Sherry Chandler

Just read a Christian Scientist Monitor review of an intriguing sounding book that I’ll probably never read — so many of them out there. This one is What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat by Louise Richardson.

Richardson is a Harvard-educated academic in the field of international security but she was born an Irish Catholic, was 14 at the time of Bloody Sunday. So she knows a bit at first hand about terrorism and its appeal.

Some snippets from the review:

“Terrorists see the world in Manichean, black-and-white terms; they identify with others; and they desire revenge,” according to Richardson.

Lots of people are called “terrorists” by their enemies, of course. That doesn’t mean they all are. Terrorism’s true definition, Richardson writes, is “deliberately and violently targeting civilians for political purposes.”

Terrorists want change, but lack the strength to prevail in other political or military ways. Individual terrorists are generally disaffected people, from any level of society. They encounter an enabling group (such as radical Islamists at a local mosque) who spout an ideology that purports to justify violent actions.

Their motivations can be summed up in a three-word phrase, according to Richardson: “Revenge, Renown, Reaction.”

…

September 11 did not change the world, she argued. It simply — and brutally — made the US aware of a world that was already occurring.

The rhetoric of declaring war on terrorism, she argues, is a mistake. Terrorism is a tactic, and thus cannot be defeated; what can be defeated, or at least contained, are individual groups of terrorists.

Thus her “Six Rules”:

• Have a defensible and achievable goal, such as stopping the spread of Islamist militancy.

• Live by your principles. No more Abu Ghraibs.

• Know your enemy.

• Separate the terrorists from their communities.

• Engage others in countering terrorists with you.

• Have patience and keep your perspective.

A few of these characteristics look familiar. Viewing the world in black & white, good & evil, with us or against us terms, for example, is a characteristic of the Bush administration. We are also, or at least we were in the beginning, out for revenge. And we are being told that any kind of torture and destruction is justified to defeat our evil enemy.

In short, we are impatient and we have lost our perspective. We react but don’t think.

We’re playing the enemy’s game.