Don’t believe the hype

Twenty years ago the classic Hip Hop group, Public Enemy, said in their hit song,

Some media is the whack
You believe it’s true, it blows me through the roof
Suckers, liars get me a shovel
Some writers I know are damn devils
For them I say don’t believe the hype
Yo Chuck, they must be on a pipe, right?
Their pens and pads I’ll snatch
‘Cause I’ve had it
I’m not an addict fiendin’ for static
I’ll see their tape recorder and grab it
No, you can’t have it back silly rabbit
I’m going’ to my media assassin
Harry Allen, I gotta ask him
Yo Harry, you’re a writer, are we that type?
Don’t believe the hype

It seems we’re facing a similar hype in our generation, but one of a different enemy of the public, the terrorist threat.

At least that’s what John Mueller, Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University, would argue.

Dispelling Terrorist Myths

It started with a piece in 2006 in Foreign Affairs, entitled, Is There Still a Terrorist Threat?: The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy, published by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mueller is the author of a 2004 book called The Remnants of War, which claimed since the fall of the Soviet Union warfare is actually obsolete. He argues that problems such as terrorism that the world currently faces are actually forms of civil disorder best dealt with by policing methods.

Mueller attributes in Foreign Affairs a lot of the panic around terrorism to baseless hype,

[I]f it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it?…

…One reasonable explanation is that almost no terrorists exist in the United States and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad. But this explanation is rarely offered….

…If al Qaeda operatives are as determined and inventive as assumed, they should be here by now. If they are not yet here, they must not be trying very hard or must be far less dedicated, diabolical, and competent than the common image would suggest.

Mueller confirms what rarely heard experts have always been saying – Al Qaeda represents not a specific terrorist entity engaging in direct operational planning, but rather an ideological basis and “support group” for copycats that it would otherwise spawn.

Loren Colemen, author of The Copycat Effect, said,

…research shows potential terrorists become aroused by media presentations of terrorism, accept the violence as justified, and become tomorrow�s suicide bombers.
Contagion terrorism, unfortunately, makes compelling sense when we understand the simple but deadly psychology of the copycat effect. The global attention and blanket media coverage given the 7/7 London terrorist attacks will actually help create tomorrow�s suicide bombers who will feel fully legitimized in their future murder-suicides.

But even the fear of copycats, here at home or abroad, seems disproportionate to the actual threat.

Counting Down Those Freed

Earlier this month, charges were stayed against more of the accused Toronto 18.

Tony Carson of Carsons Posts said,

And that�s the problem: we get the great fanfare of the arrest and nothing much else � except the slow dribble of release announcements. The Toronto 18, at the time, sounded like they needed medical help more than they needed incarceration but we have been simply left to ponder what they were really thinking � and a year later we still don�t know, only that the Toronto 18 are now the Toronto 15 soon to be what? the Toronto 12 � 7� 3� 0?

Actually, we’re already down to 11.

Thomas Walkom of The Star explains the implications,

Seven of the original 18 have had their charges stayed � which, in simple English, means the government now admits it never had any real evidence against them.

Those remaining in jail are hoping, at the very least, to get out on bail.

One of the lawyers, Anser Farooq, is calling for a public inquiry as to why an innocent person was kept behind bars for 18 months in solitary confinement.

Terrorism Will Just Fade Away, Unless…

Even if we concede that any of the remaining 11 are guilty of some crime, Mueller provides some important context in an article yesterday in the Ottawa Citizen, Terror Without the Terrorists,

All of these rather hapless, even pathetic, people, should of course be considered to be potentially dangerous. From time to time they may be able to coalesce enough to carry out acts of terrorist violence, and policing efforts to stop them before they can do so are fully justified. But the notion that they present an existential threat to just about anybody seems at least as fanciful as some of their schemes, and any notion that these characters could come up with nuclear weapons seems far fetched in the extreme.

Mueller bases his conclusions on Marc Sageman (we’ve quoted him before), author of Leaderless Jihad, and a former intelligence officer with access to classified materials,

The threat presented by these individuals is likely, concludes Sageman, simply to fade away in time. Unless, of course, the United States overreacts and does something to enhance their numbers, prestige, and determination — something that is, needless to say, entirely possible.

This overreaction may have already occurred. But if has not, a drastic shift in policy is needed immediately.

The Best Choice is Proportionality

Proportionality is also required for domestic operations, and community agencies are now calling that the remaining 11 of the Toronto 18 be reevaluated for reasonable bail terms and conditions of solitary confinement.

Mueller is author of his own new book on the subject, Overblown, which argues that the terrorist threat is deliberately exaggerated by politicians and the military industry, who in turn fuel the fear that spreads terrorism.

And this might be why the Sageman solution, which “offers a ray of hope,” may be ignored by politicians to instead economically support the dominant military industry in Canada, a sector that admittedly does add thousands of jobs and millions of dollars to the Canadian economy.

But is that a choice that Canadians, if informed on the subject, are really willing to pay?