"A lot of people seem able to muster a lot of easy certainty about terrorism, what causes it, how to stop it. Which is odd, when you consider that the whole business of blowing things up is the work of madmen intent on spreading chaos."

I quite enjoyed the article, but that was the one sentence that I found problematic. The moment we stop trying to understand what motivates terrorists by calling them deranged psychos is the moment we deny our ability to prevent terrorism or deal with it effectively.

by its definition, failed states = lack of government; not 'undemocratic government'. tyrannical governments are usually strong states, not failed states (see: Fukuyama). the neoconservative project seems to be about toppling tyrannical governments and creating failed states (i.e. Iraq). aside from creating the conditions for terrorism to flourish in the resulting anarchy, the blowback from such foreign interventions is the prime recruiting tool for terrorists.

to sum up, the neoconservative 'project': Not Helping.

Rudy, is that you? ;-)

of course I dont think he figured out he was over Chatham Ontario when he tried. It might be just too much to expect for these guys to be completely accurate, given their state of mind and potentially drug addled minds (done to ensure they are "calm" in customs)

I said we are "lucky" if they move to that stage earlier than they are ready, however them getting control of something like Pakistan would be a real problem, plays to Western strengths. We may never get there, and if that the case then our appropriate response is to keep our defence at an appropriate level, not overspend (I think we are in agreement here) and husband our resources for a longer term fight and one that is taking place on a differerent level.

Without going into a massive history lesson and rewriting Hammes and Keegans books. "The West's" enduring advantages have been leveraging technology and massing firepower. Which is why they have won "traditional" battlles. Uniformed armies fighting in an organized fashion. Al Queda does not fight that way….this is what I meant by if we were "lucky enough", its a battle our military and our society is geared to fighting. The battles the "the Western Powers" have lost are those that are asymmetrical. Although the "the Western Powers" have won the odd asymetrical fight, when the follow the prescriptions laid out in Hammes book.

What our society and traditionally our military have not been good at is fighting long running low level conflicts, like the one we are fighting. Running around chasing flies with howitzers is both expensive and unsustainable. You might try reading AND understanding the link I included before making overwrought assertions.

That is the 'Big Lie'. Islamic terrorism is fueled by the Qur'an. It is part and parcel of Isam and has been since the 7th century.
Read some history. The only thing new about the 20th century version is the tools they use. No Airplanes in the 7th century. Nor plastic explosives, AK-47's or any other tools of the terrorist trade. In the 7th century, Muslim terrorists used edged weapons because that is all they had.

Do we really have to play the wait-and-see game of My Imam Can Kick Your Imam's Ass?

I believe most of the Cheneyan heckling has been about the decision to treat Captain Underpants as a thug criminal with all the rights the US justice system can offer, rather than an enemy attacking the country. Hard to see that Cheney is off with that analysis.

And New York? If the argument is that remote, anachic and poor countries, sometimes with a lot of mountains, are a good base to hide out and/or train terrorists, well I suppose a point has been made.

Not sure where that gets us, though.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60E5TA20100…

Soft power doesn't and won't work. Al Quaeda wants a Middle East free of American influence. Obama or any American president will never acquiesce to this – America needs oil. Soft power can help a little in that it makes cooperating with the US politically easier. However, this doesn't apply to most states in the middle east because most states in the region are dictatorships that are not beholden to public opinion.

International relations is about interests. America and Al Quaeda have irrevocably conflicted interests. However, the US has some common interests with most states in the middle east. The goal should be to get Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. onside in the war on terror – not on convincing terrorists to give up their ways (an approach that will surely fail).

The Toronto 18 are a case in point. They failed utterly because the intelligence resources in advanced countries are actually pretty good. We could see what they were up to. That doesn't mean terrorism is impossible, but it limits the scale of possible attacks. Bali, Spain, and London were, frankly, pretty small potatoes (and the attacks are getting smaller). International terrorism (unlike domestic terrorism – going into Iraq saved a lot of terrorists a plane ticket) is hard to do. It requires planning, money, time, secrecy and space. Doing training exercises on a frozen lake around Orillia is not likely to succeed.

As for terrorism, terrorists need something to attack. If direct American involvement in the middle east or wherever is limited, there are going to be few viable targets. The main targets would be economic – since the US interacts with the middle east in that regard. However, since the oil trade is the bread and butter of the region, you can be damn sure that local governments will do what they can to prevent attacks on their main source of revenue.

We need oil, we need natural resources, and we need to remain watchful against the emergence of dominant regional players in strategically important regions. We should be clearer about that – Bush Sr. made a big mistake by being ambiguous about Kuwait. At the same time, there are ways of intervening that will limit our vulnerability and our footprint overseas. We may cause resentment, but we will offer our enemies few targets and harsh reprimands.

A good related read is McMafia, by Misha Glenny. I recommend it.

Geez, you had me going there, but I thought you were going to say camels. Don't you see, Paul, all these countries have oodles of camels.

I mean, if being surrounded by these surly hump-backed freaks of nature doesn't make you want to set your underwear on fire, what will?

Also, your thesis has been disproven many times,

See here:
https://umdrive.memphis.edu/rblanton/public/POLS1…

and here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=tzQobMX-nNAC&amp…

And it does not explain bin Laden, the shoe bomber, or the Toronto 18, to cite just a few examples.

There is a much closer inverse link between political development and terrorism than there is between poverty and terrorism

Sure, Obama's election is not going to deter every terrorist. Duh. But I think it's a safe bet that his election has done more to deter more terrorists today than during the Bush era. Do we have the metrics to actually gauge this? Of course not. And what Obama's election doesn't mean, of course, is that terrorists who have been plotting their missions for the past months or years are simply going to put down their shoulder-fired missile launchers and pack away the explosives until President Palin arrives (although we don't know this for sure either).

But I guarantee you that the younger generation in states that produce terrorists may well be effected by the presence of a president that not only looks and sounds like Obama, but also thinks like Obama. We're not going to see the effect of his presidency for years, same way we didn't see the effects of the Nixon presidency or even the Reagan presidency for years after their departure on a host of policy issues.

But to do what Wells does here, and draw this massive conclusion about the failure of Obama's bid for soft power…yeah, Jesse, it fails to compute on every level.

Furthermore, the Nixon doctrine has been abused constantly since it's inception. While it's all well and good to say that they can interfere to bring about good, since these actions are done in relative secrecy to provide that indirectness, they can equally be use to America's advantage in ways that don't build democracy or build nations – and it already has. Whether or not it's effective, the overt wars are at least a bit more transparent – we may not like what's going on in Iraq or Afghanistan, but at least for the most part we know what's going on!

Undoubtedly, the current method of dealing with terrorists has flaws, major ones, but the Nixon doctrine would simply be another way to reform the cycle of antagonism towards the west that's been on-going since the end of the first world war – where our interference sows as many seeds of violence as it prevents.

I am not saying that my little theory applies to all cases, but I think it works in a decent number. And yes, terrorists do express against their own "normal everyday world"; we have focussed on the recent jihadists, but they are just one instance of terrorism.

In any event, the attacks in England and Spain were actually carried out by locals.

… and it assumes once again, a single chain of direct cause and effect with a fixed beginning.

"By their nature, they attract psychopaths into their midst, and they then commit the awful crimes we have seen."

:-) I have said the same thing about the CPC. :-)

More, this connects better with the Ideology of Resentment, than a true psychopathy. It's a process of replacing and affirming an individual identity in terms of other individuals affirming your own resentments and perceptions – real or perceived.

2) And in your second paragraph, you seem to confirm the hypothesis. You seem to assume that what we in the west have – and have done – is the "normal everyday world". They aren't expressing against their own conditions, their own "normal everyday world". They are expressing against our "normal everyday world". Those two things just aren't the same .

Had GW Bush been an alert human on Aug 6 2001 then Sept 11 2001 might not be an infamous date.

A far better focus for this discussion is the very successful bomber who took out the top CIA guys in Afghanistan.
Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old doctor from the town of Zarqa, Jordan.

Why was a Jordanian doctor in Afghanistan? Why was he called a triple agent?
What does this mean for OUR mission in Afghanistan?

"The goal of asymmetrical warfare is to use trivial tools—a box cutter, a motorboat loaded with explosives, a pair of trick underpants—to goad the enemy into massive, bankrupting, demoralizing overreaction."

There will never be enough resources to defeat this sort of terrorism, nor will there ever be a finishing blow.

Our officials' responses to terrorism are ensuring that even when we win – when we stop attacks, prevent deaths – we still lose. A murderer achieves his objective when he kills someone. A terrorist achieves his objective when he makes us afraid enough to make us do stupid things. I don't know of any plan to outright stop murder, or even terrorists who engage in murder. But we can stop terrorism, without any cost, and that's by simply not giving in to our own fears.

I think you are on the right track with this because it's not just one factor that is leading to muslims wanting to blow up West. Suicide bombing seems to be mix of religion, poverty, authoritarian government and nationalism.

I was just looking at wiki and there were a few interesting ideas in there:

- "224 of 300 suicide terror attacks from 1980 to 2003 compiled by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism involved Islamist groups or terrorist acts in Muslim-majority lands"

- "From 1980 to early 2004, 95% of suicide attacks had the central objective of compelling a democratic state with military forces on territory that the terrorists prize to take those forces out."

- "Recent research on the rationale of suicide bombing as an effective technique to kill enemies has highlighted the importance of religion as a driving force."

From a Pentagon report on suicide bombers:

"His actions provide a win-win scenario for himself, his family, his faith and his God," The document explains. "The bomber secures salvation and the pleasures of Paradise. He earns a degree of financial security and a place for his family in Paradise. He defends his faith and takes his place in a long line of martyrs to be memorialized as a valorous fighter. And finally, because of the manner of his death, he is assured that he will find favor with Allah," the briefing adds. "Against these considerations, the selfless sacrifice by the individual Muslim to destroy Islam's enemies becomes a suitable, feasible and acceptable course of action."

As for "nothing to express against", this makes no sens in this context. What they are expressing against is the normal everyday world, a world they feel excluded from and which they come to hate to the point of mass murder.

And clearly the loyalty to that society/culture/country has been transferred to the Ideology of Resentment.

Terrorism will die when it has nothing to express against.

You see, Buddhism doesn't have the Ideology of resentment, so poor Buddhist countries won't grow it. Haiti doesn't have the wealth to fund it. Timothy McVeigh had the three.

Where the government – whatever form – North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia itself, is fixed and firm, it doesn't seem to grow. You see, China and Saudi Arabia also have some kind of wealth distribution system. Cuba and North Korea seem unable to muster the wealth – for whatever reason, to grow it.

Just an idea.