

The Case for Calling Terrorists Nitwits - inmygarage
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case-for-calling-them-nitwits/8130/

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GiraffeNecktie
I liked this part of the article "... it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ
the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself.
And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been
using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or
attempted attacks. "

It's hard to find suicide bombers with a good resume of successful attacks.

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gaius
Yeah, but you don't just wake up one morning, strap on a bomb and go. Rather
you spend a few weeks or months at a jihad training camp in the mountains
first, and then get sent off to blow yourself and maybe some infidels up.

So there will be suicide bomber training _mullahs_ who have a track record of
training martyrs to be effective suicide bombers, and those whose graduates
more often than not fail.

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dtf
I was half expecting to see a reference to Chris Morris's recent film Four
Lions. That film has been dubbed "controversial" here in the UK precisely
because its protagonists are portrayed as nitwits, albeit nitwits with bombs.

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techiferous
"The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to
detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already
switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to
ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars
were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists
to their untimely demises."

[http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-
notes.html#t...](http://www.speakeasy.org/~mamandel/filks/Darwin-
notes.html#timebomb)

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kyleslattery
That's the trouble with getting someone to be a suicide bomber: you need
someone stupid enough to think that killing themselves is a good idea, yet
smart enough to pull it off.

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jrockway
It seems that "the terrorists" just don't have careful leadership. With good
leadership, average people can do amazing things, like hijack four planes at
the same time and crash three of them into buildings. Pretty scary.

Also, why does the article call people "perverts" for looking at porn? Really?
People _still_ think that?

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ryanwaggoner
I'm pretty sure they were referring to the sexual encounters involving
barnyard animals. I think that qualifies as perverted.

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abalashov
But the word was used explicitly in the context of the discussion of the
contents of seized laptops.

~~~
roc
Not all porn is created equal.

I don't find it at all unlikely that the same sorts who would resort to the
most intimate form of animal husbandry might have truly perverted pornography.

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stretchwithme
the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common. It takes intelligence
in many forms to recognize and practice virtue, to recognize the influence of
the crowd over one's thinking and to resist knee jerk reactions and grudges

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sliverstorm
> the dumb and the evil have always had a lot in common.

As proven by the existence of one of my favorite logical adages- Hanlon's
razor.

~~~
sesqu
to wit, "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity."

~~~
stretchwithme
ha ha. love it

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philwelch
When your field is "suicide bombing", it's hard to retain good talent.

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knowtheory
This article really pisses me off.

Who cares how smart your enemy is? You don't need to be intelligent to be
dangerous.

The author clearly doesn't understand the point of asymmetric warfare. Even if
people want to laugh at the fact that 50% of Afghani suicide bombers don't
kill people, 50% _DO_ kill people. Suicide bombers aren't doing a cost benefit
analysis of their efficacy and then deliberating on whether they're going to
blow themselves up or not. Their job is to sow terror, and pierce the idea of
safety.

In spite of any of the points mentioned in the article, it's still possible to
recruit suicide bombers to go blow themselves up for an ideology that's
insane.

\------------------------------------

I do honestly believe that we should point out the absurdity of suicide
bombing. But the absurdity is _not_ a question of their efficacy, which is
undeniably a winning strategy if you've got the man power to throw at it. The
absurdity of suicide bombing lay in the ideology, and the goals one seeks to
achieve by blowing oneself up.

This article is at best naïve, and at worse, dangerously ignorant and besides
the point. Fight ideas.

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petewarden
You're completely missing the point. Terrorism is about spreading terror,
killing people is just a technique. Finding reasons to laugh at these
jackasses makes them a lot less terrifying.

The best way to fight their ideas is to avoid buying into their romantic self-
image as heroic martyrs, and reveal them as the sad losers they really are.

~~~
stretchwithme
and yet, humiliation is the best way to make an enemy

I think its much better to have nothing to do with these people. we need to
stop trying to create the centralized states our DC politicians are in love
with and that are necessarily more fragile, requiring life support from the
west.

I think many people feel very threatened by the west, its technology and its
overpowering media. the more we keep pushing it in their face, the more they
will keep looking for a way to make us regret we ever did

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MichaelSalib
_and yet, humiliation is the best way to make an enemy_

Mockery and humiliation are not equivalent. Humiliation implies some
degradation of people under our control. We should of course avoid such
behavior, but public mockery need not entail humiliation.

I'm pretty sure that folks willing to commit acts of terrorism are already
enemies. But I do agree that this sort of messaging has to be careful to
differentiate the nitwit terrorists and the larger community from which they
might draw support. Mock the former, not the latter.

 _I think its much better to have nothing to do with these people._

Alas, this does not seem politically feasible. Governments that fail to
communicate anything to the public about terrorists are at risk of falling
victim to demagogues in other parties.

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stretchwithme
I was referring to our foreign policy, not whether or not we should
communicate with our citizens about threats

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kmfrk
Someone relay this to TSA.

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arohann
Only fools underestimate their enemies.

