Brecher on Boko Haram

The number of people who write interesting, nuanced pieces on Islam is shockingly low. Either all Muslims are crazy, or all Muslims are peace-loving, but it's got to be one of the two. More importantly, to the extent that anyone resiles from this position, it's as a wholly dishonest token ass-covering method that simply emphasises by comparison the main sentiment. In other words, you'll read either 'Of course, not all Muslims are crazy terrorists, but [implicitly they are nearly all terrorists]', or 'Of course, there are a tiny number of Muslim terrorist fanatics, but [implicitly they are nearly all peace-loving]'.

If you want to test whether a given piece has any nuance, you can check whether it makes any attempt to distinguish between different groups of Muslims. In other words, if there are 'a tiny number of terrorist fanatics', to me it seems mightily interesting as to how we might diagnose which ones are which. Bangladesh, for instance, produces relatively few jihadis. Neither does Turkey. Saudi Arabia and Yemen, however, produce quite a lot. But how often do you hear about that distinction? Or how we should set policy as a consequence?

Gary Brecher, however, is one of the best sources of actually informed, disinterested commentary on the subject. The standard problem, as he puts it, is thus:

A few days ago, a suicide bomber got on a luxury commuter bus in Northern Nigeria and blew himself up, along with 60 people who were heading home from work.

It didn’t get much publicity. African casualties rarely do, especially when there’s a depressing religious angle. The suicide bomber came from the Northern Nigerian Islamist group “Boko Haram.” The name is interesting: “Boko” comes from the English word “book,” as pronounced by the Hausa, the biggest northern ethnic group. “Haram” (“forbidden”) is an Arabic word, the Wahhabis’ favorite word of all. When people talk about “Northern Nigeria” they mean “Muslim Nigeria.” There are three big divisions in the country: The Muslim/Hausa North, the Christian/Igbo South, and the Yoruba West. (The Yoruba are the only big group that’s mixed, with Christians and Muslims). Boko Haram blew up those buses because the people on them were going to an Igbo/Christian neighborhood of Kano, a Muslim/Northern city.

That’s already more than most squeamish Westerners want to know. “Ah, it’s religious…” is about all they need to hear before settling back into their comfy stances. Conservatives figure it’s just one more proof that all Muslims are crazy. The left mumbles “Islamophobia” and tries to change the subject to Palestine. So from left to right on your radio dial, there’s not a lot of what my social-studies teacher called “hunger for knowledge.”

 I challenge you to argue that he's wrong.

Here's his latest piece, describing the disingenuousness of people who are suddenly interested in Boko Haram as a way of distracting attention from Charlie Hedbo.

It's awesome. Read the whole thing.

On the Charlie Hedbo killings

It's taken me a while to write about the Charlie Hedbo killings. It takes me a while to write anything anymore in this august journal, but it wasn't just that.

I felt genuinely stirred by one thing, first and foremost. The Charlie Hedbo staff had some pretty damn enormous stones. Drawing original Mohammed cartoons, under your own name, when the location of your office is publicly known, after you've already been firebombed once for doing so? That, my friend, is some serious commitment to thick liberty of speech. The ghost of John Stuart Mill is applauding the glorious dead of Charlie Hedbo. They paid the ultimate price to insist that the right to speak one's mind exists not only as a theoretical construct, but one that you can actually exercise. Behold, the roll of honour:

• Cabu (Jean Cabut), 76, cartoonist

• Elsa Cayat, 54, psychoanalyst and columnist.

• Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier), 47, cartoonist, columnist, and editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo.

• Philippe Honoré, 74, cartoonist

• Bernard Maris, 68, economist, editor, and columnist

• Mustapha Ourrad , 60, copy editor.

• Tignous (Bernard Verlhac), 57, cartoonist.

• Georges Wolinski, 80, cartoonist

Alas, I fear we will not see their kind again soon.

The whole #JeSuisCharlie show of support was a mixed bag. I was at least heartened by the extent of explicit public solidarity, though I was inclined to agree with the various commentators who noted that there is a definite strain of false bravery by association in the hashtag, at least compared with the stupendous bravery of the actual Hedbo staff. But this is relatively minor.

One odd and yet somewhat positive result to come from this affair is that it finally, surprisingly dragged a number of US publications kicking and screaming into publishing some kind of depiction of Mohammed. They were for the most part unwilling in initial reporting to show any of the original cartoons that provoked the ire of the killers. They were certainly unwilling to print absolutely any of the Danish Mohammed cartoons a few years ago, to their great disgrace. 

But when the cover of the next edition of Charlie Hedbo was released, it seemed to finally shame some fraction of the American media into growing some balls, no matter how tiny and shriveled. Partly I suspect this was out of sympathy for their fellow journalists, partly because they perhaps sensed that they'd have enough of a justification and safety in numbers. Still, credit where diminutive credit is due, a surprising number at long, long last were willing to show something. According to the Daily Beast, the Washington Post ran photos of the cover, while USA Today and the Los Angeles Times put photos on their website. Even the BBC, to my astonishment, put a picture up, in one online story (which seems to be the the 'trial balloon' option, since you can take it back down again if you suddenly get scared). But of course, cowardice continues to win the day at CNN, ABC, AP, The New York Times, and so on. If you're unwilling to even reprint a cover specifically related to the story, whose depiction of Mohammed is not only mild and inoffensive, but which even contains the words 'All is Forgiven' above it, you'd sure as hell better not claim that you, too, are Charlie.

You can bet your ass that even the current crop of the recently less craven won't run more Mohammed pictures again soon. But the current reversal was made possible by the fact that for a short-lived time, a good number of the usual suspects who would ordinarily trumpet how free speech shouldn't include the right to say anything that might hurt the feelings of (certain chosen) religious minorities were at least temporarily shamed into silence. As expected, it didn't last long. It never does.

From this point on, alas, the story had mainly disappointment for me. 

With the distance of a few days, what strikes me the most about it is the fact that the only approved, socially acceptable response is sadness, and a "show of support", whatever that means. (Of course, half the left can't even muster that, going only for mealy-mouthed equivocation of "I support free speech, but..".).

But even take the #JeSuisCharlie people, whose solidarity I'm still glad to have. What exactly does it get you? You can have candlelit vigils in Paris. You can have hashtags. You can "show support", as an individual, and you can even assemble an impressive number of world leaders to do the same.

But then what?

What, exactly, does anyone plan to do in response? What, if any, policies or actions will change as a result?

The men who invaded the Charlie Hedbo offices were willing to trade their own lives, with very high expectation, to make sure that the people who drew and printed Mohammed cartoons were brutally and publicly killed. They were willing to die to send the message that if you create and distribute pictures of Mohammed under your own name, you will eventually be hunted down, even if you have police protection.

Will future such men be deterred by your hashtags? 

Will they be frightened by your "support"?

It is worth asking whether the killers succeeded in their purpose. Depressingly, I have to conclude that they did.

If you were a cartoonist, what would you learn from all this?

I'd learn, if I didn't already know it, that if I wrote a Mohammed cartoon, there's a strong chance I'd get killed. I might also learn that there's a reasonable chance I'd get a sympathetic hashtag going afterwards. How do you think that bargain strikes most cartoonists?

You don't have to guess to find out. Have a look through The Australian's gallery of cartoons drawn in the aftermath. I see a strong sentiment that the pen is mightier than the sword. I see a distinct lack of new drawings of Mohammed. 

I don't mean to single these guys out as cowards. They've just performed exactly the calculation that the terrorists wanted them to perform: if you draw a cartoon about Mohammed and publish it in such a way that we can identify you, you may be killed. Eli Valley drew about the dilemma quite poignantly here. It ends with the depressing conclusion: "The only context for me is this: call me a coward, but I want to continue to be alive." Not exactly stirring, is it? But then again, what have you done lately that's equivalently brave as what you're asking of him?

Mr Valley is absolutely right in his calculation of the stakes. Doubt not that this is deadly serious. Ask Molly Norris, a Seattle cartoonist in hiding since 2010 after death threats were made to her over her cartoons during 'Everyone Draw Mohammed' day. This is happening in America too. The only difference is that very few got printed the first time around, so there's fewer people to threaten.

Hence, the current implied scenario. Reprinting someone else's otherwise respectful depiction of Mohammed probably won't get you killed. Drawing your own anonymous Mohammed cartoon won't get you killed. Owning up to your public drawing quite possibly will.

Is there any serious doubt that of the people in the west who were, i) willing to publicly put their name to pictures of Mohammed, and ii) were set to run such cartoons in a major print publication, a large fraction were killed last week?

This is why the the terrorists succeeded.

So let's take it as given that "support", while better than opposition, will not in fact diminish the chances of future attacks occurring, nor will it significantly reduce the likely deterrent that the current attacks provide against new people drawing pictures of Mohammed. On its own, support, in other words, won't achieve anything. We return to the question from before. What, then, does anyone propose to do?

There is a very good reason that sadness is the only socially acceptable response. Anger, by contrast, requires action. When people are angry, they might actually do something. Is there anything that current political opinion will actually allow to be done?

The terrorists who perpetrated the act are already dead, so aside from cathartic displays equivalent to hanging Mussolini's corpse, there is nothing to be done there.

And since since we are loudly informed by all the great and the good that such attacks are representative of absolutely no wider sociological phenomenon but are merely the work of a tiny number of deranged madmen, apparently there's nothing to do directly to anyone else either.

So what if one's anger were turned towards the question of how we might ensure that this doesn't happen again, what might acceptable opinion consider?

Various Deus Ex Machina type answers get proposed. Better surveillance! Stop the flow of weapons to terrorist groups! Convince more Muslims to embrace free speech!

Very good. How, exactly, should this be accomplished?

The only one that might have any chance is the first. At least in America, we tried that. It was called The Patriot Act. While it is hard to judge its effectiveness, when the very name of your policy has effectively become shorthand for 'knee-jerk response to terrorism that permanently eroded important civil liberties', you may see why 'better surveillance' is not in fact an ideal policy response.

As for the second option, if anyone has the vaguest idea about what policy France might have implemented that would have succeeded in preventing the terrorists from having access to the weapons they had, I'm yet to hear it.

As for the third, nobody in any position of political power seems to have much of an idea how to get radical Muslims to love free speech other than 'be scrupulously nice to Muslims, insist that they're all peace-loving, don't discriminate against them, try not to offend them by depicting pictures of Mohammed...'

Give or take a few hiccups, it seems to me that this is the policy we've already been trying, no? This, in other words, is what brought us to the current position. Even if one were to think that we haven't done enough in this direction (like communism, true outreach has never been tried!), it surely seems worth at least considering the possibility that this policy actually does not work, and then what else one might do.

The West has collectively taken an enormous bet. It has bet that it can allow mass immigration from certain Muslim countries and successfully include such people into society in a way that doesn't compromise the West's own core values or result in permanent social conflict.

Maybe that bet is right. Every fibre of my being hopes that it is right. But Gnon cares little what you'd like to be true. It care only about what is.

However, the West, and the left in particular, cannot back away from its bet, no matter how high the stakes, no matter what evidence piles up. Because something much bigger is at issue. To acknowledge the possibility that the policy of large scale immigration from certain countries might have been mistaken would be to contemplate the notion that radical egalitarianism is false; that, much as we may hope it to be true, people are not all the same, and cultural systems are not all equally valid.

This will never be given up by the left. Never, ever, ever. 

Muslim immigration was never the cause, it was only ever the symptom. The cause was always our iron belief in radical egalitarianism. 

And this is why, in the end, we come to the conclusion that we knew all along. 

What, exactly, will the West do in response to all this? 

Nothing.

It will do nothing at all.

The one phrase you probably haven't heard being thrown about much in the debate on whether to intervene in Syria.

"Libya".

So, we want to topple a nasty secular dictator we know, who is locked in a struggle with Al Qaeda-linked terrorist 'rebels', confident that we'll manage to turn the place into Switzerland.

How'd that work out last time? Not so hot, as I wrote about at the time.

How's it going now? You've stopped hearing about it, but that's just because the west has a short attention span.

From a randomly-chosen item in the first couple of hits when I type 'news Libya' into google:

"We all thought Libya had moved on – it has, but into lawlessness and ruin"

Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi

A little under two years ago, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, urged British businessmen to begin “packing their suitcases” and to fly to Libya to share in the reconstruction of the country and exploit an anticipated boom in natural resources.

Yet now Libya has almost entirely stopped producing oil as the government loses control of much of the country to militia fighters.

Well that's just grand.

No, really, things will work out much better this time. Trust us! From the producers who brought you 'The Arab Spring'.

Fortunately, common sense seems to be slowly breaking out this time around.

It started in Britain:

British Prime Minister David Cameron loses parliamentary vote on Syrian military strike

 But now it's catching on everywhere:

TONY Abbott: We’ve got a civil war going on in that benighted country between two pretty unsavoury sides. It’s not goodies versus baddies, it’s baddies versus baddies. And that is why it is very important that we don’t make a very difficult situation worse.

Look, the phrase 'baddies versus baddies' is definitely infelicitous, but the sentiment is certainly correct. (You could probably paste the same quote into most internal conflicts in the Middle East, if not most conflicts in the Middle East more generally). I personally prefer the Kissinger restatement of the same view about the Iran/Iraq war - 'It's a shame they can't both lose'.

Still, better crudely phrased realism than naive dross about dreams of freedom that winds up with thousands more in body bags.

When I said it's catching on everywhere, you can always rely on some people to refute the 'everywhere' part:

Sweden on Tuesday became the first European Union country to announce it will give asylum to all Syrian refugees who apply.

“All Syrian asylum seekers who apply for asylum in Sweden will get it,” Annie Hoernblad, the spokesperson for Sweden’s migration agency, told AFP.

Ha ha ha! "All"?

I don't think you've thought this through.

Wild Guesses About the Boston Bombings

I was going to write a post discussing my hunches about who it was that pulled off the Boston bombing. I was, but then Gary Brecher beat me to it, with a much better piece. NSFW Corp is now behind a paywall (which you should subscribe to, if only for the War Nerd), but if you click this link in the next 48 hours, you'll get to see the column. If you just skip over there and only read his column, I wouldn't blame you.

Update: Link fixed

He focuses on a few points, one or two of which I'd thought of myself.

Brecher discusses the two more likely possible culprits, namely that it was some Arab/Subcontinent/Muslim terrorist group, or that it was some domestic Timothy McVeigh type.

He comes down on the side of the former, as do I. If there's one guy who's early stage prediction I'd want to have on my side on this one, it's the War Nerd. He's got a pretty good track record on these predictions. We'll see what turns out.

Firstly, I'd also thought that the two bomb setup, with one after the other, suggests these guys knew what they were doing. It seemed like the classic case of attracting people in with the first blast, to help with survivors, then targeting them with the second blast.

This suggests the work of a pro, which doesn't tell you much, but also implies something else that Brecher doesn't discuss - that the terrorists likely viewed the first responders to blast #1 as not only legitimate but also desirable targets for death.

That takes a certain cold-heartedness. Right-winger types may have enormous and/or irrational hatred of certain groups, like government employees. But they don't traditionally hate volunteer rescuers in tragedy situations. Anyone who wants to target those folks has a true disgust at the entire society. There may be Timothy McVeigh types who do fit into that category, but for some reason it just doesn't gel with my picture of their psychology. For instance, even McVeigh himself expressed a certain amount of "regret" (though that word may be too strong given his descriptions) about the fact that the building he bombed had a daycare centre in it, and thus a number of children were killed:

McVeigh noted that he had no knowledge that the federal offices also ran a day care center on the second floor of the building, and noted that he might have chosen a different target if he had known about the day care center. According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh claimed not to have known there was a day care center in the Murrah Building and said that if he had known it, in his own words:

"It might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage."

True, children in daycare aren't exactly the same as volunteer rescuers, and true, calling them 'collateral damage' is extraordinarily cold and callous, so the level of sympathy is not exactly overwhelming. Still, even to McVeigh, this was a target to be avoided. It seems less likely, but not impossible, that Al Qaeda or an equivalent group would say the same thing.

The other part in Brecher's argument where I think I have something to add, even if the conclusion remains the same, regards the role of the significance of the date and event.

A number of commentators pointed out that the fact that the bombing occurred on April 15th, which is both Tax Day and Patriots Day, might suggest that this some right wing domestic terrorist.

In other words, we have the Boston Marathon on April 15th. Does this make it more likely the attack was motivated by the former (probably more likely under foreign terrorism) or the latter (probably more likely under domestic terrorism).

Let's suppose that each group might have thought of their part first. What would have been the consequences?

If you were a foreign terrorist group targeting the marathon just as a high profile event with lots of spectators, it wouldn't matter at all that it was on tax day. Brecher is right that this probably wouldn't even occur to you. You just bomb the marathon on April 15th because that's when the marathon is.

On the other hand, suppose you were a domestic terrorist wanting to target something for tax day. The question is, would you know or think to check whether the Boston marathon was on that day?

My guess is that the leap in imagination in the second case seems unlikely. If you started wanting to protest taxes, isn't it more likely that you'd think to bomb the IRS? Or at least some government facility?

I'd guess that most guys who were incensed enough about Tax Day to bomb something would be rather unlikely to know that the Boston Marathon was that day. Unless you happened to know about it specifically, or were googling odd phrases like 'What big events happen on April 15th?', I doubt the marathon would occur to you as a target.

So in other words, targeting the marathon in the first place you get you April 15th. Targeting April 15th would probably not get you the marathon.

This is all weak evidence, but it's not nothing.

The other point that Brecher makes, which I hadn't thought of at all, but is very interesting, was this:

The other reason I doubt the McVeigh theory is a vague one, not something I can prove, just something that, to me at least, tilts the probabilities away from a domestic group: geography. Weird as it may seem, right-wing American irregulars tend to attack on ground they consider theirs, aiming to kill alien influences. The territory they consider worth saving is usually South, the inland West, and the Sun Belt — but definitely not Boston. Massachussets is long since lost, as far as they’re concerned. Look at the biggest right-wing terror attacks: Oklahoma City, 1995; Atlanta, 1996; Knoxville (Unitarian Church) 2008; Wichita, KS (George Tiller shooting), 2009. Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennessee — those are all hardcore red states, and the right-wingers who attacked in those places aimed at alien, blue-state institutions: Federal employees, abortionists, and Unitarians, those Satanically broadminded bastards.

When the McVeigh types do strike at a target in the blue states, it’s usually one obviously linked to their pet hates, like when that 88-year old Nazi shot a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in DC in 2009.

Huh.

In the end, Brecher thinks that it's likely to be linked to Pakistani terrorism. We shall see. He also includes this interesting aside about why Pakistani terrorist groups are really pissed off about drone strikes:

The drone attacks are very effective but very insulting, strange as that sounds. It’s much more infuriating to be killed by an unmanned machine orbiting over your village than to be shot in combat. It’s the way you’d kill a bug, and it’s created a deep hatred in the FATA.

Huh again. Read the whole thing.

If you think that it is ill-advised to speculate on who committed this repugnant act so early on due to the high risk of being shown to be a fool, I can definitely see your point. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Still, I don't feel it's rude or disrespectful in itself to speculate about who might have done this. Quite the contrary - I'd hope very much that a bunch of law enforcement and counterterrorism officers are busy going through exactly the same kinds of reasoning, along with all the more concrete evidence, to find the bastards that did this.