Attention, War, and Peace
Notes on Terror and Terrorism, 1
Since September 11, much has happened that seems connected: the apparent quick defeat of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, new terrorist acts in Pakistan along with a change in its government's allegiances and heightened tensions on its Indian border, a new Russian alignment with the United States, more intense fighting between Israel and the Palestinians. Through all these Islamic terrorism and reactions to it run as a common thread. Has enough time passed for us to reflect on the basic mechanisms involved? I started the following notes in an effort to understand shortly after the attacks, but it has taken quite some time to move towards what I think may be clarity.
It is not with terrorism we must start, but with simple terror. There are two ways in which physical force against people may be used. In the less common instance the direct application of force achieves a physical end: shoving someone out of your way, shooting down an enemy bomber before it bombs you, shooting someone to take their money, etc. However, far more common is the use of force to scare others into giving way to you in other words, terror. This is the psychological effect at work in spanking a child, in having a security guard standing in front of a store with a holstered gun, in a robber demanding money while holding a knife at the victim's throat, in a knight on horseback with lance horizontal charging an opponent, in the US dropping the A-bomb on Hiroshima, or in having thousands of nuclear tipped missiles poised at the ready all forms of terrorizing the opponent. All rely on weapons or their use drawing attention to themselves, and in the last two cases, among others, the attention usually flows through media of some kind. Likewise, a party in power can ward off opposition by making it known that even mild opponents will be jailed, tortured, killed, so that one must watch what one says or even thinks very closely, which will work only so long as the party can make clear its fierceness, often through public displays of strength, along with public accusations, arrests and show trials.
The more extensive the media attention, the more effective the terror, as a rule. Most of us have never seen military weapons in actual use, and certainly not nuclear ones. We know about the dangers and fear them entirely through media. And as media grow in ubiquity, the clever use of such weapons as attention-getting devices increases their effectiveness, in some cases without more than a handful of scientists, or not even them, ever witnessing the weapons' actual use. We know what neutron bombs would do entirely through media descriptions, based on imaginative extrapolations, since they have never been tested in any situation even approximating their intended use. Or take the danger of smallpox used as a weapon which now frightens us in the US. We have no evidence that anyone has ever used it as such or that any virus stocks could be available for those purposes. Nonetheless, we have been worried enough to insist that extensive advance countermeasures be taken, such as producing and keeping an adequate supply of smallpox vaccine for hundreds of millions of people .
As the smallpox case shows, those in power or even desiring power may use fear of someone else's destructive potential to their own advantage, simply by pointing out the danger. The implicit threat is that one?s life will be in jeopardy if one does not accept the (supposedly) defensive measures they support. And of course fear can be a powerful tool to win acceptance for one?s ideas even if the fear is of a natural process, be it cancer or earthquakes. Again, attention to the dangers through media is a crucial part of having an effect.
A very special, rare case of the use of terror is terrorism
A very special, rare case of the use of terror is terrorism: A surprise attack, generally on civilians for the purpose of terrorizing a much larger group, usually to serve the some explicit political cause. Thus IRA separatist terrorism in Northern Ireland or Great Britain, Basque separatist terrorism in Spain, Tamil Tiger separatist terrorism in Sri Lanka, the Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany in the 70?s, the Red Brigades in Italy at the same time, abortion clinic bombing here in the US, Zionist terrorism against British occupiers in the ?40's, among many others. Usually the methods used today are bombs placed in advance in a public place, though older varieties emphasized hostage takings, including kidnapping and hijacking of airplanes, buses. and boats. Almost always, publicity is an essential factor.
Terrorism is deliberately disruptive of the established order, and the more it interrupts the otherwise even, quiet flow of life, the more successful it will be in attracting reporters and video-camera people, etc. These journalists in turn get attention only by reporting on and showing not what is expected but what is shocking and disturbing. Those who resort to terrorism,then, have to be those who do not see themselves aided by the pre-existing order, and so generally see themselves as unable to use other kinds of power, or other forms of terror to get power.
Terrorism thus is not normal warfare. If one had the organization and the military strength to wage normal war, terrorism would seem a relatively insignificant sort of terror, not nearly as likely to be effective, and indeed most terrorists take an incredibly long time to get what they want, if they ever do. But it must be added that today, in most situations, having the power to wage normal warfare usually carries with it extreme pressures not to resort to it, in part because of the balance of terror and in part (often these days the much larger part) because of the attention a warlike act can now help draw to the inevitable innocent victims a point I will elaborate on in a bit.
To return to terrorism, to be noticeable and continuing, it generally does require a quite sophisticated organization; and thus is hardly a tool for the completely powerless. Leaders or organizers must be able to command considerable attention to recruit terrorists, although the attention needed for specific recruitment must be hidden from the general public.
How new all this really is depends on exact definitions. Was the 17th century Gunpowder plot against the British Parliament intended to frighten, or was it intended just to get rid of Parliament? Were 19th century anarchist and leftist bombers terrorists or assassins? (It's not the perceived rightness or wrongness of the acts I'm looking for at this point, but rather a way to think about what they were trying to accomplish.) What is evident, especially after September 11, is that the means to conduct a terrorist act that will get huge attention is much greater now than it has ever been before. For one thing,modern technologies, like jet travel, though ostensibly intended for quite other purposes, offer opportunities for spectacular acts. For another, world wide media provide a huge audience for the hideous results.
If terrorism depends on attention getting, is Al Qaeda terrorist? Before September 11, its successful acts, mostly bombings, were chiefly directed at either the US military or US embassies, though with ample collateral damage when the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were hit. In addition, al Qaeda, unlike most terrorist groups does not take credit for its bombings, nor indicate their goals directly.
The Sept 11 attack thus represent a departure from the al Qaeda norm insofar as the vast majority of the victims were predictably civilian, unconnected with the government, the number of deaths was far higher than ever before, and neither bombs nor guns were used. It was also the first successful attack within the US, apparently. The purpose of the attack is also completely unclear. Could it have even not been intended as terror but merely to physically destroy Wall Street, say? Could it have been intended to cause a run on banks or to enrich someone who sold short earlier? Was it a severe form of architectural criticism? (Mohammed Atta, the leading hijacker was a student of city-planning.) Would the buildings hit have been hit were they were not called the World Trade Center? (They were of course not in fact the center of world trade, but just large, relatively inexpensive offices for Wall Street, and occupied by firms connected with various aspects of finance and insurance, mostly focussed on the United States domestic economy rather than world trade or finance.)
Whatever the attack?s intent, however, it clearly did evoke widespread terror, and this in consequence of getting even more widespread attention. Did the terrorists guess that media presence in Manhattan would ensure that the second plane?s hitting the second tower would be broadcast live, that the destruction of the towers would be witnessed on TV, probably by billions? Was the purpose in killing so many to ensure that the terror would be more severe?
Ironically, one way this attack was like others attributed to al Qaeda was that no one took credit at the time! Is this proof they were behind it? In fact, to this day, al Qaeda has never officially taken credit and even the tapes found in Afghanistan in which bin Laden appears to claim responsibility, no real justification is offered. Yet even without al Qaeda itself saying anything, world media and governments quickly decided who the author of the act was, which added to the reverence in some circles, as well as to the revulsion in others, accorded bin Laden, and no doubt added volunteers for al Qaeda and money in its coffers. (Recall the Osama T-shirt sales in Pakistan and elsewhere.)
If terrorism at a certain scale keeps happening, does one get used to it? Do the one to thirty people killed each time in recent terrorist attacks in Israel seem less important in the light of the thousands killed on September 11? Or, in fact, at least here in the US,is our attention since that date so sharply attuned to terrorism that those smaller numbers jar us more than a similar number earlier?