers. I'm glad to see you agree.

You'll make a fine conservative one day.

[J Thomas]

Jeff, I've had problems with that particular issue. I want us to understand the terrorists -- how can we win when we don't understand them and understand ourselves? And if they have some legitimate complaints, we should fix those whether it's terrorists complaining about them or not. Why give them unnecessary recruiting points? Reasonable people agree with me about that. And when I make the exact same argument about anti-abortion fanatics they get mad.

Similarly, they tend to be all for measures to oppose racism in the USA. But tell them that palestinians get treated far worse by israel than blacks in the USA under segregation and they get all defensive.

I think people generally -- conservative, liberal, neocon, whoever -- just don't think things out very consistently. We just have to live with that.

I haven't found a good political label for myself. "Radical center" and "radical front" both sound wrong. "Radical moderate" makes people think I'm joking.

[Joe S]

The abortion analogy is not on point. Abortion policy regulates abortions, not enforcement of domestic terrorism. Domestic terrorism is outside its scope. If you were to argue that our enforcement policy with respect to domestic-bombers was in fact a proximate cause of clinic-bombings, then your analogy would be on point.

Seeing as how our military policy has the goal of defeating an insurgency, isn't it of primary importance to understand how our policy may be creating the problem it attempts to alleviate? The point is, our foreign policy is contributing to the problem it purports to solve.

[Jeff younger]

J Thomas, continuing his campaign of equivocation, wrote "I want us to understand the terrorists -- how can we win when we don't understand them and understand ourselves?"

There are two senses of ‘understand.’ (1) “to achieve a grasp of the nature, significance, or explanation of something, ” and (2) “to show a sympathetic or tolerant attitude toward something.”

In the sentence above, he uses (1). Then, with hardly a care for consistency, writes “And if they have some legitimate complaints, we should fix those whether it's terrorists complaining about them or not.” As though (1) automatically implies (2). Tsk. Tsk.

It is precisely because we do understand terrorism (including abortion bombers) in the sense of (1), that we refuse understanding in the sense of (2).

[Jeff younger]

Joe, I admit you are right regarding military policy in Iraq, but you are wrong regarding foreign policy. The analogy holds for our policy with Israel, et. al.

[J Thomas]

Jeff, I may be misunderstanding you, but I think I disagree.

When it's a matter of understanding human beings, you don't understand them until you do both your #1 and #2. When you have a clear sympathetic feeling for them in addition to the cold facts, and you see that despite everything there's no acceptable result without fighting them, then you're ready to kill them. At that point you're ready to do what's necessary and stop when it's done.

If you can't sympathise with the enemy then you might win by accident. Or you might have some sort of grotesque spasm that sort of looks like a victory, and then have it all to do over or worse. Or you could lose. You do what you have to, sympathetic or not, but without sympathy how do you even know what's needed?

There may be people who can understand the whole thing and still be too squeamish to do what's necessary. People like that shouldn't be soldiers. People who refuse to see it through the other guy's eyes shouldn't be soldiers either.

[Jeff younger]

J Thomas, wow. I can see "grasping the nature" of an enemy, to see it from his viewpoint. But when you ask us to show sympathy and tolerance for a suicide bomber that detonates on a bus carrying school kids, well that's ridiculous.

Your ethics are repugnant, but I appreciate your honesty.

[J Thomas]

Sympathy, not tolerance. You don't let the schoolchildren play with firearms unsupervised no matter how much you love them, and you don't tolerate somebody blowing them up no matter how well you understand him wanting to.

In both cases you might use your understanding to look for ways to redirect them.

[Jeff younger]

J Thomas, you are equivocating again! You are using ‘sympathy’ when you mean ‘empathy.’

Little wonder you have such difficulty understanding people, you either aren’t very facile with English or you’re quite dishonest. I can’t tell which.

Beside, any fool can see that (1) above involves “to achieve a grasp of the nature, significance, or explanation” for other points of view, even while it does not entail sympathy.

Your straw man simply can’t stand without flummery.

[J Thomas]

Jeff, it may be that you would use the word "empathy" for what I call sympathy. If you believe you understand what I'm saying, why not focus on that instead of quibbling about the wording? It's possible you don't understand, as I've several times now misunderstood you.

I don't think I'm propping up a straw man. If it's a straw man you're attacking, very likely you've missed my meaning.

[Jeff Younger]

J Thomas, I'll let you continue to invent new meanings for words. Pardon me, if I ignore your advice on language.

I'll keep using well known connotations, so people don't get confused. You may not have much sympathy for that view, but I'm sure you can empathize.

[J Thomas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy

I don't understand your confusion here. You haven't said why you object to sympathy as opposed to empathy.

[Jeff Younger]

J Thomas, you’re a sophist. You don't seek to understand but rather to obfuscate. My aim was to show how you do it --- you employ sophomoric equivocations. I have to say, the last one was hilariously inept.

Helping you to understand was not my goal.

[J Thomas]

Jeff Younger, you are arguing in bad faith. Now you admit that you are not attempting to communicate.

I will no longer give you the benefit of the doubt, unless I forget and do so by habit. I will respond if you say something interesting or something that calls up an interesting idea, despite your bad intentions.

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