Terrorism

It's called "asymmetrical warfare." It's when the enemy is not an easily identifiable entity. It's not a country, for example. It's not a centralized organization but often lone individuals or what we've come to call "terror cells." There may be leaders but we're talking more of a network than a bureaucracy. It's like the hydra of Greek myth--"Cut off one head and two more will take its place.

How do you fight terrorism?

1. Obviously you stop any individual enemies you can. This requires intelligence on possible plots.

2. To the extent that terrorist leadership can be identified, force does seem appropriate, whether by arrest or elimination. There are potential complications, though, where the consequences of forceful action are worse than biding time.

• When the terrorist is in the sovereign territory of another country. You don't want to get into an unnecessary war with some country the terrorist is hanging out in.
• When getting the terrorist would lead to unnecessary civilian casualties. 

3. The long term elimination of terrorism cannot be achieved by force. Force can have the same effect as stomping on an ant hill. In fact, the heavy handed use of force usually creates more terrorists. Force and indiscriminate rhetoric is actually a recruiting tool, both in the present and in impressionable children who become terrorists in a few years.

4. When intelligence is not available, the best way to foil terrorist attempts is a climate in which people want to report potential terrorist threats. This requires the good will of the people who would do such reporting, another reason why indiscriminate force and rhetoric are counterproductive.

5. One type of terrorist is like a child who wants attention and is acting out. The more attention you give the child, the more you feed the behavior. The more we freak out and talk it up, the more we feed the quest for fame and glory. This calls for firm but unaffected response.

6. Terrorism also emerges from a context of hopelessness. After all, it is not natural to blow yourself up. A culture where most of the citizens are at ease is not a culture likely to generate terrorism. So the normal goals of democratic society are the best long term solutions to terrorism--equal justice for all, economic empowerment for all.

Je suis Charlie.

"I am Charlie."

Well, I hope I'm actually little like the person Charlie or his publication. My impression is that Charlie Hebdo was an in-your-face publication that was hostile and insulting toward religions of all sort.

We are Charlie today because we stand against the kind of person that marches into a place and murders a bunch of people. We would be against someone calling himself a Christian who marched into an abortion clinic and killed a bunch of people. We are against terrorists. If God really needed people like this, he wouldn't be much of a god.

Freedom of religion is not absolute in that sense, not in a modern, representational democracy. Your religion doesn't give you the freedom to kill people. Indeed, since your children are individuals protected by the fundamentals of democracy, there is a point where you are not free to have your religious way with your children. For example, if for religious reasons you refuse to let your child have a blood transfusion, a democratic society will give them one anyway.

Given the circumstances, the French right now are tempted to think freedom of speech an absolute. But none of these privileges of a modern democracy are absolutes. There is a point at which a radical cleric crosses an ambiguous line between stating ideas and making violence happen. Whatever that point is, it is the point where freedom of speech ends.

As a side note, words can actually be more hurtful than physical actions, as most people with multiple children can attest. The cutting words of a sharp-tongued child are often more hurtful than the physical response of a less verbal sibling. You cannot neatly partition off speech from action, as speech-act theory attests. Speech is action, and there is a point where its action crosses a line.

"Charlie" didn't cross that line. So this discussion is merely the reflection of someone who doesn't live in France today.

Today, "je suis Charlie."