Provocation or Not?
January 12, 2015
Among Yahoo Questions and Answers is this one: “What did WE do to provoke Muslim fundamentalists -slash- Jihadists?”
The first long answer provides a partial list of actions initiated by the U.S. government that provoked terrorist responses. The second answer says there has been no provocation. Instead, they want to kill infidels. Another version of the latter is that they “hate our freedoms” or “hate democracy” or something along those lines.
To shed some light on these two possibilities, we can examine the list of terrorist incidents in America, which is here. Actually, the Jewish Defense League launched far more attacks (27) in the 1970s than any Muslims or Muslim groups (1 incident listed), second only to the FALN (40), a Puerto Rican separatist group.
The biggest and relatively early attack within America by a Muslim group was the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. The mastermind was Ramzi Yousef. The Wikipedia article about this online suggests that his motives were political and that he was provoked by U.S. actions:
“According to the journalist Steve Coll, Yousef mailed letters to various New York newspapers just before the attack, in which he claimed he belonged to ‘Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion’.[8] These letters made three demands: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a pledge by the United States to end interference ‘with any of the Middle East countries’ interior affairs.’ He stated that the attack on the World Trade Center would be merely the first of such attacks if his demands were not met. In his letters Yousef admitted that the World Trade Center bombing was an act of terrorism, but this was justified because ‘the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one.'”
This does not prove that today’s jihadists are motivated in the same ways that Yousef was, but it does provide evidence inconsistent with terrorism arising from pure and unprovoked hatred while offering evidence that provocations initiated by the U.S. have been significant in causing retaliation.
There is a case that has been made that Yousef was an agent of Saddam Hussein. Suppose that this is true, for the sake of the question of provocation or not. Then again the reasons behind this bombing would trace back to relations, frictions, sanctions and wars between Iraq and the U.S. The suggestion that fundamentalist hatred of the American system in and of itself causes terrorism would not be supported.
Other incidents in America listed in this collection called terrorist can be cited that involve the Palestine issue clearly. These include synagogue bombings in 2000, an attack in 1997 taking place on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and a 1994 shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Israel’s actions and the U.S. support of Israel have consistently been sources of provocation for some of those initiating terrorist acts. The terrorists themselves have said so. This is certainly not the only provocation, but it has been an important one for a subset of terrorist attacks. This is solid evidence consistent with the provocation hypothesis and inconsistent with the hate-our-freedoms hypothesis.
If we extend this investigation to terrorist attacks against the U.S. overseas and to attacks in other countries like England, France and India, even more evidence can be found that supports the theory that a great many terrorist attacks result from provocations. In addition, there is terrorism that has arisen from separatist agendas. This is provoked (called forth) by opposition to political arrangements.
The capacity to make an attack or commit suicide in making an attack may in many cases be aided by a religious commitment and belief. The question at hand is whether or not such a belief in and of itself leads to a hatred of some system, such as the American or Israeli system, that culminates in an attack, suicidal or otherwise. This is to be doubted based on the evidence before us.
There is little doubt that a man or woman who believes religiously in what they are doing will more likely commit to and carry out the violent acts they aim at and train for. It happens with American soldiers who are trained to kill on the basis of defending America against its enemies or otherwise absorb doctrines that, if not religious, inculcate quasi-religious beliefs or beliefs that fuse the state, God, family, freedom and American values. One does not pull the trigger or dispatch a drone or a bomb without some such training to overcome earlier instilled inhibitions.
American men and women who receive this training and act upon it are, like their Muslim terrorist counterparts, subject to provocations, the largest of which is the belief that America has been attacked (9/11) and now is at war. They see themselves as retaliating against invaders, in the same way that their chosen enemies see themselves as retaliating against Americans who have invaded their lands. This is a lose-lose situation. The same kind of situation occurs between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Each sees the other as invader.
The basic provocations are usually, but not always, ones involving property. An invasion takes property. It takes away what is regarded as one’s property. Justice is undermined.
Sometimes, however, the invasion is perceived while being non-physical. In 1989, Riverdale Press was firebombed in the Bronx for defending Salman Rushdie. The attack on Charlie Hebdo has the same character, namely, offense was taken at what has been written or said. The Jewish Defense League similarly attacked targets it viewed as anti-Semitic.
In these cases, there is provocation too. One may, as many libertarians do, make a strong distinction between physical provocations or invasions in which property rights become the issue and non-physical provocations in which speech and reputation are the issue. This distinction does not alter the fact that people take offense at both kinds of provocation. The hypothesis that provocations lie at the root of terrorist actions still is supported, even in these non-physical cases.
What I see missing from the statements and reactions of American politicians, by and large, is the idea of provocation. The tendency is to regard terrorism as motivated by hatred or an ideological clash as opposed to understanding it as provoked by the actions of those who are being attacked by terrorists. Leaders do not want to admit that they have possibly done things that provoked retaliation. Even when the terrorists say so, they refuse to acknowledge their claims. The media tend to ignore the reasons stated by terrorists. The U.S. government ignores the injustices of its own interventions (and those of Israel), always claiming that what it is doing or has done is right and just.
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