Priorities for Homeland Security The last line of defense against suicide terrorism--preventing bombers from reaching targets--may be the most expensive and least likely to succeed. Random bag or body searches cannot be very effective against people willing to die, although this may provide some semblance of security and
hence psychological defense against suicide terrorism's psychological warfare. A middle line of defense, penetrating and destroying recruiting organizations and isolating their leaders, may be successful in the near term, but even more resistant organizations could emerge instead. The first line of defense is to drastically reduce receptivity of potential recruits to recruiting organizations. But how? It is important to know what probably will not work. Raising literacy rates may have no effect and could be counterproductive should greater literacy translate into greater exposure to terrorist propaganda (in Pakistan, literacy and dislike for the United States increased as the number of religious madrasa schools increased from 3000 to 39,000 since 1978) (27, 38). Lessening poverty may have no effect, and could be counterproductive if poverty reduction for the entire population amounted to a downward redistribution of wealth that left those initially better off with fewer opportunities than before. Ending occupation or reducing perceived humiliation may help, but not if the population believes this to be a victory inspired by terror (e.g., Israel's apparently forced withdrawal from Lebanon). If suicide-bombing is crucially (though not exclusively) an institution-level phenomenon, it may require finding the right mix of pressure and inducements to get the communities themselves to abandon support for institutions that recruit suicide attackers. One way is to so damage the community's social and political fabric that any support by the local population or authorities for sponsors of suicide attacks collapses, as happened regarding the kamikaze as a by-product of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the present world, however, such a strategy would neither be morally justifiable nor practical to implement, given the dispersed and distributed organization of terrorist institutions among distantly separated populations that collectively number in the hundreds of millions. Likewise, retaliation in kind ("tit-for-tat") is not morally acceptable if allies are sought (41). Even in more localized settings, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, coercive policies alone may not achieve lasting relief from attack and can exacerbate the problem over time. On the inducement side, social psychology research indicates that people who identify with antagonistic groups use conflicting information from the other group to reinforce antagonism (19). Thus, simply trying to persuade others from without by bombarding them with more self-serving information may only increase hostility. Other research suggests that most people have more moderate views than what they consider their group norm to be. Inciting and empowering moderates from within to confront inadequacies and inconsistencies in their own knowledge (of others as evil), values (respect for life), and behavior (support for killing), and other members of their group (42), can produce emotional dissatisfaction leading to lasting change and influence on the part of these individuals (43). Funding for civic education and debate may help, also interfaith confidence-building through intercommunity interaction initiatives (as Singapore's government proposes) (35). Ethnic profiling, isolation, and preemptive attack on potential (but not yet actual) supporters of terrorism probably will not help. Another strategy is for the United States and its allies to change behavior by directly addressing and lessening sentiments of grievance and humiliation, especially in Palestine (where images of daily violence have made it the global focus of Moslem attention) (44) (Fig. 4). For no evidence (historical or otherwise) indicates that support for suicide terrorism will evaporate without complicity in achieving at least some fundamental goals that suicide bombers and supporting communities share. Fig. 4. Moslem youth with Quran dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber demonstrating outside the United Nations office in Jakarta, Indonesia (April 2002). (Indonesia is the most populous Moslem nation.) [Reuters/Darren Whiteside] [View Larger Version of this Image (95K GIF file)] Of course, this does not mean negotiating over all goals, such as Al-Qaida's quest to replace the Western-inspired system of nation-states with a global caliphate, first in Moslem lands and then everywhere (see supporting online text for history and agenda of suicide-sponsoring groups). Unlike other groups, Al-Qaida publicizes no specific demands after martyr actions. As with an avenging army, it seeks no compromise. But most people who currently sympathize with it might. Perhaps to stop the bombing we need research to understand which configurations of psychological and cultural relationships are luring and binding thousands, possibly millions, of mostly ordinary people into the terrorist organization's martyr-making web. Study is needed on how terrorist institutions form and on similarities and differences across organizational structures, recruiting practices, and populations recruited. Are there reliable differences between religious and secular groups, or between ideologically driven and grievance-driven terrorism? Interviews with surviving Hamas bombers and captured Al-Qaida operatives suggest that ideology and grievance are factors for both groups but relative weights and consequences may differ. We also need to investigate any significant causal relations between our society's policies and actions and those of terrorist organizations and supporters. We may find that the global economic, political, and cultural agenda of our own society has a catalyzing role in moves to retreat from our world view (Taliban) or to create a global counterweight (Al-Qaida). Funding such research may be difficult. As with the somewhat tendentious and self-serving use of "terror" as a policy concept (45), to reduce dissonance our governments and media may wish to ignore these relations as legitimate topics for inquiry into what terrorism is all about and why it exists. This call for research may demand more patience than any administration could politically tolerate during times of crisis. In the long run, however, our society can ill afford to ignore either the consequences of its own actions or the causes behind the actions of others. Potential costs of such ignorance are terrible to contemplate. The comparatively minor expense of research into such consequences and causes could have inestimable benefit. REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. "Patterns of global terrorism" (U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, May 2002); available at www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2001/. "The U.S. Governmenthas employed this definition of terrorism for statistical and analytical purposes since 1983." 2. U.S. Code Congress. Admin. News, 98th Congress, 2nd Session, v. 2, par. 3077, 98 STAT. (19 October 1984). 3. Until 1983, official U.S. positions on "terror" followed the term's common meaning in use since the French Revolution, referring to state-sponsored terror. For example, under "sources relating to Operation Enduring Freedom and the struggle against terrorism," the U.S. Navy's Web guide on terrorism regularly links to Department of Defense articles on Iraq (www.history.navy.mil/library/guides/terrorism.htm). 4. The recent Guatemalan truth commission report singled out the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), now at Fort Benning, Georgia, for counterinsurgency training that "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed conflict." A 1998 human rights report released by the Guatemala Archdiocese Human Rights Office also linked SOA graduates in Guatemala's military intelligence (D-2, G-2) to a civilian-targeted campaign of kidnappings, torture, and murder that left tens of thousands dead. References available online through Network Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), "U.S. Army School of the Americas cited in Guatemalan Truth Commission Report," 17 July 2001; available at www.nisgua.org/articles/school_of_the_americas. htm. 5. B. Lewis, The Assassins (Basic, New York, 2002). 6. M. Robespierre, "Principes de morale politique," speech delivered to French National Convention, 5 February 1794; available at http://membres.lycos.fr/discours/1794.htm. 7. A. Axell, Kamikaze (Longman, New York, 2002). 8. A precipitating event was the exiling of 418 Palestinians suspected of affiliation with Hamas (18 December 1992), the first mass expulsion of Arabs from Palestine since 1948. 9. Quran, chapt. 3, verses 140-146. 10. Compare this statement with that of Hamas leader Abd Al-'Aziz Al-Rantisi, Al-Hayat (London-Beirut), 25 April 2002. 11. U.S. Department of Justice, Al Qaeda Training Manual, online release 7 December 2001; available at www.usdoj.gov/ag/trainingmanual.htm. 12. "Suicide terrorism: A global threat," Jane's BioSecurity (2002); available at www.janes.com/security/ international_security/news/usscole/jir001020_1_n. shtml. 13. B. Lewis, What Went Wrong (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2002). The notion of a distinct religious authority, or clergy, was traditionally alien to Islam. The de facto modern clergy recognized by Islamic suicide attackers includes mullahs of Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as the 19th-century administrative office of ayatollah in Iran and the former Ottoman office of State Attorney, or mufti (e.g., in Palestine, Syria, and Arabia). Many in this "clergy" also oppose suicide bombing. 14. D. Malakoff, Science 295, 254 (2002) . 15. D. Chapin, et al., Science 297, 1997 (2002) [Free Full Text]. 16. D. Von Drehle, Washington Post, 7 October 2002, p. A1. Warner's example of "rational deterrence" was the Cold War doctrine MAD (mutually assured destruction). MAD's key premise was the apparently irrational threat of guaranteeing one's own destruction in order to destroy the enemy. 17. Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, "Confronting anti-Arab or anti-Muslim sentiments," 21 September 2002; available at www.uua.org/uuawo/issues/respond/confront.html. 18. S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority (Harper & Row, New York, 1974). 19. L. Ross and C. Stillinger, Negotiation J. 7, 389 (1991) [ISI]. 20. R. Clark, Crime in America (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1970). 21. White House news release, 22 March 2002; available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020322-1.html. 22. J. J. Jai, Christian Science Monitor, 10 December 2001, p. 7. 23. G. Becker, Pol. Econ. 76, 169 (1968) [CrossRef]. 24. "They are youth at the peak of their blooming, who at a certain moment decide to turn their bodies into body parts... flowers." Editorial, Al-Risala (Hamas weekly), 7 June 2001. 25. Sheikh Yussuf Al-Qaradhawi (a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood), Al-Ahram Al-Arabi (Cairo), 3 February 2001. 26. A. Krueger, J. Maleckova, NBER Working Paper no. w9074, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, July 2002; available at http://papers.nber.org/papers/W9074. 27. T. Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, 2002). Leaders of Al-Qaida's international cells are often middle-class, European-educated converts to radical Islam. Family histories indicate little religious fervor before emigration to a solitary existence in Europe and subsequent belonging to a local prayer group or mosque (available tapes preach a revolutionary end to daily, personal alienation through collective action to destroy perceived impediments to "restoring" Islam's values and dominance). As with other radical Islamic groups, ordinary cell operatives are often resident Middle East bachelors from middle-class families. 28. A. Merari, paper presented to Institute for Social Research seminar series, "The Psychology of Extremism," Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 11 February 2002. 29. R. Ezekiel, The Racist Mind (Viking, New York, 1995). 30. N. Hassan, The New Yorker, 19 November 2001; available at www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?011119fa_FACT1. 31. B. Barber, Heart and Stones (Palgrave, New York, in press). 32. D. Brooks, The Atlantic Monthly 289 (6), 18 (June 2002); available at www.theatlanticmonthly.com/issues/2002/06/brooks.htm. 33. Unlike people willing to blow themselves up, for frontline soldiers in an apparently hopeless battle, there usually remains hope for survival [ G. Allport, J. Gillespie, J. Young, J. Psychol. 25, 3 (1948) ]. The distance between no hope and some (however small) is infinite, which represents the ultimate measure of devotion that religions typically uphold as ideal. While commitment to die for nonkin cannot be rendered within standard theories of Expected Utility, there are moves theorists attempt, such as invoking "infinite utility." Using "infinite utility" to patch theories of rationality creates holes elsewhere in the system. Thus, expected utilities are usually weighted averages, which has scant sense when one term is infinite. The deeper point is that notions of maximization of anticipated benefits cannot account for such behaviors, and ad hoc moves to maintain rational utility at all costs result in a concept of rationality or utility doing little explanatory work. In sum, reliance on rational-choice theories may not be the best way to understand and try to stop suicide terrorism. 34. D. Rhode, A. Chivers, New York Times, 17 March 2002, p. A1. 35. "White Paper--The Jemaah Islamiyah Arrests," (Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore, 9 January 2003); available at www2.mha.gov.sg. Recruitment and indoctrination into Jemaah Islamiyah are similar in other radical Islamic groups: "The first stage ... involved religious classes organised for a general mass... . The second stage ... involved identifying those who were captivated enough to find out more about the plight of Muslims in other regions. [JI spiritual leader] Ibrahim Maidan identified potential members from those who were curious enough to remain after classes to enquire further. He engaged those students' interest and compassion and finally invited those he deemed suitable to join JI. This recruitment process would usually take about 18 months. The few who were selected as members were made to feel a strong sense of exclusivity and self esteem ... a strong sense of in-group superiority." 36. In much the same way, the pornography, fast food, or soft drink industries manipulate innate desires for naturally scarce commodities like sexual mates, fatty foods, and sugar to ends that reduce personal fitness but benefit the manipulating institution. [S. Atran, In Gods We Trust (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 2002)]. 37. E. Sciolino, New York Times, 27 January 2002, p. A8. 38. "What the world thinks in 2002: How global publics view: Their lives, their countries, the world, America" (Survey Rep., Pew Research Center, 4 December 2002); available at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=165. 39. Reuters News Service, 11 June 2002; accessed at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020611/wl_nm/mideast_palestini. 40. C. Lynch, Washington Post, 18 December 2002, p. A27. 41. R. Axelrod and W. Hamilton, Science 211, 1390 (1981) [ISI][Medline]. 42. M. Bazerman, M. Neale, Negotiating Rationally (Free Press, New York, 1991). 43. A. Eagly, S. Chaiken, The Psychology of Attitudes (Harcourt Brace, Fort Worth, TX, 1993). 44. One possibility is to offer and guarantee a clear resolution of "final status" acceptable to majorities of Israelis and Palestinians. Without clear resolution of final status before implementation of "confidence building" measures, with an understanding by all parties of what to expect in the end, it is likely that doubts about ultimate intentions will undermine any interim accord--as in every case since 1948. [ S. Atran, Politics and Society 18, 481 (1990) ]. 45. N. Chomsky, 9-11 (Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001). 46. Thanks to D. Medin, N. Chomsky, R. Gonzalez, M. Bazerman, R. Nisbett, and reviewers. Supporting Online Material www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/299/5612/1534/DC1 SOM Text