ShrinkWrapped

9/11 Ambiguities Continued

In my post yesterday, I wrote about the "Jihadi Army of One" offering a way for an otherwise marginal young Muslim man with minimal prospects to gain status.   Ken Spiker pointed out in his comment that most Jihadis are not necessarily marginalized individuals:

I think there's evidence that a majority of terrorists are not the wretched of the earth but often as not educated and seemingly with prospects for the future. Of course that's in the real world; in their minds they live in a fantasyland of religious lunacy in which they're heroes and favored of God. The Palestinians, it appeared at one time, were on their way to having a viable society. Many were working in Israel and many had access to education.

How can we resolve the conflict between these two sets of facts, that Jihadis are often well educated, often spending time in the West, often with opportunities for, at least material, success yet they can become involved in the kind of "Jihadi Army of One" terrorism I described?

Start with the concept of the Self-Representation:

Early in life we take the various images we have developed of ourselves (our self representations, in Psychoanalytic terms) and merge them to form a relatively stable, and usually only moderately distorted, sense of who we are and how we fit into the world around us.

Now, add in the idea of the Ego Ideal:

9/11 Ambiguities

Yesterday, Condoleeza Rice was on Fox News Sunday, followed by Howard Dean.  It was an opportunity to see and hear two diametrically opposing views on where we are five years into the War on Terror and to  get a sense of how the Republicans and Democrats view the issues that 9/11 brought to our attention in such an unmistakable and undeniable way.

In watching Dr. Rice, a very bright woman who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, I was struck by how poorly she was able to articulate our current dilemmas.  Almost immediately thereafter, watching Dr. Dean, a very bright man who I think has done a fair amount to degrade the level of discourse in our political life, I was struck by how incoherent his positions seemed to be. 

I have been quite open about my disenchantment with the Democrats.  I have been less critical of the Republicans, in part because I think they are more aware of the dangers we face.   However, I think there is a problem plaguing both sides of the debate, which is difficult to engage and even more difficult to articulate.

We know now that since at least 1979, the world of Islamic radicalism, or Islamic fascism, or Islamic expansionism, or whatever we choose to call it, has been at war with the West, and most specifically with the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (America).  We also know that since 9/11/01 we have been aware of this war and have begun to fight back. 

I would suggest that if, after 5 years of being at war, we still cannot fully name our enemies, this likely represents a particular problem that has less to do with our ability to be clear and precise and more to do with the nature of our enemies, and therein lies a problem.

Daniel Thomas Afflitto

This post is part of the 2996 project, put together by D. Challener Roe, "Dale", who wanted to find a way to honor all the ordinary (really, extraordinary) Americans who went to work the morning of 9/11/01 and never returned home.  Dale describes the project:

2,996 is a tribute to the victims of 9/11.

On September 11, 2006, 2,996 volunteer bloggers
will join together for a tribute to the victims of 9/11.
Each person will pay tribute to a single victim.

We will honor them by remembering their lives,
and not by remembering their murderers.

I pay tribute to Daniel Thomas Afflitto, a young man just beginning a family, bright, successful, funny, and in love with his life.

The Council Has Spoken ...

This week, the winning Council post was It’s Not a War. It’s a Trendy Buzzword! by Jimmie at The Sundries Shack, who explains, once again, that there are those who are serious about the war on Islamic fascism and then there are those like CNN.  In second place there was a tie.  Joshua Pundit suggested that for the Jews in Europe it is 1936 again, with It is time for Jews to think about leaving Western Europe.  Rick Moran, at Right Wing Nut House, was pleased to see the government respond in 9/11 TIN FOIL HATS ARE MELTING.  Rick probably knows that reason makes little difference to the "tin foil hat brigades" who need their conspiracy theories for psychological reasons, but I agree it is nice to see the effort.

Among the non-Council posts, Omri Ceren makes some excellent points over at Mere Rhetoric, where he suggests Hezbollah Probably Lost the War, But They May Never Have Been In It To Win; well worth a read for his interesting take on the recent war.  There was also a tie for second place among the non-Council posts.  Friday, September 01, 2006, at Gideon's Blog, explored issues around the "naming" of our enemies, while Repeal McCainFeingold at Going to the Mat, was one of several blog posts in the running which explored the threats to free speech, also known as the "incumbent protection racket", that are posed by the execrable McCain-Feingold bill. 

As always, all the nominees can be found at the Watcher of Weasels and all will reward your time and energy.

Projection and Externalization in Politics

Every morning I listen to NPR, alternating with the Imus in the Morning radio program.  I also scan and occasionally read the New York Times on-line edition.  In this way, I take the pulse of the Northeast liberal prevailing wisdom.  I rarely comment on what I hear because it tends to be thoroughly predictable and uninteresting.  I am used to hearing that all the ills of the world are caused by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove; I am used to hearing Imus sigh heavily and pronounce, "what a mess" in relation to Iraq, alternating with snide comments that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are war criminals.  However, a couple of things caught my attention this morning and are worrisome.

This morning, Imus had on his program Tom Oliphant, a highly respected pundit who wrote a column for the Boston Globe, but retired after suffering a brain aneurysm last year (from which he has recovered without apparent sequellae.)  Oliphant is a reliable liberal, leaning to the left side of the Democratic party, not unexpected for a Boston liberal.  During the show this morning, he made the pronouncement that everything has gotten worse under the Conservatives.  He specifically mentioned the war in Iraq, but added the environment, health care, and gas prices.

His comments left me wondering: how do we determine whether things are in fact, getting better or getting worse?

Terror and Societal Regression

During the 2005 Winter Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a panel on "Terror and Societal Regression" was convened.  A summary report on the panel, by Ira Brenner, appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.   

[The JAPA is only available by subscription and the current issue is not yet on line.]

It has long been recognized that in the face of trauma, a person tends to regress.  This essentially means that when highly stressed, we tend to fall back on more primitive mental functioning to face the trauma.  Once the situation has resolved, reasonably intact people, in the absence of the most severe trauma, are able to slowly reconstitute over time and regain their prior level of functioning.  When people have trouble doing so, they often seek Psychiatric/Psychological assistance. 

This is similar to the point I have made so many times that our rational minds are thin, fragile, veneers over the deeper, unconscious, strata of our more primitive emotional minds.

To offer a generic, yet common, example: Consider a person who escapes with only minor injuries from a serious car accident.  No one would be surprised that they would have some anxiety and hesitancy about getting behind the wheel again.  However, if they are unable to drive 3 months or 6 months after the accident because they are terrified of getting into another accident, it should be clear that the initial, expectable regression has not resolved.  The capable adult has regressed to the state of an anxious and frightened youngster unable to drive and has become psychologically stuck there.

In the same way, Societies, as highly complex structures, can regress from their optimal functioning in the face of a trauma.  The American Psychoanalytic Association panel considered just this question, and while their focus was on various traumatized societies (Albania, after Hoxha, and Argentina, after the military coup of 1976 and the ensuing suppression of the left, were of special interest) there is obvious relevance for America, post 9/11.

Fearful Ruminations

[Update at the end]

In an article last weekend, Mark Steyn, in his inimitable style, skewered those who missed the significance of the Centanni/Wiig forced conversion tape (which the Sanity Squad discussed in last week's podcast):

It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.

In response, Glenn Greenwald made the point, after slanting Steyn's words to fit and adding some ad hominem remarks of his own, that many Neocons are reacting out of fear to the current threats we face.  His post, Will the real cowards please stand up? contains some important elements of truth, but he stops short of recognizing the implications of what he writes:

The ironies of this disturbed war dance are virtually infinite, the most obvious one being that the Steyn Warriors can never point to any sacrifices they make or risks they incur. But the most striking irony is this. So much of the neoconservative warrior cries are built on an ethos of deep fear, of exactly the desperate desire to be protected and saved which Steyn and company claim is the hallmark of the girlish, soul-less West. As they strike the warrior pose, they are desperately willing, even eager, to fundamentally change the character and principles of our republic and to sacrifice the core liberties which define it because they are scared and want, more than anything else, to be protected.

Dean Barnett responded with some deserved criticism of Greenwald's style, followed by an attack on his substance; however, Dean actually agrees with Greenwald on a basic point:

Saying Whatever Comes to Mind V

Join Neo-neocon, Dr. Sanity, Siggy and myself in our weekly podcast, as we explore the differing impact of our historical Pearl Harbor and 9/11, our current "Pearl Harbor", on our National Psyche. 

Although I have my doubts about the wisdom of Pajamas Media in calling us the Sanity Squad, I have no doubts that we are getting better at this, despite some ongoing, intermittent, technological glitches.

Listen in or down load Pearl Harbor to 9/11 for our unique perspective on the issue.

Reasons for Optimism: Part V

My first order of business today is to thank Owen Johnson for the exceptional essay he put together describing our Strategy, our goals, and offering reasons for optimism in this Long War against our enemies.  I do not think I have seen such a comprehensive piece anywhere else and I found it invaluable for organizing my thinking about the current conflict.  To Recap:

Part I offered a description of the who we are fighting and the various components of our Strategic armamentarium.

Part II focused on the Information Warfare aspects of the conflict.

Part III examined the role of Islam and the goals of the Islamists in this war.

Part IV summarized our strategy and offered evidence that we are winning at this point in the Long War.  In an Epilog, Owen pointed to one potential future paradoxical outcome.

In the Part IV section On Victory, Owen suggests that the best metric we have for determining we are winning is the behavior and beliefs of our enemy, and they act and believe as if they are losing, all the while protesting they are winning:

The Jihadis have watched the progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, considered the consequences for Islam and for themselves, and I think they are ones who now see the writing on the wall: that they are divided, that they have been found wanting, and that their days are numbered. They are not fighting for time anymore — they are fighting for their lives.

Notice the mention that the Jihadis are not fighting for time anymore.  Time and Will are of the essence and those are the areas of most concern for me.

Reasons for Optimism: Part IV

In this final section of Owen's exegesis on our Strategy in the Middle East, he describes the differences between Passive Containment, Active Containment, and Engagement and delineates the approach we are taking.  Further, he suggests, with some powerful logic, that we are currently winning.  At the end he includes an epilog describing a possible unexpected outcome of this war.

Passive containment I include in the spirit of completeness and because I think it exemplifies the typical pre-9/11 approach as applied to Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Palestinians. The general characteristics of Passive Containment are:

• A law-enforcement approach to terrorism emphasizing defensive and legal measures.
• A diplomatic approach to hostile governments emphasizing international agreements, resolutions and sanctions imposed through the UN, and moral (and possibly some practical) support to dissident elements.
• Relies on but weakly supports deterrence.
• Military action only as a last resort and with a limited objective, which may or may not include regime change, and then only under UN auspices.
• Little or no emphasis on nation building or even establishing lasting security.
• Strong emphasis on politically expedient exit strategies.

The failures of this approach are manifest and it does not deserve further consideration. That leaves us with two genuine alternatives, Active Containment and Engagement.