Physicians of Fear
My column at Salon.com this week is "Inside the minds of killer doctors": Some of the accused behind the recent terror plots in Britain were professional healers. What on earth prompts someone to snap from caregiver to killer?
Excerpt:
"the actions of the group in Britain were too erratic and error-prone to be the result of careful political planning. And the self-immolation by some of them raises questions as to their deeper mind-set. Terrorists imagine the world in black and white, as full of demons and angels, and place themselves on the side of the angels. Sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer has called this way of thinking "cosmic war." Small terrorist cells arise in part because their members develop a specific way of looking at the world, which they reinforce for one another in everyday interactions. As the group becomes more and more distinct in its views from the society around it -- and more isolated -- its members can cross boundaries of reason and human sentiment, becoming monstrous.
For caring professions to produce terrorists is hardly unprecedented. Israeli-American Dr. Baruch Goldstein carried out the 1994 massacre of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron, killing 29 persons at the Ibrahimi Mosque and wounding another 150. The No. 2 man in al-Qaida, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri from the elite Azzam family, trained as a physician in Cairo in the 1970s.
Paul J. Hill, who shot down abortion clinic physician Dr. John Britton in 1994 in Florida, was a formally trained clergyman who started out committed to helping people spiritually, not killing them. He became so overwrought about what he considered genocide inflicted on the unborn, however, that he felt compelled to save innocents by killing Dr. Britton. The reverend reflected, chillingly, afterward, "If I wounded him, just shot him in the leg or shoulder, I knew there was an excellent probability that he would return to killing innocent children. In my thinking it just became: I had to kill him."
Becoming a religious terrorist depends on several steps. The first is conversion to a way of thinking by which the perpetrators identify with a core group that they wish to protect, but which they believe is being subjected to great harm. Typically this group is imagined to be composed of innocents or lonely carriers of divine truth, whose existence is both essential and yet precarious."
Read the whole thing.
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/09/2007 12:32:00 AM
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15 Comments:
yesterday, John Koch asked in the comments
"if 160k US troops could not secure Iraq, the question is what entity, if any, will do this as the US pulls out."
Another backhanded endorsement of the "Model Communities" approach.
The only entity that can secure al-Faloojah is a local security force of Faloojans, under the command of an authentic indigenous local leader of the city who has the respect of the local population.
Who in Mosul ? Same answer.
Who in Tuz Khurmatu ?
It is our choice - do we want the local communities, and their leaders, as our enemies, or as our allies ? Until now, we have chosen badly, but we can choose differently tomorrow.
Your avid student
Perhaps one does not need to resort to elaborate theories to understand this. They were simply driven by understandable outrage at the mass slaughter of innocents in Iraq. Were the situation reversed, with an Arab occupation army in the US, and American society disintegrating, would such acts be hard to fathom?
Dr Cole, I've read your last Salon article both with interest and attention. I agree with your main conclusion that The Glasgow Airport bombing underlines how the Iraq war is not, as President George W. Bush argues, quelling terror, but rather is generating it. But for the rest, I think that :
1) You are underestimating the political factor : describing islamic terrorism only as religious is wrong IMO, because terrorists do also have implicit or explicit political goals : aka anti-imperialist and anti-occupation goals. Not to speak of the traditional reproach made to Islam that there is no clear separation between religion and politic. The Iraqi and Palestinian terrorists may define themselves as religious activists, yet their main goals are clearly for a regime change, aka, they are also political in nature. Getting rid of occupation is a legitime goal.
2) Following Pope and others, you offer a somewhat interesting insight in how ... As the group becomes more and more distinct in its views from the society around it -- and more isolated -- its members can cross boundaries of reason and human sentiment, becoming monstrous.. But it is wrong IMO to treat all kind of terrorism in the same way : the killings of medical personnal by anti-abortionists can't be put on the same level as resistance acts of citizen whose country is occupied. Much less the killing/mass suiccide of the Solar Temple. In short, you describe terrorism only in psychosociological terms, that of a small group or a set of misled individuals. I don't think this is valid for Palestinians living in the OT, nor for Iraqi living in Iraq. As for the doctors recently arrested in the UK, they may be isolated in the UK, but they probably feel part of the Iraqi/Palestinian community.
4) The injustice felt by the terrorists and pushing them to action can be a wrongly perceived one in pathological cases, but it can also be a very real one, like in the case of the Palestinians and the Iraqi. There is a strong rational behind terrorism acts, which isn't only in the mindset of the perpetrators : terrorism is the weapon used by the weakest parties. In countries invaded by a military superpower, be it the US or Israel, you can only use assymetrical warfare.
5) Part of the assymetrical warfare are the media. Their role is well recognized by terrorists, which has led to an escalation in violence on innocent victims, the only way to attract the attention of the media. Targetting innocents is a serious warcrime and most people, including in Arab countries, disagree on this choice of means. The whole question there is : does the end justifies the means ? Terrorists targetting innocents here wrongly answer yes, but they aren't the only ones to answer yes : how many innocent victims caused the US invasion and occupation of Iraq ?
6) He likely believed that Britain and the U.S. were responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq -- though this is a gross simplification of a complex war -- and that the imperial powers had fatally marginalized Iraq's formerly dominant Sunni Arabs in favor of Iran-linked Shiites and separatist Kurds.
Personnally, I think that their analysis of the situation was right on spot. Saying that this is a gross simplification is disculping the US and UK a little too easily. The US/UK invasion of Iraq is the direct cause of much harm and damages succeeding in Iraq and it is the indirect cause of all the rest. Granted, the Shiites were dominated/oppressed by the Sunni, but as far as I know the Iraqi have lived in peace during centuries. The US played the sectarian card and the sorcerer apprentices in order to control the Iraqi politics and install a US friendly government in Iraq. Like it or not, the civil war now taking place in Iraq was caused by the US/UK invasion who are responsible of all the harms suffered by the Iraqi. Women too, were dominated and oppressed by men (and they still are including in the West), yet, there has never been civil wars between them. Being oppressed or dominated, figthing against oppression and domination doesn't necessarily entails civil wars; in Iraq, the US/UK sparked it more or less knowingly.
Also, don't forget that within the Iraqi community, the hospital doctors have probably been most consistentl exposed for many years now to the mangled remains of people blown up and mutilated under the US-UK "security" (= insecurity) regime there. That-- plus all the frustrations they have had trying to provide anything like an acceptable level of care to their patients because of the chaos in the whole country-- has doubtless had a strong potential to cause massive psychic/spiritual damage for those docs.
This is not to excuse, but to seek to understand and explain this phenomenon.
Also, just to add to the list of trained physicians who espouse the use of brute force including against noncombatants, let's remember Israeli cabinet member Efraim Sneh. (A sad case, because he used to be much more dovish.)
listening to a reminder of the Srebrenica massacre, on the radio last night - 8000 Muslim men and boys massascred in one afternoon - while the world looks on - and does nothing - and Mladic and Karadzic live on in quiet retirement, their whereabouts apparently known to the authorities - reinforced my thought that it might, possibly, if I were a Muslim, observing current events, be enough to tip me over the edge, irrespective of my occupation. I would say, from the point of view of a Muslim, and also from the point of view of some of us others, the US, Europe, Israel and Russia in the case of Chechnya, seem to cleave to a belief that killing 'Muslims' is not the same as killing regular human beings. Day after day due to the actions of the forces of the above, the sense of fury, frustration, anger and outrage must be growing exponentially. And all we do is say "How could a Doctor do such a thing?"
And the Bosnian incident is almost the least of it.
and Roger Cohen, writing in the NY Times yesterday
"the Palestinians have been [their own worst enemy] - in 1948 they could have had half their land back....."
I bet they are kicking them selves today - what an arrogant statement.
Dr Cole,
Eric Margolis in the column below calls it Blowback.Given the overwhelming use of air power and boots on the ground misdemeanours as well as the political mess, chaos and anarchy that resulted from the invasion of Iraq, I think we will experience incidents of blowback for quite some time.
July 09, 2007
LONDON AND GLASGOW: WORSE THAN A CRIME, A MISTAKE
NEW YORK – Pundits and self-appointed experts on Islam are wringing their hands as they try to explain why two Muslim doctors and at least six other medical workers were involved in this week’s failed bombings in London and Glasgow.
It certainly sounds horrific and counter-intuitive. Physicians, trained to heal, turned into would-be mass murders with cars packed full of explosive materials and nails. Since I’m writing a book on why the Muslim World is so angry at the west, let me venture some heretical thoughts.
First, there is nothing sacrosanct about doctors. Behind carefully cultivated veneers of icy detachment, they have the same emotions as ordinary mortals. The most evil, frightening man I ever met – and I’ve met a lot – was Haiti’s tyrant, `Papa Doc’ Duvalier, who was a crusading country doctor before he turned into a Voodoo-crazed despot.
Second, the amateur, would-be killers who staged these bungled attacks were not, as many western pundits claim, unlikely to have been driven by some sort of homicidal perversion native to Islam. An entire cottage industry of publicity-seeking anti-Muslim writers is at work seeking to confirm the increasingly popular prejudice that Islam is a sick, demented, homicidal faith. These pundits are merely licking the hand that pays them.
There is nothing in Islam that advocates homicidal acts or mass killing. In fact, while its popular these days to demonize Islam as a violent faith, we should recall that history’s biggest mass murderers, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao and Hitler, were not Muslims. Auschwitz and the gulag did not come from Islam. World wars I and II, the most murderous in history, were begun by Christian nations and Japan.
The two accused doctors now under arrest In Britain, one of whom was Iraqi and the other Jordanian of Palestinian descent, were most likely driven by rage over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pure and simple.
Nothing ever excuses killing civilians. Those who stage horrific bombings against Israelis, Europeans, American and fellow Muslim civilians are criminals. Nothing excuses their behavior. But we must understand why it happens and why it will continue. Understanding has nothing to do with condoning.
Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, responded the right way to the London and Glasgow incidents. Unlike Tony Blair, who raised anti-western attacks to hysterical, apocalyptic levels, declaring civilization in peril, the dour Brown properly characterized the latest outrages as `criminal’ acts to be handled by the police.
The two doctors who tried to kill British civilians were most likely motivated by the same ferocious fury as the suicide squads who attacked New York and Washington on 11 Sept 2001.
Their attacks were not the result of some innate sickness in Islam, misreading the Koran, brainwashing, or hatred of western shopping habits. Our governments and media just refuse to face the ugly reality that such attacks are very often a direct reaction to our own violent actions in the Mideast and South Asia.
We can’t expect to go on bombing and shooting up Iraq, or shredding Afghan villages with cluster bombs and 20mm Gatling guns, and not expect violent reaction. The increasing death of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the ongoing agonies of Palestine, have enraged the Muslim World against the west.
Most Muslims simply complain. But a tiny number, as in Britain, forget rationality, humanity, or common sense and try to strike back at what they believe are the oppressors of the Muslin World.
I was in London two years ago this past weekend when a group of British Muslims bombed the London Underground and a bus. Their motivation, it was subsequently revealed, was revenge against Britain for its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Such violence is criminal and, worse, to paraphrase Tallyrand, a mistake. They undermine whatever cause the militants are fighting for, making them into criminals with no possible justifiable grievances. In the end, innocent Muslims in Britain and other western nations become victims of these mindless attacks.
But revenge attacks will continue, and even intensify, until the west reassesses its policies in the regions that are generating such anti-western violence.
Intensified police work is needed at home to prevent more attacks. Muslim leaders must keep telling their people that attacks against civilians are immoral and self-defeating.
But western governments have to face the fact that the wars they are waging against the Muslim World are the primary generators of terrorism. In the intelligence business, it’s called blowback.
Blaming every violent incident on the shadowy al-Qaida is a handy excuse for avoiding reality and responsibility. But it won’t change the fact that a good 20% of the world’s population is increasingly enraged at the US, Britain, Australia and, most lately, Canada. How can we hector the Muslim World to cease its acts of violence when we westerners continue to intensify our own?
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007
Don't forget that the UK's most prolific murderer is a Doctor. Dr Shipman most likely killed over 250 people. Just for the sake of watching them die in the vast majority of cases.
"As the group becomes more and more distinct in its views from the society around it -- and more isolated -- its members can cross boundaries of reason and human sentiment, becoming monstrous."
Is this what happened to Americans? After all, we have killed more innocents in the last five years than anyone. And going further back, we certainly were in the top ten of Killer Nations.
I read an article yesterday about how the US gave out jihad-inspired primary school books in Afghanistan in the 1980's.
We have certainly sown the seeds of violence and poverty around the world.
I agree with Helena that there are no excuses for violence, only explanations. And some explanations are better than others - and I see this bungled terrorist attack in England to be about 1/100 of 1% as bad as starting up a war of aggression in a country that had not attacked anyone in over a decade. I am certain those doctors have a better explanation for their actions than 90% of Americans.
What we did is a WAR CRIME which makes 9/11 look like petty criminal actions in comparison.
can you tell that I am flipping TIRED of Americans and other westerners with rose-colored glasses and blinders?
Time to start seeing clearly. Way past time, actually.
I would say that it's not just about religion, but zeal in general. Let's not forget that Che Guevara was a doctor, as well. I think there is something in the health field itself; you have to make choices, sometimes, such as breaking a bone in order to re-set it, or choosing to amputate a limb.
Medicine may not prompt such behavior, but it certainly helps people intellectualize it and practice it with precision.
In discussing this, don't forget the actions of 'western' doctors.
I know there are psychiatrists involved in the torture of prisoners, as that's been under some debate in their professional society.
And, I believe medical doctors are also involved in torture, but I'm less sure of that.
Dr. Cole, as others have said above, the reason these doctors tried to lash out is because (in the words of Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque, remarking on a Washington Post article about an American bombing of an Iraqi village):
"None of it was necessary. None of it was justified. Abdullah's grandson was shredded into fragments of meat and bone because George W. Bush wanted to be a "war president" and prance around in his "Commander-in-Chief" socks. Abdullah's wife had her brains dashed out because Dick Cheney wanted to impose American dominance over the oil lands of the Middle East, for the greater glory and profits for his oil cronies and his military servicing paymasters. Abdullah's daughters were mutilated and disemboweled by shrapnel because the blind, monstrous engines of barbaric militarism and greasy war contracting have spread their moral rot from the wasteland called Hell's Bottom where the Pentagon was built throughout the entire American Republic. Abdullah's daughter-in-law had her skin eaten away by ravenous fire because the leading lights of the American Establishment -- in government, in media, in business, in academia, in "think tanks" and "policy centers" – were giddy at the thought of empire, or dazzled by the prospect of loot, or maddened by ideological fervor, or driven by some private evil… or turned into cowards by 9/11, ready to sacrifice anything and everything – morality, reason, common sense, legality, the lives of their nation's soldiers and endless multitudes of innocent foreigners – in order to keep themselves safe, to keep living high on the hog, to stay well-wadded, cozy and comfy, forever protected from any adverse consequences of the destructive policies that have enriched them."
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php
Dear Juan
I was a little surprised by your omission of one of the best know medically trained militants from your list in Salon.
As a young man studying medicine, Guevara traveled roughrough[›] throughout South America, bringing him into direct contact with the impoverished conditions in which many people lived. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to the conclusion that the region's socio-economic inequalities could only be remedied by revolution, prompting him to intensify his study of Marxism and travel to Guatemala to learn about the reforms being implemented there by President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
It is great good luck that the Kamikaze doctors hadn't read some of Che's books which include useful "how to" tips. (You will get the Men in Macs calling if you try and borrow Memories of the Cuban Revolutionary War from the library)
I read the the medical statistics from Bolivia which has recently managed to publish some and the contrasts with the mortality rates in Western Europe are appalling. Particularly so as Bolivia sits on one of the biggest gas fields in South America. So the reasons why people vote for Evo and Lula and Hugo are clear to see. When you are twenty and think you can't achieve some social justice for people within the system the temptation to go outside the system is enormous. Could McGuinness have become deputy prime minister of Northern Ireland if he hadn't commanded the Derry Brigade?
Given the perceived difficulty of actually achieving anything through the British political system particularly at, say, the time of the Lebanese (Bombings, massacres, war, war crimes, Guernica, take your pick ) when Mr Blair refused to call for a halt to the killing, I might dispute any overt reason to take part in British Politics. The mutiny of the MPs was kept very quiet, until Mr Blair was well on his way out the door. The destruction of Parnell in the 19th century destroyed the willingness of a section of the Irish to believe in achieving anything through a Parliamentary process. It was Collins that sat down with Lloyd George to thrash out a treaty, not Willie Redmond.
I suspect you have wandered into the enormous area of difficulty of how to deal with Muslim citizens of Europe within the EU. The Ferdinand and Isabella solution of throwing them all out advocated by Sarkozy wont work. We don't produce enough children so we have to find some way of integrating large numbers of young people of varying levels of education into the European landmass from North Africa and Middle East and coping with their different expectations of law and rights. I am trying to read Tariq Ramadan along with all the other stuff I read to understand how to counter Pope Benedict's view that Europe is for Christians only. I am more in favour of Fred Braudel's view of the Mediterranean as an entity.
We can't line up with the naked avarice of the Robber Barons of the Oil and Gas companies to rip off the natural resources of the poor and indigent. Their cousins in Lyon and Bradford will get very peeved indeed. There has to be some equitable return.
I was much taken with the Brzezinsky castigation of the raw materiel rip off in Russia during the Yeltsin era. It is reassuring to see how closely our conclusions line up. Vladimir Vladimirovich has a platform that a lot of people will identify with in the next phase of the New Thirty Years War. I was looking at some of the antique posters in Dom Knigi recently and the message hasn't changed much.
I thought I had a problem with rolling out broadband anywhere that wants it, because it increases the flow of ideas and inflammatory materiel in both directions. I realised that you can get so much content on a memory stick that there is no way of stopping the flow so we might as well exploit the economic benefits of networking.
Now that you have opened the Pandora's box of the motivation of people who try to kill us all in our nightclubs and airports, perhaps we can explore how you explain to others that there are other ways to achieve their ends. I saw the same frustration in some of my friends during the Lebanon war at being unable to hit back that I saw in Dublin after the Derry massacre. The Kamikaze Doctors make it a bit difficult for me to invite friends from Syria to come and visit England so I can return their hospitality. I read the joy of a young lady in Mosul University at coming first in her class in her year 1 exams and wonder if girls will still be educated in Mosul by the end of her third year and how we might find her a place at a British University as a contingency plan.
If you want a realy frightening thought,somone will be looking at the Flaming Idiots in Glasgow and thinking about how much went right and how to fix what went wrong.
Regards
Frank
Doctors? Maybe some experience a whiff of idealism or console themselves that, at least some of the time, their work does less harm than good. However, the scope of their wisdom is small, even in the confines of medical sccience. They are perennially disposed to overstate their degree of knolwedge about things and extrapolate into general prescriptions on social policy. Think of Bill Frist!
High MCATs or GPAs, not any sort of Fransican vow to serve, are the principal screen for medical school admission. Many take up the profession, but quickly tire of its routine and drudgery, then turn to business schemes or politics.
Ex-lawyers probably outnumber doctors in guerrilla or terror movements. But the MDs do make a showing, particularly in societies where opportunities in the wealthy or insured patient sectors are skimpy, ill-paid, or assigned to cronies. There is perhaps no one more angry, or available to join a fanatical cause, than a doctor who, after years of study and under a mountain of debt, feels under-employed or wasted.
PS: "Anonymous" (why so clandestine?) writes that the solution is to delicate security to whatever local militas spontaneously present themselves.
A backhanded endorsement of an Afghan, Mogadishan, Liberian, or Sudan-Darfur solution?
Why suppose that local war lords would be useful US allies or even "democratic"? One can imagine each mini-Saddam cutting out a deal with oil companies, enriching mainly his own pocket or clan.
If so, is that to be blamed on the US too? Damned if it stays, but damned even more if it leaves, eh? Hot diggety dog.
Further note: The "just leave it to the locals" formula does not address Baghdad very well.
John Koch,
I have trouble keeping passwords straight, and "Anonymous" is so easy. I am the same "Avid Student" from some months back, and Brian X at Washington Post, where I think I see you post.
I'm well-enough known to those following the use of mercenaries in Iraq.
You are right, that allowing Iraq to break into a thousand fiefdoms, islands of stability, is not a good outcome. So, do you imagine that "stay the course" or "cut and run" lead to better outcomes ?
Right again, these home-rule communities will not be democratic. Building democracy requires first a foundation of stability.
And if the local leaders we partner with are on our payroll and running aid, reconstruction and development programs we are funding, that gives us some leverage to institute open government, a census, citizen feedback, lots of ways to encourage better local governance.
To see how successful we have been at IMPOSING democratic governance, look to the interim report to Congress this week on how that is working out in Iraq.
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