The Desperation of Terrorists
So much for the image of bombers as poor, under-educated, under-privileged, persecuted and desperate men acting out because they have no jobs, food or future:
Sky News: Two Terror Suspects Are Hospital Doctors
Two of the five terror suspects being held in the wake of the failed car bombings in London and Glasgow are hospital doctors working in the UK.
The majority of the five terror suspects being held in police custody in connection with bomb attacks in London and Glasgow are not British and at least one is still at large, according to Sky sources.
Sky sources believe one of the men arrested at Glasgow airport and a 26-year-old man arrested on the M6 with a 27-year-old woman in Cheshire are both doctors.
Sky Crime Reporter Martin Brunt said: “This is very far removed from the picture we normally have. These are professional people with highly paid jobs who are intent on killing people.”
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11 Responses to “The Desperation of Terrorists”
Makes you question the motives of the far left antiwar who say if we just be nice to them and give them economic hope they will not become terrorism.
I do not blame the Antiwar. I think they are as confused about all this as is the Bush Administration. The fact of the matter is that we avoid, denied and ignored the terrorism element in this world for far too long and once it sprung upon us we really are clueless how to deal with it.
Maybe they would have been more effective if they had had the assistance of Doctors Without Borders.
Actually the vast majority of terrorist leaders are from the upper class. Plus, even most of the Palestinian suicide bombers seemed to be middle-upper class and educated. When the Intifada was at its worst, I noticed how many college students/recent grads were being recruited and wondered if the terrorists were selecting them when they were young and stupid so they didn’t have to worry about them becoming old and wise.
You can count me among those who think that terrorism is very highly correlated with the lack economic and political opportunity. It’s not because it’ll necessarily cut down on the number of fanatics, but because when people have a bright future they’ll be more willing to fight for it.
In the US, Muslims in general are very well integrated and their communities are the best defense we have.
Impoverishment and desperation is still the number one factor, IMO. Even if bombers are better off, a population is more likely to support them in their endeavors if that population is impoverished. There is also the factor of feeling one has received unfair treatment by society, which explains the commitment of such acts in wealthy countries. But, in countries where poverty is less of an issue, these people will likely not have the support of the people. That is why here it has been so easy for the authorities to infiltrate these groups, because they don’t have the support of the people.
It’s the anti-war crowd
It’s the Left
How is that any better than saying it’s Bush?
A terrible thing has happened, and this is the kind of garbage people come UP with?.
This is sick.
Crime did not rise hugely during the Great Depression.
Poverty alone is not to blame.
Poverty is NOT the motivation, ideology is the motivation. That is why the majority are upper-middle class and educated.
The poor, quite frankly, and too busy trying to survive. It is easy to forget or even be unaware, if you don’t travel to those regions of the world, that ‘poor’ is a much more desperate situation for those areas. The don’t have the time or excess energy for jihad.
‘are too busy’
My guess would be that these people do think they had no future. It’s just that the disaster they saw in particular is not economic but religious or cultural. They are sure that there is a clash of civilizations (a phrase I’ve heard in a presidential speech or two) in which giant powers are out to destroy Islam and all that they hold dear.
There will always be small groups of people who think the world is against them. About 13 years ago, I did my own study of religious rebellions in China. These occurred pretty frequently throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. In one example a group managed to get some converts among officials in the Forbidden City and eventually attacked it. The occupation lasted for a few days and then they were wiped out. Such events occur over and over. Then in the mid 19th, such a rebellion occurred in the middle of other economic and environmental disasters and suddenly one of these tiny rebellions (this time instead of Buddhist or Taoist beliefs, the leader thought he was Jesus’ brother) caught aflame and engulfed several provinces, killing hundreds of thousands of people.
In short the motivations for actions like this are complex. One of our key foreign policy goals should be for the people who want to kill for their religious beliefs to not be in the middle of thousands of people for whom there are little prospects of economic happiness.
The fact that there is a correlation between poverty and violence (supposedly one could track French peasant uprisings for a couple hundred years pretty well by watching bread prices) does not reduce to the simple idea that when you get demoted at work you suddenly go violent. This is in the same way that one should not point to religiously tied violence and claim that as soon as someone becomes Christian (or Muslim or Buddhist, etc.) they start trying to kill people.
Good catch, Holly. Ideologues have been good at motivating idealistic young people, especially those from middle or upper class backgrounds for many of the militant movements in the 20th century, and that seems to be continuing. The September 11, 2001 terrorists were not starving guys from a Cairo slum, they were largely college educated men from middle class households.
Of course it isn’t just the jihadis. We have seen this here as well. The “Unibomber” with his rage against modernity was a university graduate, Patty Hearst was a member of the elite. The ideologues use the idealistic folks as useful idiots, a term which fits. Notice that none of these suicide bombers seem to wonder why if this is such a good and noble thing their leaders never volunteer to be the first to perform the mission.
It’s a huge mistake in reasoning to try to reduce the motivation and character of terrorists to a thumb-nail sketch.
Some are educated; Others are illiterate.
Some are well-off. Others sign on because they have no other source of income (as reported by our military)
Some are motivated by the continuation of the Iraq war. Others are motivated by anti-war demonstrations, elections and other political events in the West.
Some fight for global domination. Others fight for local issues.
One description does not exclude its opposite.
So, perhaps its time to stop using this subject like a political football.
Trying to pinpoint the blame is an equally ffruitless exercise.
Ultimately, the terrorists are to blame.
People and policies that have played an aiding and abetting role, on purpose or by accidetnt, comprise such a long and varied list that it will take decades for historians and analysts to complete the account.
Terrorism is a tool.
A computer is a tool. Can anyone provide a pithy description of computer use and users?