Say a doctor treats a man with Aids but ignores the disease he is stricken with and its nature. No doctor would do that. It is akin to treating the symptoms and not the disease to ignore the evil nature and its factor. Granted it may not win you points with Muslims(or fellow academics), but one withholds or censors the term evil at his/her peril.
Column continued: Is Isis Evil? 3rd part — [see 2 ; 1]
We can analyze the ways its violent tactics are effective for its purposes given the local power dynamics, so that we can also better understand its weak spots. And we can ask how it is that normal men — men who were not born evil — get turned into monsters, so that we can work to change the structures that produce terrorists over the long-term instead of locking ourselves into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of “killing fanatics” until they are gone.
Trying to understand something isn’t the same as trying to justify or excuse it. That’s a basic mistake, and a costly one.
As Jane Harman, president of the Woodrow International Center for Scholars, recently wrote: “We can’t counter radical narratives if we don’t understand the motives of the radicalized.”
Nonetheless, trying to understand evil is an offense. It is an offense to everything we hold dear, because understanding — that is, true and effective understanding — must bring us close to the other, must help us see the world through their eyes.
That is a painful, offensive process, and that is exactly what we must do.
See: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/22/opinion/dawes-isis-evil/
We can analyze the ways its violent tactics are effective for its purposes given the local power dynamics, so that we can also better understand its weak spots. And we can ask how it is that normal men — men who were not born evil — get turned into monsters, so that we can work to change the structures that produce terrorists over the long term instead of locking ourselves into an endlessly repeated, short-term policy of “killing fanatics” until they are gone.
What all is wrong with that? The government, military and CIA do analytics on their effectiveness and there are documentations. But if we do not have the leaders who act on those facts, we have our heads in the sand dunes. “Local power dynamics” is a problem.
You treat it as a social services matter, but this community(and ME region) has had these problems for many decades. Then you expect to “unmake” the results over their desires and will. If those in the neighborhood do not care, how can you undo a situation hundreds of years in the making? Generations of terrorists were weened on it.
We have also given them the incentives to improve and reform these “dynamics” but it falls on deaf ears. Apparently they don’t want to and have reasons to do otherwise. Put it this way, some of them like it this way, some of them don’t, but yet another part that is interested in reform wants to amplify those same dynamics many times over.
It doesn’t take a majority, only a fractional faction hell bent on any means necessary to do it. Change the structures? The structures are just the way they like them — and not even big or bad enough for some. Blaming the structures brings us right back to blaming, or understanding something other than the central causes of terrorism. It is evil.
Trying to understand something isn’t the same as trying to justify or excuse it. That’s a basic mistake, and a costly one.
Oh yes it can be the same thing. Attempts at understanding can lead to rationalizations for why they do it, and lead you to error. Human beings are easily capable of such rationalizations. Thereby making excuses for the evil conduct.
As Jane Harman, president of the Woodrow International Center for Scholars, recently wrote: “We can’t counter radical narratives if we don’t understand the motives of the radicalized.”
Sounds nice. So we must argue against another academic. We do have to understand and know the nature of evil that drives them, too, and its source. But that includes recognizing the evil. Their motives are part of the evil we face.
Nonetheless, trying to understand evil is an offense. It is an offense to everything we hold dear, because understanding — that is, true and effective understanding — must bring us close to the other, must help us see the world through their eyes.
That is a painful, offensive process, and that is exactly what we must do.
I realized some limitations to understanding “evil”. But there is real danger in trying to understand the people who perpetrate and spread this evil and their sordid history, across borders — against those structural boundaries — absent the evil involved. Pain or not.
Summary:
He said that evil is inhuman so best not even try to understand it. But then he also wants to treat these people from a humane perspective to counter it. As if applied humane nature will overcome the inherent evil in them. Now there’s a fool’s errand. You don’t get it do you? How do you do that with people who’s military strategy is summed up in deception or lying? What are you really going to understand about them and their social fabric of evil woven throughout the region? People who put severed heads on spits do not generally offer much in the way of working therapy. When an animal is rabid we don’t just say let me find out why he got it? The first defense is to destroy it and find out where its been etc. And yes we do understand the disease of rabies and know what it can do, and take precautions.
Handling this as if it were some humanitarian social ill would be a mistake. We know what goes into it. Finally, ignoring the central factor of their radicalization, their religion, would be another huge mistake. Playing social worker with terrorists is not a treatment, it’s a recipe for disaster. And how many months or years would that take? We don’t have that kind of time, when the very humanity you savor hangs in the balance. When there seems to be more urgency for Ebola epidemic than there is for terrorism, something is askew. We do understand enough about that culture to know how it works. And then it uses the most powerful addiction on the planet, blood. What is there to understand about that? Let’s not over complicate it, and its evil.
What he is asking us to do is to play social worker and therapist, namely to people who hate us. I notice he didn’t offer any solutions other than ‘apply the ointment, liberally’.
We don’t have enough beds or an asylum large enough to house all these patients. That’s what he has done, converted them into patients —albeit unthinking sick ones.
Terrorism: “The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” But we do not have a simple matter of terrorism. We have a religion sponsored, state-sponsored, caliphate-centric, political, ideologically rooted, Islam-driven terrorism.
From ABC:
That includes the U.S. government. “No one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance,” the State Department said in a report on world terrorism in 2000.
The key elements to terrorism are obvious to many — violence, non-combatant targets, intention of spreading fear, and political aims. But crafting a watertight, commonly accepted definition has proven difficult.
The State Department’s definition holds that only sub-national groups, not states themselves, can commit acts of terrorism. It states the violence must be politically motivated, but does not mention instilling or spreading fear.
The FBI looks to the Code of Federal Regulations definition: “The unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
“In a nutshell, [terrorism] is the threat and use of both psychological and physical force in violation of international law, by state and sub-state agencies for strategic and political goals,” says Yonah Alexander, a terrorism expert and director of the Institute for Studies in International Terrorism at the State University of New York.
“No ifs, ands, or buts,” he adds.
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