Machan's Musings - What Some Don't Get About Terrorism
by Tibor R. Machan
It is very dismaying—but not impossible to understand—that some folks do not comprehend the viciousness of terrorism. The bottom line is: tribalism. It is also called collectivism—socialist, fascist, communitarian or any other type of irrational lumping of human beings into groups they have never chosen to join.
Any time a terrorist attack occurs, a great many people wring their hands trying to figure out just what is amiss with such barbaric conduct. Be it an IRA, Palestinian or radical Muslim (suicide) attack, there is the usual acknowledgement that terrorism is horrible and the people doing it are over the top, but then the focus turns to whatever is supposed to have provoked it—usually George W. Bush and his predecessors' foreign policy measures. And some of this, of course, isn't beside the point in making sense of certain of these events.
Yet this focus on provocations misses the must basic issue, which is that terrorists lack the most elementary traits of civilization, which is to treat individuals as individuals, as sovereign, self-directed agents who aren't responsible for the misdeeds of their fellow human beings. If you insult me, hit me, steal from me, or do any other untoward deed toward me, it is utterly unjustifiable for me to go after your sister, your neighbor, someone who looks like you, someone sitting near you, someone who lives in the same country as you. If you have been wronged by A, the only recourse that is justified, morally and (at least as it should be) legally and politically, is to put you on trial and convict you of your bad deeds. Such due process is the bedrock of a civilized society and anyone who resorts to so-called reprisals that fail to meet this strict criterion may not be rationally excused.
In our age there is, of course, a widespread temptation to construct explanations for everything people do, as if they were bad storms coming off the Atlantic Ocean or viruses attacking the nervous system. The source of this temptation is the old philosophical doctrine of materialism, the view that everything in nature happens because some prior event caused it to happen.
This is, indeed, the origin of much of social science and social engineering but it misses a vital point about human life. People are agents, they do not simply react to what happens to them. So to really explain their conduct, it is not enough to gather up the data of what happens around them. It is imperative, for a decent understanding of how people act, to consider their own thinking and intentions and motives, things over which they have ultimate control.
Once you look at it this way, you have to realize that a terrorist is a vicious, irresponsible thug who refuses to control his own emotions and lashes out at some target, often with much intelligence and savvy, in the fashion of a toddler who is throwing a tantrum. And toddlers are not civilized beings, as any parent knows. Only toddlers can be excused because, well, they are too young to have the capacity to act more rationally, to be civilized. This explanation isn't, however, available for terrorists. They are adults and they ought to thinking before they lash out in their violent, reckless ways.
It is true, of course, that some of what terrorists object to is awful and their anger can even be justified. It is what they do about these thoughs and their emotional reactions that are vile. And no matter how valid some of their complaints are, tearing into the lives of innocent people is morally inexcusable. The way, however, many of them think is to lump other people together, in some sort of irrational corporate fashion, as if all of those in London had consciously, voluntarily joined in with a club with a mission statement forged by, say, Tony Blair, a mission statement that terrorists find objectionable. But this is wrong. Certainly a bunch of kids on a subway cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be so regarded. Nor can most citizens of London. Nor those of Israel or New York City. And to fail to realize this is the mark of the barbaric.
Sadly, the people of the world have tended to think in this tribalist fashion for centuries and centuries and even some of the most well educated, erudite blokes do not get it. The imperative for us all is to "get it" and to make as sure as possible that everyone around us gets it. It is individuals who are responsible for their conduct. Striking out at their neighbors and friends and family when you find that conduct intolerable is a rejection of a basic feature of human civilization.
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