We shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night in ever-increasing measure, casting upon them month by month
a heavier discharge of bombs and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries
they have showered upon mankind.
-- Prime Minister Winston Churchill, radio broadcast, June 22, 1941 --
If [the Japanese leaders] do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.
-- President Harry Truman, announcement 16 hours after the bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 --
Yesterday, 10 Arab states offered their support to the United States in its war against ISIS:* Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey refused to sign on, apparently out of fear for 49 of its citizens who are ISIS hostages. Other coalition members include Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.
Wait a second... In addition to Turkey, somebody else is missing.
After a conference on the ISIS menace was announced, a Russian diplomat complained that the participants did not include Russia and its allies, Iran and Syria.
"The guest list was ´incomplete, because it does not include all parties fighting terrorism,´ said Russia’s ambassador to Beirut, Alexander Zasypkin.
Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar quoted him as saying that the West acts ´as if it is the only concerned party, and not an issue for the international community as a whole.´
If the U.S. and the West ´plan to fight terrorism seriously, they should steer away from adopting double standards and work to unite the ranks and not create factions.´"
Are the Russians themselves adopting double standards and being divisive? Trouble-fêtes; aguafiestas; party poopers? Or, is there something serious in what they are saying?
Because if there is, it is very serious.
* * *
What is to be done about ISIS?
When faced with atrocities of the magnitude ISIS is committing against civilization (however defined), we will search for a new solution in what is oldest.
Given glaring similarities between ISIS and Nazi Germany, we answer What is to be done? with another question. What would Winston Churchill do if he were Prime Minister today?
No doubt many readers are gasping in dismay. Churchill, along with Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, committed unconscionable errors and omissions during World War II. Magnifying the collective gasp, as we will show below, under a certain British law in effect today, instead of residing in the White House and Downing Street, Churchill, FDR and Truman would be in prison.
Dismayed readers, I entirely agree with you. But let´s go one step further. Big men have big faults. How could it be otherwise? We are not asking if the three leaders were immoral; we are asking if they were terrorists.
We have discovered Churchill´s solution to ISIS, and will present it below. It is the same as FDR´s. It is loud, clear, unambiguous.
It is not what President Obama is doing.
* * *
First, astonishingly pedestrian thinking about terrorists that is a la mode in London and Washington needs a brief but full exposure. Only thereafter will Churchill´s solution to ISIS be meaningful.
On August 24, the Sunday Times told us that the British Secret Intelligence Service SIS (MI5 and MI6) had "identified the British fighter suspected of murdering the American journalist James Foley, senior government sources confirmed last night." No positive identification of Jihadi John, however, was forthcoming from the government.
Two weeks later, on September 8, RT News reiterated the official line:
"British and American authorities say they know the identity of the Islamic State (IS) hostage executioner ´Jihadi John,´ and are poised to reveal who he is within days, the Mirror reports....
A US intelligence source told the Mirror that the identity of the executioners would most likely be revealed officially within the coming days ´and it is only a matter of time before we bring him in.´ ....
Sources revealed to the Mirror that an elite FBI team flew into Britain last month. The FBI team is now closing in on 12 suspects in the UK, who are believed to have provided money, contacts, and helped Jihadi John travel to Syria. Among them are several suspects from the West Midlands who are already known to UK security services.
A US source told the Mirror: ´It has been a co-ordinated effort to track down the support network around the British Islamic State executioner. Our inquiries have given us leads across the country.´
´We are 99.9 percent certain now as to who ‘John’ is but investigators have had to tread softly in charting and approaching his wider network in the UK.´"
99.9 percent? Most likely? Within the coming days? Closing in on? What do those statements mean? A little bit pregnant? A mediocre helicopter pilot? A sometimes friendly tiger?
It turns out the Mirror report referred to above was published on September 5; therefore, we are already looking at old news. SIS, the coming days you bragged about in the Mirror are still coming and coming -- and going, along with your credibility.
Don´t look now, SIS, but you may be upstaged by American hotdoggers. According to a report filed September 9, "U.S. law enforcement officials believe they may have identified the masked man seen in the ISIS video of the killing of American journalist James Foley, two U.S. officials told CNN." Like it or not, the race is on. No guts, no glory.
We have no doubt, SIS, that, although the Americans may beat you to it, you will eventually publicly name Jihadi John. Our question is not if but when? Britain is simply not that big of an island. (P.S. I used to live there.)
There are many ways to identify a terrorist. However, some are more effective and efficient than others. Tragically, with all the coming days that keep on coming, it is becoming clearer which ways SIS is using.
British and American intelligence agencies, if you truly know who Jihadi John is, you should reveal his identity immediately.
(i) By your inquiries and your pursuit of leads across the country, the terrorist accomplices of Jihadi John already know you are in hot pursuit. Forget tread softly; there is no longer any strategic reason to withhold his identity from the public.
(ii) By publicly naming Jihadi John, the information about him and his network -- hence, about ISIS -- you are receiving will expand a hundred-fold. Make that a thousand.
Sidebar: I find it incredible that you refuse to publicl y identify Jihadi John, yet publicly announce that the FBI is on the verge of rounding up 12 suspects. Could it be that after all this time you still don´t have a clue who Jihadi John is and are hoping to get one by provoking panic, hence mistakes, among his accomplices?
One if by land, two if by sea. Any Jihadi terrorist in the United Kingdom who knows his trade prepares several escape routes from police dragnets such as the FBI´s. He will be half way around the world by now.
(iii) As mentioned, SIS and CIA, your delay in tearing the mask off Jihadi John is making you lose precious credibility. We need to expand on this subject...
British and American authorities admit they still have a .1% doubt about who Jihadi John is. A micro doubt, then, but nevertheless it exists. Which leads us to ask: are we, in truth, looking at a different scenario? U.S. cowboy thunderbull -- not James Bond Thunderball?
I´ve got a secret! -- American TV program, 1952-67. Takes you back to schoolyard days, doesn´t it. While we´re at it, I´ll show you! I´ll bet you remember I´m taking names! There is always I could do it if I wanted to; I just don´t want to.
Thunderbull.
Can you keep a secret?
As I write these words, 1:00 p.m. September 12, British and American governments still have not publicly identified Jihadi John. Their delay is bringing to light two serious flaws in the anti-ISIS fight.
(i) The delay suggests that SIS fell into the trap we warned about in our post of September 23, 2014, "James Foley and Jihadi John. Time/Time/Time."
SIS accepted the "help" of the CIA, FBI, and NSA; of Beltway bandits -- legions of Virginia lawyers and lobbyists and Maryland terrorism "advisors" and "consultants;" of Harvard professors; of various and sundry D.C. operators with political experience (read: flotsam-jetsam of failed election campaigns); of Pentagon understudies; of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed White House and Democrat Party B-squadders with connections; of computer "system engineer" hustlers and hangers-on; of listening to --- or worse yet, purchasing -- up-to-the-minute audio-visual equipment with pretty bar graphs and pie charts, lights, bells -- "ding-dong," etc.; of spending hundreds of thousands of man-hours pouring over NSA and CIA data beamed down from outer space that truly answer all questions -- except the ones you ask.
We will say it again: all those wonderful time-wasters. All those non-strategic thinkers.
SIS, here comes a sentence that has never been said before in Western civilization. You don´t have to use something simply because it cost a lot of money. No need either, to fly overstuffed people with overstuffed expense accounts across the Atlantic. As we showed in our posts on James Foley and on the Boston Marathon terrorist attack, the identification of Jihadi John is a telephone book away.
Is he an engineer? M.D.? Lab technician? Computer expert? If he decapitated James Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines, did ISIS give him the assignment because he had hospital experience? Is his dad an engineer? Doctor? Teacher? Lawyer? Architect? Small merchant? Is Mom a nurse? Accountant? Bureaucrat?
SIS, again, I don´t like to tell you this, but somebody must. A full public identification of Jihadi John would have, could have, should have been made weeks ago. His accomplices would have been arrested by now and told you more than you expected, wanted or needed to know.
(ii) The delay in publicly naming Jihadi John brings to the surface a crisis that transcends by far any single terrorist.
Unlike the CIA and SIS, why waste time? Let´s cut to the quick. As is the case of their American colleagues, British Intelligence has no idea what is to be done about ISIS because it has no idea what a terrorist is.
Ignorance explains why American authorities were holding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of ISIS, in prison, and let him go. They truly could not identify a middle class rebel -- al-Baghdadi has a Ph.D. -- turned terrorist sitting two feet in front of them.
Ignorance also explains why the United States trained and equipped anti-al-Assad soldiers who later joined ISIS. Those soldiers had been "vetted for links with extremist organizations." Translation: the U.S. asked a few perfunctory questions, e.g., "Are you married?," looked in the soldiers´ wallets, found no terrorist membership cards, so... By their actions, the American authorities made a formal declaration to the world: we have no analysis. It wasn´t the first time they did so,** and it won´t be the last.
Ignorance about terrorists is on display not just in live time on the ground. It is even more overt and incontrovertible in the clumsy and naive attempts of America and Britain to define terrorism.
We analyzed and rejected elsewhere the American government´s various definitions of terrorism. They are so full of holes a typical teenager can play them like a flute.
Here is the definition in English law ("Terrorism Act 2000"):
"In this act terrorism means the use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause; and it involves or causes:
- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to a property;
- a threat to a person's life;
- a serious risk to the health and safety of the public; or
- serious interference with or disruption to an electronic system."
A term which includes too much always says too little because it is incapable of making meaningful distinctions. According to the above definition, a 12-year-old kid who takes his BB gun and shoots out a streetlight because he hates the Jew living behind it is a terrorist; any and all anonymous hackers are terrorists, even one who interferes with a malicious program designed to provoke epileptic attacks. The British list of terrorists is as endless as juvenile delinquents.
At the same time, the British definition excludes from terrorism all individuals who have no political, religious, racial or ideological cause. If that stipulation is accepted, the perpetrators of massacres such as Columbine are not terrorists. That exclusion is hopelessly culture-bound; the reason it exists is not its explanatory power -- which is zero -- but its hidden political agenda. The fact is that American terrorists seldom proclaim political, religious, racial or ideological motives; ergo, terrorism becomes a foreign phenomenon far from Main Street America. An inconvenient fact is thereby lost in the shuffle: most terrorists are Main Streeters, i.e., middle class.
Including non-terrorists while excluding real terrorists, the British definition of terrorism is short on both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately, that is the only the start of its deficiencies...
Any typology is supposed to dispel confusion, not create it. To provide clarity, specified items such as the five contained in the definition of terrorism must be (i) mutually exclusive and (ii) exhaustive. Now, any electronic system is always a property of somebody, be it public or private; hence, items 2 and 5 are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, and incredibly, item 5 does not include destruction of an electronic system. Common sense tells us that destruction could be a terrorist act; hence, the definition is not exhaustive.
Speaking of exhaustive, the term welfare should have been included in item 4. If a terrorist produces and maintains a prolonged strike of public employees so as to disrupt social security payments, health and safety would not be directly put at risk, unlike welfare. For that matter, the wording should be health or safety so as not to require that both conditions be present for something to constitute a terrorist act.
Just a few more -- I promise. The words interference and disruption in item 5 are redundant; one or the other is sufficient. (I prefer disruption; interference is a bureaucratic weasel-word.) The same holds for the words involves and causes. Involves covers causes.
I could write a book of such criticisms, but why bother? The British definition of terrorism is a failure, but it is a successful failure. Here´s why:
Underneath all the hubris about transparency and clarity, ambiguity is the definition´s real goal. The reason is that in an ambiguous situation, he who is in a POSITION to know has the power. We will pick up this theme shortly.
I can´t conclude our critique without noting the definition´s obsessive use of the word serious. It is a vintage Freudian slip, for without even attempting to operationalize the word serious (example, serious damage = $50,000/more), the definition itself is anything but serious.
Or is it?
Let´s get practical. Who will determine in a real live legal case if a risk to the health and safety of the public was serious? Somebody must do it, and it won´t be me or you, dear reader. He who controls definitions controls the rules of the game. He who controls the rules of the game wins the game.
Lazy, sloppy wording, then, but lazy, sloppy wording for a purpose:
Unlike its we-know-but-we´re-not-telling non-identification identification of Jihadi John, here the British government truly knows something; it really has a secret. Power -- not clarity or protection or public guidance or peace or freedom or anything else -- is the name of the game. Power is why the British definition of terrorism is neither fish nor fowl; it´s pure fudge. Ambiguity reigns. And that means the British bureaucracy -- not Queen Elizabeth, the Prime Minister or Parliament -- reigns.
So, what is a terrorist? We will address that question below. In the meantime, via our critique of the British definition, what I am trying to tell you, SIS, in a nice way is: Like your American colleagues, when it comes to terrorists, you literally don´t know what you are talking about. No wonder neither you nor the Americans know what is to be done about ISIS.
Our critique of the British definition should not be dismissed as a purely academic exercise. Apart from the pointless and dangerous delay in identifying Jihadi John, the consequences of slab-dab, bureau-pathic thinking about terrorists are as real as they are grave. Ultimately, the definition of terrorist determines who will and will not be bombed. Who is a friend; who is a foe. Who will and will not go to prison. Who will live. Who will die.
You need proof?
* * *
It´s time to put the British definition of terrorism to a practical, historical test.
Was Prime Minister Winston Churchill a terrorist for conducting the "area bombing" of German cities, notably Hamburg, Dresden, Kassel, and Darmstadt, in World War II? (Note: what applies to Churchill applies to Franklin Roosevelt. The United States Army Air Forces participated in area bombing).
Was President Harry Truman a terrorist for ordering the nuclear bombing of Japan?
Many people answer yes to both questions. A lot more wonder.
We will conclusively show what you, dear reader, already suspect. Whether or not Churchill and Truman were terrorists depends on the definition of terrorist.
O.K., let´s put Churchill and Truman on trial. Bailiff, bring in the prisoners.
Here is how the British Government´s definition of terrorist would establish guilt or innocence.
Let´s re-run that definition:
"In this act terrorism means the use or threat of action designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public, or a section of the public; made for the purposes of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause; and it involves or causes:
- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to a property;
- a threat to a person's life;
- a serious risk to the health and safety of the public; or
- serious interference with or disruption to an electronic system."
Threat of action. Read again the quotes from Churchill and Truman at the top of this post. If they aren´t threats designed to influence, what is? Taste and gulp each month...miseries; may expect a rain of ruin: if those aren´t intimidations, what is?
Next, use of action. 90-166,000 died in Truman´s bombing of Hiroshima; 39-80,000 died in the bombing of Nagasaki. In Churchill´s area bombings, one million German civilians were killed or wounded, 7.5 million were rendered homeless.
On to political cause. Churchill definitely had one. He stated on May 13, 1940: "You ask, what is our policy? I will say: ... to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime."
President Franklin Roosevelt, who waged the vast part of World War II for America, expressed in slightly different terms the same political cause: "Democracy's fight against world conquest."
Harry Truman, who became president in 1945 on the death of FDR and continued the war effort, took up Churchill´s/FDR´s cause. He declared on May 8, 1945, on the surrender of Germany: "We must work to finish the war. Our victory is but half-won. The West is free, but the East is still in bondage to the treacherous tyranny of the Japanese."
Threat, action, intimidation, political objective. Serious violence, serious damage, serious risk to life and health, disruption of an electronic system. For those who want to characterize Churchill and Truman as terrorists, the British definition was made to order.
Verdict: guilty.
Bailiff, handcuff the prisoners.
* * *
So, were Churchill and Truman really terrorists?
To repeat, any judgment depends entirely on the definition of terrorist. We will demonstrate that fact by applying another definition which has nothing in common with those employed by the British and American governments.
Our definition is from The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion:
"A terrorist is usually a middle class rebel (1) experiencing magnified marginal or transitional conditions, who (2) voluntarily (3) goes through certain rites of passage, among which are (4) clique membership and (5) a deliberate decision to commit a criminal act that is almost always (6) violent and most often (7) murder, in (8) the name of higher intentions or convictions without (9) retaining consciously the ambiguity of his criminal act and his higher intentions/convictions.
He expresses powerful, unconscious, ambivalent emotions in two ways: (10) converting his intentions/convictions into fixed ideas or absolute truths, the opposite extreme from ambiguity, and (11) wielding uncertainty as a weapon. That uncertainty is total, as shown by the fact that (12) everyone -- allies, non-combatants, even himself -- is a potential victim."
Under that definition, Churchill and Truman are nowhere close to being terrorists. They were not middle class rebels experiencing magnified marginal or transitional conditions. They did not go through certain rites of passage, e.g., voluntarily and consciously murdering someone a la James Foley. They did not wield total insecurity as a weapon by which everyone, including their Western allies and even themselves, could end up as a victim of violence.
Finally, and perhaps most impressively -- and contrary to popular belief -- Churchill and Truman retained in consciousness the ambiguity of their devastating bombings and their noble intentions:
First, Churchill.
(i) "Are we beasts? Are we taking this too far?" Churchill asked regarding the Allied bombing of the Ruhr in 1943.
(ii) In 1949, on the verge of tears, Churchill told his son Randolph who had said Allied area bombing of Germany was equal in "horror" to the U.S. nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, "Tens of thousands of lives were extinguished in one night. Old men, old women, little children -- yes, yes, children about to be born."
Now, Truman. Arthur Schlesinger wrote:
"Revisionist historians condemn Truman for his allegedly unrepentant decision to drop the bomb in 1945. In fact, Truman behaved like a man most shaken by the decision. He had directed that the bomb be used 'so that military objectives are the target . . . and not women and children,' and he was considerably disturbed when he learned that most of those killed at Hiroshima were civilians.
The day after Nagasaki he ordered that further atomic bombing be stopped. He told his cabinet, as Henry Wallace recorded in his diary, that the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids.'"***
I have a message for you cynics out there. Even if Truman and Churchill were faking it -- even if their morals were written in jello -- if Jihadi John is taken alive, you will see and hear nothing approaching what you just read. A total absence of any doubt and self-questioning will play itself out before your eyes. I could write his entire self-righteous, finger-pointing, wooden dialogue, but you´re going to see it time and again, when ISIS members are captured and appear in court.
To conclude our Churchill/Truman trial: what a difference a definition makes.
Verdict: innocent.
Bailiff, remove the handcuffs.
* * *
Having blown away a few long-standing, highly-noxious fumes, we present Churchill´s solution to ISIS.
Churchill despised the Russian government as much as he despised Hitler. That moral equation made inevitable an ethical dilemma whenever -- and it was only a matter of time -- Hitler attacked Russia.
Here is Churchill´s take on things in a June 22, 1941 radio broadcast hours after Nazi troops invaded Russia:
"The Nazi regime is indistinguishable from the worst features of Communism. It is devoid of all theme and principle except appetite and racial domination. It excels in all forms of human wickedness, in the efficiency of its cruelty and ferocious aggression. No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no words that I've spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding...
We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime. From this nothing will turn us. Nothing. We will never parley; we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his gang. We shall fight him by land; we shall fight him by sea; we shall fight him in the air, until, with God's help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated its people from his yoke.
Any man or State who fights against Nazism will have our aid. Any man or State who marches with Hitler is our foe. This applies not only to organized States but to all representatives of that vile race of Quislings who make themselves the tools and agents of the Nazi regime against their fellow-countrymen and against the lands of their births. These Quislings, like the Nazi leaders themselves, if not disposed of by their fellow-countrymen, which would save trouble, will be delivered by us on the morrow of victory to the justice of the Allied tribunals. That is our policy and that is our declaration."
Churchill´s solution is as obvious as it is overlooked by Obama. To wit:
Any man or state that fights ISIS is our friend. Yes, that includes Iran and Syria. To be sure, they do things I personally disapprove of; I am sure they would say the same thing about me (you too, dear reader) -- but all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding.
White House, CIA, SIS, State Department, Pentagon, Secret Service and war profiteers everywhere: sorry, but Churchill´s solution doesn´t stop at Syria and Iran.
If Cuba and North Korea want to join in the fight against ISIS, welcome. (Picture the impossible: North and South Korea fighting side-by-side. Ditto Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels.) No, I didn´t forget Venezuela and Ecuador. Russia? China? -- but of course. Everyone, anyone, everywhere is welcome who has something to contribute in the war against ISIS.
We have but one aim and one single irrevocable purpose. We are resolved to destroy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and every vestige of ISIS.
A Churchillian World Against ISIS would set an unparalleled precedent. World history would record that a lesson finally, really, actually had been learned from world history.
There is something else the World Against ISIS would do.
Everywhere you look, the new world order is the old world disorder. A dead puppet show. By having all people and governments united against ISIS, long-suppressed, desperately-needed radical realignments of nations and groups would stir, take form.
Who knows where co-operating with others will lead? Certainly not Henry Kissinger who a few days ago pontificated that Iran "was a bigger problem than ISIS." The dead hand of the dead puppet keeps on playing.
FDR practiced Churchill´s all-inclusive policy. Among others, Ho Chi Minh, whom Kissinger fought tooth and nail (and lost), had been a steadfast American ally against the Japanese.
We give the last word not to Obama or Kissinger, not to Bush or the Carlyle Group or to any other person or entity which, as a result of arms profits or other financial interests, is preventing the formation of a Churchillian World Against ISIS. Instead, we give it to a genuine statesman:
Hitler and his Nazi gang have sown the wind.
Now let them reap the whirlwind.
-- Winston Churchill, December 30, 1941 --
Update, September 15, 2014: All The Wrong Moves. Two days ago, British aid worker David Haines was presented in a "beheading" video released by ISIS. The video was strikingly similar to the videos of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, i.e., Jihadi John is the master of ceremonies and no beheading is shown.
Our deepest sympathies go out to family and friends of David Haines.
I have yet to see a recent poll of United Kingdom citizens about ISIS; however, I suspect the results are similar to those of a Wallstreet Journal/NBC News/Annenberg poll conducted of Americans on September 11-13. A whopping 68% had litte or no confidence in Obama´s policy of "degrading and eliminating the threat posed by ISIS in Iraq and Syria."
That plummeting confidence is no doubt in part due to the failure of the CIA and SIS to name publicly Jihadi John. After all, if with all their voice and vein recognition software, with all their outer space hardware, they cannot identify him, what else are they incapable of doing?
I do not know if an early public identification of Jihadi John would have prevented the slaying of David Haines. I do know that, while Americans´ faith in Obama´s policy against ISIS is capsizing, the confidence of Jihadi John is soaring. Along with 68% of Americans, he cannot help but sense the American and British governments are stumbling and fumbling.
Our method of identifying terrorists has never varied. Forget CIA software and NSA hardware; forget Beltway Bandits; forget Harvard professors; ad nauseam. 1. Take out the telephone book. 2. Turn to universities...
Jihadi John knows thunderbull when he sees it. Readers, brace yourselves for a fourth beheading.
_______________
*ISIS is only the latest in a long series of toxic amalgamations of middle class rebels and lumpenproletariat. (For concrete examples of ISIS lumpens, click here.)
The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion:
"The combination of middle class rebels with lumpenproletariat elements can have consequences as spectacular as they are lethal. According to investigators, the attacks in Madrid in March 2004, were the work of a “collaboration of educated, middle-class and ideologically radical Muslims with drug dealers and petty criminals.” Elaine Sciolino, “More Madrid suspects at large,” International Herald Tribune, April 12, 2004. Two other notable cases: (i) the Symbionese Liberation Army whose members in 1974, kidnapped the heiress Patti Hearst; (ii) the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany. Andreas Baader was a high school dropout and petty criminal. Ulrike Meinhof was the daughter of a prominent art historian.
The relationships between middle class rebels and petty criminals that generate hyper-violence have never been adequately portrayed, much less analysed; Dostoevsky’s The Possessed comes the closest. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood explores how, acting together, two petty criminals were capable of committing a heinous crime that neither could have committed alone." (p. 272)
**The CIA knows nothing about terrorists. There is only one party in the world who agrees with that assessment: the CIA.
If one picture is worth a thousand words, one act is worth a thousand pictures. In this case, waterboarding. We noted in our post of April 23, 2011, "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Part 2: Catch 23" that when the United States started capturing al-Qaeda militants
"the CIA simply did not know how to handle terrorists. The CIA made that admission in a New York Times article.
´I asked, "What are we going to do with these guys when we get them?" recalled A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. from March 2001 until 2004. ´I said, "We’ve never run a prison. We don’t have the languages. We don’t have the interrogators."´
The CIA's resounding inexperience, plus a political pressure-cooker atmosphere to ´do something,´ doomed the agency to follow the path of least resistance. The Times article observes:
´In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.´
In other words, rather than create, develop, and employ techniques relevant to contemporary terrorists -- most of whom are middle class rebels -- the U.S. took lessons at the feet of foes it had defeated years ago."
***Arthur Schlesinger, The Cycles of American History, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999, p. 398.