Mike Lee wrote:
> > Let's say, Kerry wins the US > > Presidential elections. He is going to dramatically alter the > > US response to terrorism. Would that too count as a win for > Al-Qaeda? > > They'll think it is.
They as in AQ? I am not so sure of that. I know they'll say it, often and loud, but I am not sure they'd think that.
And in any case, I'd really rather not take AQ's statements as the barometer of the efficacy of the anti-terrorism efforts. These people kill without compunction, in fact they seem to relish slaughter - I doubt they would worry about misleading those they hate.
Taking this subject to a meta level . . . . What is going on is not hard to understand in memetics and evolutionary psychology terms.
EP theory says our psychological traits were shaped by millions of years of living and (most important) reproducing in small tribes. When the game was hunted out, all the plants picked and starvation looming it was time to move on if you could.
If (as was usually the case) there were other tribes blocking your movement in all directions, your tribe picked one of them, dehumanized them with xenophobic memes and attacked.
If you were attacked you fought back.
Now if Spain had been attacked *before* they took part in Iraq, they would have gone on the warpath fully justified on stomping the (to use a xenophobic term) "rag heads." But they were not. The Spanish leaders joined the US (which was attacked and thereby motivated into making war). They took part in an attack on Iraq which really wasn't justified--especially in the post analysis. (Other than speaking the same language, Iraq didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks nor did they have any nukes, poison gas or germs.)
So in EP/tribal terms, the "Spanish tribe" was none too happy about being sucked into the Iraq mess. Ghod knows they have their own crew of trouble makers. Given a chance, a swing segment of the population voted for the party that would get them out.
(An interesting side effect is that the "Spanish tribe" has lumped Iraq and bin Laden's cult into one tribe--just like the bin Laden cult leaders wanted.)
It probably isn't going to get Spain out of the line of fire, because according to the theory what drives the bin Laden cult is the realization that "income per capita" has been falling. I make the case from EP that this maps into the same motivation as looming starvation did when we were living in small tribes.
What bin Laden is after (though he certainly does not know this consciously) is for his tribe to kill all of the males in our tribe and take the women and food resources, or failing that, for the males in his "tribe" to be wiped out and those he attacked to absorb his tribe's women, thus saving his genes from starvation.
The particular xenophobic memes of Islamic fundamentalism don't matter. If they didn't have those memes, other xenophobic memes would have "justified" attacking. The Easter Islander's sorted themselves out into "long ears" and "short ears" and went at it till 90-95% of the population was gone and the badly damaged ecosystem could recover a bit.
That this entire business is insane is to be expected. Genes inducing this kind of insanity in the face of periodic downturns in the productivity of the ecosystem did better than genes for being rational.
How does the US get out?
Not an easy question.
Rising income per capita in the Islamic world would do the trick, like it eventually did in Northern Ireland. But to do that requires rising productivity and falling birth rates, neither of which look likely in that culture. Birth control wouldn't get any support from the current US administration either (especially if based on an evolution theory!). A major epidemic perhaps. (If there are any historians around who want to research if wars become less common after a major die off, please contact me.)
I don't see any way to get rid of the responsibility the US took on in Iraq either. It would have to be something in the same insanity class as 9/11. We could, I suppose, punish the people of Iraq for not being grateful enough for our invasion by putting Saddam back in power. But that's probably not insane enough.
Swapping half (or more) of the people in Iraq with US citizens just might be insane enough to work.
All of this is going on way out of our environment of evolutionary adaption--so take even the humor parts with a grain of salt.
Keith Henson
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