Thinkin' like a terrorist, part 3
There were only two public responses to the September 11th plane crashes in the Western world: righteous fury and liberal angst.
The righteous fury crowd feels that there is no better use for a terrorist than to shoot one. The images that came out of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Grhaib bother them only because no one had the good sense to keep the activities concealed.
The liberal angst crowd feels that we were attacked because we have such terrible, oppressive policies towards the rest of the world.
In the days shortly following the crashes, after loved ones' safety was assured, an outpouring of sentiment occurred. The most prevalent was righteous anger, with the notable exception of the late Mary McGrory, who was on some other planet than the rest of us that fateful day, telling the world she thought the President had "flunked" the test of leadership presented by the attacks, as early as September 13.
After the attacks, a sense of liberal angst did seep into the public conscious, the worst of which is the meretricious portrayal by Michael Moore of Iraq as an idyll, where laughing children play with kites while simple shopkeepers proudly display their hammered copper pots.
In this piece, I'm going to present a different stance based on an economic and a cultural observation.
For those of you looking around for assumptions to challenge, I am assuming that Dr. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations accurately describes the environment in which these conflicting viewpoints rest. Feel free to read the book and critique it.
A warning, before we begin: this piece, like many in the series, is going to contain some generalizations.
The perspective that I want you to consider is based on two pillars:
1. Pareto optimal solutions are always better than non-Pareto optimal solutions.
2. Freedom can be a bad thing.
Okay, what do these mean, and how on Earth do they hang together?
1. Pareto optimal solutions are always better than non-Pareto optimal solutions.
Pareto optimality is a more general form of the quote: "You can swing your fist until it touches my nose." Thomas Jefferson Pareto optimal solutions make someone better off without making anyone else worse off. Because of what's called the "initial endowment" problem, they are very rare between rich, developed countries and developing nations. The initial endowment problem refers to the difference in bargaining position. If one person has much greater wealth at the start of negotiations (a larger initial endowment), then they have a much stronger bargaining position and can push the negotiations in a way that exacerbates the disparity in relative wealth of the participants. This is mapped out mathematically in Calculus of Consent, by Buchanan and Tullock, and by Denis Mueller in Public Choice. Both books also make some suggestions, to which I will not subject you, about how to enforce Pareto optimal solutions in the face of an initial endowment problem.
Why does it apply here? What on earth does this seemingly obscure economic theory have to do with Muslim terrorism?
BJ probably doesn't remember it, but he and I worked out an economic theory of revolution back in 1992. I re-read our theory over the Christmas holidays. One statement we make is obvious: Under certain conditions, it is a better deal for a class of people to rise up and overthrow the current order, seemingly risking everything, than it is to suffer the current order.
We then went on to outline those conditions. While we wrote them as a series of equations, let me summarize by saying that an environment that consists of an initial endowment problem, without any Pareto optimal corrective measures and with a wealth redistribution policy that is below a certain threshhold, will ALWAYS lead to revolution. Always. Without fail. It is inevitable.
Revolution takes different forms, of course, and we used this to model the fall of the Soviet Empire, which was a current topic.
This was in direct contradiction to the conventional wisdom of the time, as told by Francis Fukuyama, that the fall of the Soviet empire signalled the end of history, as Western capitalist democracy would infect the world and conquer it.
If what BJ and I discovered is true (it is), then Francis Fukuyama is clearly wrong; there is a built in market failure as a result of wealth inequity that will lead to revolution.
I contend that for much of the Muslim world, they are in or nearing this revolutionary regime. Unless Pareto optimal contract enforcement techniques coupled with a redistributive social policy are enacted, a series of revolutions will be inevitable. Given the social network that has formed to reinforce the revolutionary tendencies of individual groups, this will likely be a global revolution. While we didn't have the term "tipping point" in 1992, we've got it now. Watch for a tipping point. When it happens, it will happen fast. Also, it won't happen in America.
2. Freedom can be a bad thing.
In December of 1997, The Atlantic ran an article by Robert Kaplan that challenged the idea that liberal democracy was compatible with Muslim regimes. This followed on the heels of Samuel Huntington's now legendary Foreign Affairs article entitled "The Clash of Civilizations" and expanded on one of its themes.
Namely, some places are ill-suited to democracy. The cultural tradition of many Muslim nations, and indeed of many heavily Christian portions of the U.S., favors justice over freedom. Under this tradition of thought, freedom becomes sedition.
My good friend James once said to me that Algeria was more free now, under a military regime installed by the West, than they would have been under the freely elected Islamic Salvation Front. I replied that there were differences between being free from something and free to do something. Islamic law gives you a society free of drugs, free of crime, free of pornography, free of sexual distraction. Western society gives you no such freedoms.
The difference in perspective between the Muslim world and the West means that the West views cloistration, the chador, the muzzein's call, absolute submission to the will of God, the closed Gate of Ijtihaad, and indeed the very existence of Wahhabis and Salafists (let alone Khawariji) as an anomaly that will, with time and patience, be overcome as Muslims become more informed. Muslims in turn view baywatch, Coca Cola, heroin, petty theft, cohabitation, the prevailing content on the Internet, philosophy, ethics and secular law as zulm, shirk and bida - at best dross to be rejected, at worst corruption which must be rooted out and destroyed.
If your perspective is the latter, then freedom doesn't look that attractive. Instead, it becomes chaos, anarchy, strife and sedition. When the church is the state, iconoclasm and heresy are revolution and war.
Viewed through the lense of Islam (specifically Wahhabist, Salafist or Khawariji eyes), it's hard to know where to start criticizing the West, because so much of it is wrong. Certainly, the West is viewed as giving aid and succor to much reviled nepotic regimes in Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc. In other cases it is viewed as a corrupting influence, in Turkey and the UAE.
How does this inform the events of September 11, 2001?
Well, first, a large portion of the world is living in conditions which will change radically for the better if they rise up and challenge the existing order. We can show that it is inevitable that they will do so.
Further, these same people are currently living under the yoke of hypocritical leaders who wield dictatorial powers and are dependent on the flow of Western money and arms to suppress those very uprisings.
September 11 was, from this perspective, a strike at the root of the problem - the money that props up proximate oppressors.
This column presents only a perspective - watch this space for a program of solutions that will explain, step by step, what needs to be done to secure a safer world for Western culture in general and the U.S. specifically.
If you've got any comments, please post them below! I appreciate your feedback, and look forward to hearing from you.
Comments
sigh.
Posted by: Mendon | February 10, 2005 2:59 AM
To your first point-it seems to me what you're saying boils down to, "If the poor are abused enough, eventually they'll rise up." Well, yes. As Herb Stein put it, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." That's fine, but it doesn't tell us when revolution will begin, its form, or its severity. History is littered with unsuccessful peasant revolutions. Is what you describe the 1905 Revolution or the 1917? The French Revolution or Wat Tyler's Rebellion? I don't really expect you to be able to plug in a bunch of variables and have "Egyptian government to be overthrown in July 2006," (although that would be cool) but even given your initial premise, you can see there is enormous scope for variability here.
Let me offer a counter to your second point-'Freedom can be a bad thing.' I would agree that viewed through the Wahabbist lens, the freedom we have (primarily, though not totally, in the Western nations) is disturbing. That's no surprise-reactionary movements always hate and fear lack of control. The fact that these particular reactionaries point to Koranic verses to justify control by the imams is of no great relevance-there's a reason for the saying, "the devil can quote Scripture to serve his purposes." They can dress it up with Allah, but it really comes down to telling people what to do.
The point being, freedom is superior, specifically because it allows the possibility of the escape hatch-one can remove oneself from the grid. If you don't like Western society, it is possible to live in it, but not of it. It's not neccesarily easy, but it's generally understood in the Abrahamic religions that sacrifice for one beliefs is at the least, not an evil. One need look no further than the Amish to see a successful example-at the cost of substantial effort, they maintain a separatist community of 18th century ways in the heart of the East Coast of the United States. If conservative Muslims want to live here and follow their beliefs, I'm a-ok with it, provided they don't try to enforce them upon me.
In short, I think your second statement could be better phrased, "Some will view freedom as a bad thing." Short of actual anarchy, I would say that freedom is an undeniably good thing.
Posted by: FS | February 10, 2005 6:51 AM
1. Amish? Get a grip. They're devastated - teen pregnancy, drugs, etc. - they aren't immune. In fact, teen pregnancy is quite high in that community - and not on purpose. Friends working in social services in those areas see a LOT of Amish with A LOT of problems.
2. Muslims - let's make it clear that the Islamic Front is NOT Islam. Islamicism may be a twisted sect or derivation thereof, but it is not the majority of Muslims. In fact, most of what 'we' in the 'West' see is not Islam, but f***ed up wierdos who can be found anywhere. There are possibilities of reality other than the obscene.
Posted by: Mara | February 10, 2005 8:22 AM
My point isn't so much the rights or wrongs of the Amish themselves (although I'd argue that the very reason the Amish community has so many problems is because suppressing yourself-voluntarily or no-is a psychologically difficult, even harmful, behaviour). It's that this society is okay with the a consciously different sect living among us-we leave them alone, and they leave us alone. This freedom is specifically rejected by the Islamists.
As to the Islamists, that's exactly what I was trying to get across (perhaps poorly). They are clothing their tyrrany in the tenets of Islam. I'm not trying to say that these people represent Islam or the majority of Muslims, most of whom, I imagine, would rather welcome democracy (see Indonesia). I am saying that I don't think Nathan's point ("Freedom can be a bad thing") is really valid. Freedom is only a bad thing for those thrive on repression.
Posted by: FS | February 10, 2005 3:33 PM
Sorry, FS, the second comment was not directed at you. Though I have to admit that I do believe there should be limits on freedom - as there are in the States, and as I believe there should be.
Posted by: Mara | February 10, 2005 4:34 PM
Fair enough-anything can be bad in sufficient quantities (if you drink enough water, it will kill you). But my comfort level for freedom is way, way over to one end of the dial.
Posted by: FS | February 10, 2005 4:47 PM
I'm going to bow to Mara's superior knowledge of Islam and start using the term 'Islamicist' to describe someone who believes in a stronger interpretation of Islam - a term which will encompass Salfists, Wahhabists and Kharijis with equal ease.
Apologies to folks less extreme.
Second, the difference in the views on freedom between FS and Mara are examples of differences in the views on freedom that can happen within the West. Imagine how extreme they can be across cultures.
The differences in views on freedom between European countries and the U.S. can be fairly stark, and they have a large common history. France has recently outlawed religious symbols in schools - you can't wear a cross to school. The U.K. doesn't permit private ownership of handguns under any circumstances, Ireland doesn't allow abortions except when the mother's life is threatened.
As you go further afield, the distinction between freedom and sedition gets blurrier. One of my theses here is that the perspectives on freedom are so divergent that FS's stance will appear to be seditious and rebellious if the context is changed. Imagine if he made the statement "If conservative Muslims want to live here and follow their beliefs, I'm a-ok with it, provided they don't try to enforce them upon me." in downtown Haifa. I suspect people would think it was a farce. If they realised he was serious, he might get arrested.
By the same token, the stance of, say, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab that the wisdom of sages after Mohammed should be ignored seems like a strange and pedantic point upon which to base generations of violence, to Western eyes.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | February 10, 2005 8:32 PM
I think you're falling in to the trap of cultural relativism. Many countries repress their citizens, and may well have cultural reasons for it, but I think it's clear they are prima facie wrong to do so.
If you went back to say, Imperial Rome, and started saying that slaves were people, too, and should all be freed, people would think you're crazy, and the centurions would probably haul you off. But you would be right, and they would be wrong. Slavery is wrong. Ruling without consent of the governed is wrong. Killing women for the mistake of being raped is wrong.
I agree with you that we need to think how our actions look to others, that we should be aware of different cultures, that we should transgress taboos as little as possible. But there are some things that are quite simply bad and we should not condone them.
Posted by: FS | February 10, 2005 8:54 PM
Nathan made an argument for the West to be increasingly upright in its actions. We must not fall into the cultural relativistic perspective that because we have freedom that we have done it right. As a society which is supposed to be exemplary how do we relate to the world? We pretty much fail.
The arguments thus far have been based on comparison to dangerous extremists. Certainly, if you compare me to a mass murderer I will always come out shining. America has plenty of problems with its freedom. Significantly, its brand of freedom condoned racial segregation until the late sixties. Now, racial segregation is condoned as a silent vernacular policy. Another vast shortcoming of our society is its oppression of women, especially in rural areas. The United States didn't manage to shrug off many of the ideologies of the Victorian era until the sixties, even then, many of its ideas persist to today. How do we compare? We have a society of freedom which is tantamount to anarchy at its best. Those who are incredibly wealthy pay good money for people with guns to drive around the streets and protect them at night. Meanwhile those who don't have money are free from the tyranny of good police protection, equal opportunity, good schools, and established social institutions that maintain order. In other words, there is a cultural elite that enjoy luxury while there is a growing group of impoverished who are suffering not unlike those in extremist radical Islamic nations. Arguably, the only reason we don't perceive thise individuals as being oppressed is because the West has, in general, more resources to go around. However, the extremes of wealth and poverty are clearly displayed in the United States.
Furthermore, the West has been deluded into suffering from heavy doses of a belief in a just world (Aronson, Wilson, and Akert, 2004). The United States blames rape victims for their rape far more often than it blames the man who rapes her. America has no moral superiority. America's freedom and vast wealth have made her a spotlight for the hypocrisy inherent in all the world systems. Recently, the United States government has instituted systematic opression of the lower classes and for whatever odd reason (0h, how about lack of education imposed by the wealthy upper-class)have supported this opression. But, wait, didn't the oppressed masses in Iran support and even carry out the revolution in 1984?!
To continue this conversation we should note several things.
1). For all of its pedantry, the West does not know or have a good definition for justice.
2). America's ills are the same shortcomings as those of other nations only expressed differently.
3). "Freedom" is a term used by those who have complete self-autonomy (the wealthy)to keep themselves peacefully in power.
4). One who is willing to go to "Imperial Rome" and cry against its must, to be correct, become exemplary or be dismissed as a hypocrite.
5). Furthermore, no one in the West can live independently of it. The Amish are some of the most exploited people in Ohio, perhaps with the exception of the Hispanic-American population.
6). Oppressive regimes that clothe their policies in Islam may consciously be aware that they are distorting Islam for their benefit but they often have become as deluded as the president, belivieving, undeniably, that they actually represent a true version of Islam. Oppressive or not the willingness of their followers to walk in their footsteps in the name of Faith is very great.
Posted by: Mendon | February 12, 2005 12:48 AM
I don't think that the President believes, undeniably, that he actually represents a true version of Islam.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | February 12, 2005 1:14 AM
I disagree, Mensch. I haven't made an argument that the West should become increasingly uptight in its actions.
The only statements that I've made about what America should do is that it should take a look at different perspectives.
The accusation of cultural relativism is one I've been waiting to surface.
Cultural relativism speaks to the heart of the intelligence failure. We have failed to be properly culturally relativisitic in our analysis of the Middle East.
There are two kinds of cultural relativism. One is moral cultural relativism, which is where I think that liberals have failed in their analysis. The contention is that since what we do in our daily lives would be offensive in thus and such other culture, it is understandable when they react criminally or immorally. That's moral cultural relativism.
Methadological cultural relativism is the act of temprorarily suspending the cognitive bias that infects our analysis as a result of our culture. The Pentagon analysts who believed that we would be welcomed with open arms, ticker-tape parades and peace in Iraq analyzed what Westerners would do if freed from a dictator, as if overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Mussolini. They should have engaged in a bit more methadological cultural relativism.
FS, I'm not claiming that claustration is a fine idea, nor that clitoridectomies are the wave of the future, even though they may be considered moral in some Arabic cultures.
What I am saying, though, is that we'd better get a good handle on what is considered moral in other cultures if we want to interact with them successfully.
I also think Mendon has hit on something when he says that America has lost its sense of justice. This is spot on. Justice has been masticated by moral relativists, moral incentives have been removed by insurance and rich parents, and we are now adrift.
We need to seek out and hold the moral high ground. If only we knew where it was.
Posted by: Nathan Dornbrook | February 12, 2005 2:08 AM
And what of the repressive regimes that clothe their policies in Christianity, while consciously aware that they are distorting Christianity for their benefit? We don't talk too much about that situation here in America. (A-hem... I wonder why)
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye." (Luke 6:41-42)
Posted by: Kristen | February 12, 2005 4:16 AM
mmmmm... Nae, I meant that the President of the U.S. believes, undeniably, that he is motivated and representative of Christianity. The president is deluded about his religious actions and affiliations. He is not deluded, however, about being a representative of islam. To make the statement more accurate please remove "Islam" at the end of the sentence and replace it with "their faith".
I'd like to point out that to have thought that I was including the president as a "representative of Islam" would require an interpretation of the sentence such that the antecedent of "they" is "Oppressive regimes that clothe their policies in Islam"+"the president".
Now, let's go back to Sesame Street when I was little, before it was super PC. "One of these things is not like the others!"
Posted by: Mendon | February 12, 2005 4:27 AM
you may recall, when Mara was watching Sesame Street I think the lyrics were, "one of these things just doesn't belong."
When i watched it, it became, "one of these things is not like the others."
and, recently, it's become, "one of these things is special and different."
I always thought it odd because they never did compare people, it was always inanimate objects, a pear and two oranges or two pens and a pencil.
Posted by: Mendon | February 12, 2005 4:32 AM
Actually, Haifa is a pretty diverse city. The Muslims probably don't get too fundamentalist here, but there are a good number of Arabs here - both Christian and Muslim. There are also Jews, Druze, and Baha'is - among others, I imagine. Haifa is actually fairly wellknown for its peaceful coexistence. People here largely just want to live and get by.
Posted by: Mara Fojas | February 12, 2005 10:08 AM
"Killing women for the mistake of being raped is wrong." What is wrong with this sentence? And just whose "mistake" is it anyway?
"I don't think that the President believes, undeniably, that he actually represents a true version of Islam."
Nae, I agree with you grammatically, but with Mensch in spirit. This is on of the things that really scares me about our president -- he really seems to believe that he has a mandate from *God*. He thinks he understands what the Bible says and what it means. There are many theologians who can't agree among themselves what the Bible says. How does he think his interpretation is the 'right' one?
And, Nae, how did you manage to bold a word in the comments area? I have not had success doing that.
Posted by: Nannie | February 12, 2005 11:45 PM
Just testing.
Ooooooooo! It worked!
Posted by: Nannie | February 14, 2005 3:01 AM
To be honest, I think that "mistake" is appropriate. It makes you cringe with the reality that women ARE blamed for another's crime, BECAUSE they're the victim of it. We do some of that here as well, but instead of killing her physically, we blame her, destroy her ability to emote, and smother her soul. Occassionally, we have some well-publicized survivors.
By the way, how do you post with bold and italics? : )
Posted by: Kristen | February 14, 2005 4:01 AM
That's what I meant-rape victims are precisely that, victims. To ascribe some sort of taint to the family name because of their victimization is repellent.
Also, Mendon-I do recall Sesame Street using people in the "one of these is not like the other" segment-three kids would be in snow gear, and one in beachwear, that sort of thing.
Posted by: FS | February 14, 2005 8:12 PM
Yeah, me too. (re: Sesame Street)
Posted by: Mara | February 15, 2005 8:30 AM
"Killing women for the mistake of being raped is wrong." Maybe I just feel like arguing, but this sentence seems to be saying that the women are being killed for making the mistake of being raped. Rape is never "accidental", ie, a 'mistake'. It is an act of violence against women. If you mean that it is a mistake to kill women for being raped, than say so. (Yes, I really am that cranky.)
You use html to make bold and italics. I had tried it before in the comments and it wouldn't take, but now it does. So, yea! I can't demonstrate for you because it will bold and italicize and not show. I'll email you, Kristen. (So that is why Nae emailed me the instructions instead of putting it here.)
Posted by: Nannie | February 15, 2005 2:36 PM
Not only am I cranky; I'm slow. I think what you were trying to say is: "Killing women for the 'mistake of being raped' is wrong."
Okay, now that I get it, I still want to quibble with you. Those that stone women for being rape victims don't see it as a mistake the woman made, but a crime they committed. Because, after all, if she hadn't been prancing around flaunting her sexuality, the man would not have been tempted to rape her. Which makes it even more out there.
Posted by: Nannie | February 15, 2005 6:16 PM
Sorry, I my passion I lost my parallelism. Forgive me.
Posted by: Nannie | February 15, 2005 6:16 PM
Did you read the link that FS had attached to it? It tells part of a horrible story of how a woman was sentenced to gang rape for a crime her brother (did not) commit. And when she didn't kill herself afterward, those who raped her were SERIOUSLY pissed. Not only that, but she had the 'gall' to take them to court and win.... They were sentenced to death. And she went on to start a school - saying education was the only way to stop this heinousy. Wow - that's some capacity.
Posted by: Mara | February 16, 2005 8:41 AM
I don't see a link attached anywhere in these comments. I would like to read it. Can you put it in or tell me where to find it? Thanks.
Posted by: Nannie | February 16, 2005 3:03 PM
In FS' fourth comment it says 'killing women' (the very sentence that has upset you) - if you drag your mouse over it you'll see it's a link.
Posted by: Mara | February 16, 2005 3:47 PM
Thanks. I would have never spotted that.
Posted by: Nannie | February 16, 2005 3:57 PM
Okay, found it, read it. Didn't see anything about education. Different link?
Posted by: Nannie | February 16, 2005 4:04 PM
Since we were talking about female genital mutilation, this may be of interest. A French doctor is performing restorative surgery for its victims, free of charge. Story here.
Posted by: FS | February 17, 2005 1:55 PM
We were talking about FGM? Did I miss that too?
Posted by: Nannie | February 19, 2005 5:34 AM
Okay, Nae, time for a new post. This one's about played out.
Posted by: Nannie | February 22, 2005 6:24 PM