Schneier on Security

Petrov • May 29, 2015 1:30 PM

@Definition of terrorism, @Albert

I think it is very well understood that the word ‘terrorism’ is highly subjective and used very often in an extremely dishonest and deeply hypocritical manner.

Both groups on each side of the ‘terrorist’ battles are going to be terrorist, almost but obviously not invariably. And this is often well understood by anyone not extremely biased for one side or the other.

So, for instance, this can be ‘mind blowing’ especially in situations where the other side includes nations that consider themselves ‘civilized’ and may themselves have within their nations many liberties and rights.

A good ‘for example’ is contrasting the forces of ‘the West’ against modern ‘Islamist’ terrorism. These forces use fear to sell the need for war extensively, and they back that up with threats and actions that are designed to be fear inducing. Not the least is the vast ‘war machines’, and the actual actions in battle, such as indiscriminate killing, torture, focus on war, focus on violence.

Violence is their mantle, their pride. Such activity here even includes the actions like mass domestic surveillance, violating en masse fundamentals of their own liberties and human rights (which most definitely have a strong fear element to the message especially considering the history of tyranny), and so on.

Contrasting, ISIS, for example, against these these ‘Western Forces’:

ISIS is very upfront about their actual actions of violence, whereas the West largely prefers to be either implying or distant. So, for instance, when the infamous “helicopter video” or the torture evidence got out, that was something the West really wanted to hide. Stories and depictions of the violence on the ground was generally not well publicized. In some cases, some extreme examples, soldiers were even prosecuted and jailed for excessive violence.

Almost ironically, scenes of mass devastation, however, from further way were not so well shied away from, and the term ‘shock & awe’ was actually glorified in, along with depictions of that shock and awe.

This sort of mass messaging of the violence was more sophisticated in many ways, then the often vaunted sophisticated methods of propaganda of ISIS. It was ‘from a distance’, and tried not to include the misery, corpses, and ‘up close’ killings of anyone involved. Yet, the messaging, ultimately, is similar.

To some degree, this is also the way much of the violence was handled. Whereas ISIS members intentionally have sought out and killed people simply on the basis of religion, reportedly engaged in door to door rape and sex slavery including that of little girls and little boys, and relished in slow deaths… with Western forces, while there was much reported bad attitudes and systematic willingness to kill, there was an attempt to distance themselves from those exact rites.

Contrast again with major anti-terrorist ‘ally’ Saudi Arabia, and you get back down to the dirt (and see, again, how Western groups distance themselves from a lot of the ‘up close’ dirty work, but are all very willing to get into bed with another nation that decidedly does not.)

I think a lot of this gets into the illusion of the ‘western soldier’. The reality is there is very much a culture of violence there, but it is prettied up. There is a mythology of nobility attached. There can be noble western soldiers (like eastern), but this is the exception, not the rule. For most it is about the gun, the weapons, the explosions, the violence. It is about the murdering and displays of aggressive domination. It is about power.

None of this means that ‘ISIS’ and ‘Western soldiers and war machines’ are exactly the same and guilty of all the exact same wrongs. I think it is a hard case to say ISIS is not invariably worse, and if they had access to the same level of weaponry, surveillance systems, national controls their systems would be far worse. But there is a lot of equations there that do lift up the Westerners due to the hypocrisy of their actions and words, and the deception of their true states.

Petrov • May 29, 2015 2:26 PM

@Buck

Yes, but what ideas could ever lead up to that volunteering being a decent pledge to make? If we start from the beginning — perhaps that initial decision to enlist could be attributed to familial pressure, the glorification of past heros, a need to put food on the table, retribution against enemies, or any combination of these and other factors… By the time we reach the greatly immoral act, it’s easy to see this as a result of a vast number of relatively benign life choices.

Very insightful post.

In these sorts of situations, there is often a sort of hidden problem to begin with, I would add. For instance, with the Nazis, they were sold on their ideology. So, you saw a lot of early German critics among the Nazis. Some were within the system and opposed it from within. They actually did a lot of damage. (Most of those sorts were life long military, and always saw through and hated Hitler. Canaris is a major one who comes to mind.)

With Nazis and other perverted ideologies, then, the problem is not so difficult to detect right off. What do you think you are signing up for? While for those who are subjective in their society and have never been exposed to contradictory opinions will be largely oblivious to the deception… well, I think that is where the main problem is. They have no frame of reference, and that is all they know.

With the “West” and Democratic states, it is actually very much the same thing, though the espoused beliefs widely stated are not just the such that ‘mean well or appear to mean well but in practice does not work’, but do have strong tendencies to work. However, in battle and in practical application during wartimes these ideologies become simply excuses and ways of distancing the person. And here you start to see a lot of the same principles used: they are not killing a person for no reason but personal pleasure, they are eliminating enemies of justice and liberty for the betterment of their society.

One is not becoming much worse a person, and hardened, but they are having their personal strength tested. Or their bravery.

Of course, very often the actual vehicle for destruction is very young and has very poor schooling which did not expose them to many contradictory arguments so as to consider matters from many angles. They tend to have very little education on the crimes of tyranny, for reasons like, ‘it is offensive’ or ‘controversial’.

But, at the core, there are deeper problems: what do you have when you have someone that is idealizing the lifestyle of weapons and destruction? Who vaunts and idealizes such authority figures? They might learn phrases like ‘a soldier is the one who does hate war the most’, but surely do not believe it. That is their dream lifestyle and what they love.

It is actually usually far more clean and more honest with gangsters. They are often much more upfront about their liking of violence and how, for them, it is the very basis of their identity.

Further, it is true, everyone deals with adversity and adversaries, and they like to win. How far is it from that from getting addicted to the power that winning by violence gives, or the inherent possibility found in that lifestyle with its’ attendant rights to violence and weapons and training?

I find it a bit odd, people are often “for” one side or the other in many of these wars or points of aggression. There very often is not a ‘third way’, where both parties are thoroughly condemned. I think this also blinds people to the bigger picture of what is going on and so the track to the future.

This gets near comical in blindness in the past fifteen some odd years.

That sort of ‘morality’ is not so often easily captured in modern story, but I think something like ‘Unforgiven’, or ‘Inglorious Basterds’ might get very close.

What is lacking in that picture? Violence is a necessity, it is at a near hunger like level from pure emotion of hatred of bad things. There is no pretentious trappings, no vast deceptions, no glorious conceit built up around them. It is simple, raw righteous rage.

It is honest.

And it is intrinsically not selfish.