Terrorism’s fight-or-flight
Take a simple concept from high school biology class. The most innate human reaction to a threat is the fight-or-flight response. Given a threatening situation, a human chooses either to confront the source of the threat or to avoid the source of the threat. Fight-or-flight is the foundation of survival.
Terrorism is a threat. Its primary purpose is to instill fear, and the brand of extreme Islamist terror practiced today seems to have little agenda but to instill fear; al Qaeda has no demands, no “note” it sends prior to bombings. al Qaeda kills to instill fear, not to invoke change.
As Westerners, we stand in the face of terrorism. We are threatened. We are in fear. And we are faced with the most basic of choices: the fight-or-flight choice. To fight is to confront the source of the threat, to meet it head-on, and to attempt to eradicate it. To flee is to placate, to appease, and to hope that the source of the threat goes away or becomes unthreatening.
Given this backdrop, terrorism has fundamentally divided the West into those who fight and those who flee. In the former camp stand conservatives and moderates in the U.S., most of Israel, and conservatives in Europe. In the latter camp stand liberals in the U.S. and moderates and liberals in Europe. Westerners are divided by our reaction. America fights; Europe flees.
And we knew Madrid was coming. For al Qaeda, it is not about America, but the West. The question was how Europe would react to “their September 11″ when it inevitably arrived. It came, and they are reacting. Fleeing. Spaniards voted out the conservative government that chose to fight with the U.S. and replaced it with a socialist government that vowed to flee Iraq. The terrorists won. They provoked regime change from explosives. They shaped policy. They got their way.
The West must never flee. To flee is to give power to the source of the threat. To flee is to choose defense over offense and to allow one’s opponent to control the rules of the game. To flee is weak. To flee is to acknowledge that the threat is too strong.
Europe has chosen. Europe flees. America fights.
March 17th, 2004 at 9:10 pm
Right on.
March 19th, 2004 at 1:24 pm
Right on, indeed, Tom.
You’ve confirmed several hallmarks of the rhetoric of the right — knee-jerk reactionism, exploitation and distillation to utter simplicity.
It’s this last quality that is perhaps so infuriating to those of with more lefty leanings[*] who consider those with more conservative opinions (such as yourself) to be friends. Infuriating because we know you’re smart people, yet you INSIST on refusing to use your God given ability to use reason, the exact thing that separates us humans from the rest of the “flight or fight” animal kingdom.
Contrary to your assertion, flying or fighting are not the only options at our disposal, or at least not in the terms you mean. And starting preemptive wars with nations who pose no “imminent threat” (to quote Donald Rumsfeld), with no ties to the very real threat of terrorism, is certainly not the correct way to fight the problem. Though it has succeding in making sure that terrorism now flourishes in Iraq, hasn’t it.
But there I go again, loony liberal that I am. Back to this problem of distillation of complexity — despite the president’s refusal to tune into technicolor reality (”I don’t see things in a lot of grays” is a close approximation to a quote) the world really is NOT black and white. This issues of terrorism are slightly more complex than “they hate our freedom”.
Fighting this war by lashing out, a very non-rational, animalisitc approach, will never win. All the smart bombs Boeing can manufacture will never destroy the spectre of terrorism, and will ultimately do more to breed further contempt. The victories from these strategies will be few, fleeting and temporary, all the while bolstering the very enemy it seeks to destroy.
Like other wars against [$abstract_concept], to truly fight terrorism means to fight the cause of terrorism, not the effect. To keep the War on Terror from becoming as meaningless as other great Republican wars (drugs, hunger, poverty, Mars, etc.) is going to require decisive leadership of a different kind, which is willing and able to see a complex world rather than just sending in the troops.
One final note — your jab at the people of Spain, who’ve certainly suffered enough recently, is something I might expect from less sophisticated wonks like Anne Coulter, but it’s really kinda surprising here. Before blaming Aznar’s stunning loss on “proof that terrorism works”, consider that fewer than 10% of the Spanish people supported Aznar’s decision to back Bush. Even before the train bombings, the election was a statistical dead heat, with some indications that the Socialist party was going to out Aznar. After the bombings, leaders the world over, including President Bush, encouraged the Spanish people to go to the polls, to make a statement to the people who committed such a heinous crime for political gain. Now that the Spanish people have done that, with an outcome that right doesn’t agree with, they are to be villified? That’s truly shameful.
[*] By “more lefty” I mean, of course, those of us with more liberal leanings than the hawkish, flag waving, jinoistic (not to mention exploitive, at the risk of repeating myself) attitude that seems to have gripped this nation by the short hairs. In other words, what used to mean “centrist” but has now come to mean “America hater, in bed with the terrah-ists”.
March 20th, 2004 at 4:59 pm
Jim,
Good comments. But your take on my take is, well, reductionist.
First, I did not, and do not, wholly support the war. I support its intentions, but I think our efforts could have been better invested elsewhere. See http://underscorebleach.net/content/jotsheet/older/2003/03/19
Second, the Iraq war was just. It removed a dictator and installed a democracy. See http://underscorebleach.net/content/jotsheet/older/2003/04/17
You say I am guilty of “knee-jerk reactionism.” I think you would well-advised to rethink that statement. This entry has nothing to do with America being macho and Europe being weak. It has everything to do with how people react to threats–a simple, fundamental human reaction that can drive the (yes) complex concepts of policy and philosophy.
Also, the War on Povery and the War on Hunger are inventions of the Democrats. Not sure how you’re allying that with Republicans. And to put Mars in that category is silly.
You say I insult the people of Spain. I do not. But their reaction to terrorism has been been to kowtow and appease. Can you argue with the fact that Islamist terrorists have influenced Spanish foreign policy in the manner they intended? Spaniards are letting terrorists drive their agenda. It is about control.
Finally, you say that conservatives–me, Rummy, Dubya–can’t see the world in “technicolor.” We only see it in black and white. But “black and white” is a proxy for moral certainty, my friend. Liberals are uncomfortable with it. Reuters won’t write “terrorists”; I’ve got no problem putting it here. See http://underscorebleach.net/content/jotsheet/older/2003/04/17 again.
March 21st, 2004 at 12:58 pm
Oh, bugger, I did screw up that war on poverty thing — LBJ would be ashamed. I didn’t mean to lump it into Republican wars but the abstract war thing. Drat. The Mars bit — come on, man, that was funny! You guys on the right are always accusing liberals of being so humorless…
Back to Spain. I’ll reiterate a few facts. Spain joined the coalition in Iraq despite overwhelming support against going to war — 90% of Spaniards opposed.
Support for the socialist party was growing even before the bombings in Madrid, with some polls indicating that Aznar would be replaced on the basis of his support of the Iraq war. Not to mention his mismanagement of domestic issues, such as the oil spill that decimated the northwest coast in 2002.
The Spanish people went to the polls for the exact opposite reason that you articulate, to show that terror is not an effective deterrent to the democratic process. To say that they were kowtowing to a terrorist agenda IS insulting, for it implies that the people who cast those votes (in record numbers, I might add) were doing so without their own free will. I’ll ask again — would there be such outrage from the spinsters on the right if Aznar had won? I suspect the reaction would instead be more along the lines of “mandate from the people” in support of the “war on terror” — funny how a mandate only exists if you agree with it.
March 21st, 2004 at 4:18 pm
Spaniards are exercising free will–free will to cede control of their political agenda to terrorists. I will concede the point that the Iraq War was wildly unpopular in Spain, but it certainly looks to me as if the Madrid attacks tipped the balance in the Socialists’ favor. That means that Spaniards exercised their free will in the democratic system to choose to flee rather than fight.
Perhaps I should respond directly to your original charge:
“After the bombings, leaders the world over, including President Bush, encouraged the Spanish people to go to the polls, to make a statement to the people who committed such a heinous crime for political gain. Now that the Spanish people have done that, with an outcome that [the] right doesn’t agree with, they are to be villified? That’s truly shameful.”
I’m not villifying them. Not at all. If you go back and read the original post, you’ll see that I don’t make a normative statement about Europe, but a descriptive one. Spain’s government chose to fight, its people wanted to flee, and the people punished the conservative government for the discrepancy.
What I *am* saying is that Europe has funamdentally chosen to respond to the threat of terrorism in a manner that cedes control to the source of the threat (the terrorists). The first demand has been met: Spain will pull its troops out of Iraq. Will Northern Africa or the Basque region be next?
March 23rd, 2004 at 12:12 am
Too simplistic boy! The new Spanis gov’t. has vowed to fight terror with even more vigor; they have been experiencing it domestically for decades from ETA.
Now they have experienced international terror from Al-Qaeda.
Ninety percent of the people in Spain were against their government’s involvement in Iraq. Like the rest of W. Europe they were telling the gov’t. long before the Madrid bombings that they did not agree with a policy that equated fighting terrorism with overthrowing Sadaam Hussein.
And with the election the Spanish people emphatically made known their feelings about the policies of the Aznar gov’t. It wasn’t appeasement of terrorists; it isn’t “fleeing” from terrorism. It was turning away from a gov’t. whose policies toward Iraq they never agreed with.
All of Europe is united in the fight against terrorism — and they’ve experienced it in many places. They’re just not involved in Bush’s obsession with Iraq. Fighting terrorism does not equal support for the misguided U.S. policy in Iraq.
Watch for the Italian government to fall as well and Tony Blair to be replaced as Labor’s leader.
p.s. I just read Jim Ray’s comments and couldn’t agree more. Liberal — hell I’m a socialist!!!!
April 5th, 2004 at 7:42 am
I do not wish to open a new can of worms, if I do that is not the intent. I refer to Vietnam. As those of us boomers(old hippies, etc.) recall, that engagement by the US was as unpopular at home as it was overseas. Not everyone who was anti-war was supporting Hanio, although the FBI seemed to believe the contrary. So now the implication is that if you are opposed to this GRAND MISTAKE you are a supporter of terrorism against the free world. I personnaly believe that it would be inhumane to abandon Iraq and turn things over to anarchy, but I have deep regrets that our elected leadership got us(US) into this mess on such weak intelligence. This is a history lesson unlearned.