Dear May,
"Psychology of Suicide Bombers " on the Discovery Channel ... This was really interesting, and scary. I'm sorry you didn't get to see it so let me try to condense an hour long show into just a few words..... ok, more than a few :)
As the title suggests, the point of the program was to examine the psychology of those who become suicide bombers. To do that the producers used a three pronged approach. An interview with a researcher tracing the lives of the suspects that carried out the London Bombing a few months ago, an interview with a former IRA participant and an historical look back at experiments conducted in the 1950's, here in the US, on the power of peer pressure and of authority. I'll start with the experiments.
Circa 1950's......
A newspaper ad is placed asking for participants in an experiment. They will be paid $4 each. One by one they are placed in a room, at a table against a wall with a series of buttons in front of them. They are told on the other side of the wall is another volunteer who is poised to answer a series of questions he will put to the man. Should the other man answer incorrectly he is to press the first of many buttons. This will administer an electrical shock to the other man. With each incorrect answer he is to press the NEXT button which will give shocks of ever increasing voltage. Unbeknownst to the volunteer, the person in the adjoined room is an actor who will fake his reactions to the 'shocks'. The first experiment begins.......
Mild at first, the actor eventually screams in pain at each 'shock' .. yet the volunteers continue as instructed. Fully 60% of the volunteers continued even after the screams had stopped and they believed the man dead !
Experiment #2 ......
This was in color so it was obviously later than the first. Ten or so people are brought into a room and sat around three sides of a rectangular table facing an easel atop of which is a large sketch pad. Each sheet of the sketch pad contained a vertical line on the left side of the page. Towards the center of the sheet were a series of vertical lines of various heights, numbered sequentially 1 through 4. All of the people in the room were actors but for one. The task was simply to examine each page as it was flipped and for each person to say which of the 4 numbered lines is the same length as the one on the left ..... no trick question and the answer was obvious in each case. The actors were all instructed to pick the same wrong answer each time.
The point of this experiment was to show the power of peer pressure, the strong need to fit in, to conform ... to be an accepted part of a group. After only a couple iterations the 'subject' was also agreeing with the clearly wrong answers of his brethren. ( so much for our jury system :) But what has this to do with suicide bombers ????
An interesting point was brought out, and that is that militaries the world over have long understood that the best way to make an effective fighting force is in small numbers. Small groups that, once removed from their families, become a family. There is no force stronger than that of a family unit. People eagerly lay down their lives to protect their family, hence if they can be made to substitute their comrades for their family, they will do anything without hesitation or thought. Since people have a need to 'belong', this is easier than you might think. The perfect soldier is one who follows orders without asking why. Enter the research fellow ....
Professor Dumbledore, or whatever his name was, has spent the past 20 years backtracking the lives and associations of suicide bombers. What he found is really interesting. Suicide Bombers are not 'crazy' people, or religious fanatics ( although some are, the vast majority are not ) . They are not the down trodden, the poor among us or those with a death wish. They are, for the most part educated, married with families, middle class, normal people just like those working and living in and around you each day AND ...... second generation immigrants to the country in which they now live. This last point is important because it seems to be the only thing common to most such people.
He has created quite a visual .. a spider web of sorts with dots representing each bomber and lines of association connecting them to one another ...each line represents an association between two or more people. Those associations are limited to only a few people for each group, it turns out.
In the case of the London bombers, they were known to each other from childhood. They were born in England to immigrant parents. They were University students who began hanging out together more and more. The result of their exclusivity led to a narrowing of ideas, it is thought. Their circle of friends shrank until they were spending all their time together at a gym in the basement of a Mosque.... one's marriage failed because he was gone for weeks at a time.. There was NO radical cleric, no al-Qaeda training that could be found. ( In fact, it was said, that al-Qaeda doesn't need to recruit. People clamor to be accepted to al-Qaeda training camps ... only about 20% are actually accepted ! )
They became a family unit feeding upon the need to support one another. A plan of action, seemingly, materialized out of thin air. In other words they sprang up like mushrooms among 'normal' people as the 'normal' people they were. But unlike mushrooms, they sprang up in the glare of broad daylight and operated just like a small family group ... military style. And that is the scary part because there does not seem to be any rhyme or reason for it ... just a quirk of human behavior that is very difficult to spot ahead of time and equally difficult to quantify. The small group that pulled off 911 is just such a group which followed a strikingly similar path.
The man identified as a former IRA killer lent credence to the family adhesion felt in a paramilitary association, such as these bombers feel. "A narrow focus descends upon you that blanks out all else but the mission..." a feeling often ascribed to those in military circumstances. They become 'brothers' ..... ( When I was in the Air Force I had a small sense of this 'brotherhood' feeling myself. )
[ My words not the shows ]
One has to wonder what and who is it that is passing you in the halls each day. Are we somehow, unknowingly, planting the seeds of a new and larger crop of mushrooms that, without a centralized command, will materialize out of thin air and wage war on us in the future for no apparent reason ? Looking at the middle east you have to wonder.
These suicide bombers certainly have no end game in mind. There is no end result they would be happy with so it is not result driven. In fact 'they' is hard to define because there apparently is no leader or strategy in the larger sense. They are small groups of friends known only among themselves, and working independently, that for some reason generate a sense of hatred that they want to express. They then seek out an organization, such as al-Qaeda, to supply the means. If the end they propose happens to coincide with the organizations goals then it is sanctioned and aided. A 'bottom-up' approach as opposed to the traditional 'top-down' military command.
In retrospect, this is nothing new or unusual. What is new and unusual is that organizations, like al-Qaeda, have become enablers. Heretofore angry individuals, or groups of individuals, that might commit small acts of violence are now enabled to cause more widespread violence with the assistance of organizations with better resources, money and training. Rather like a Small Business Association of the disaffected. Instead of setting up coffee shops and hotdog stands, they go into the business of killing and destroying.
It is random hatred directed against everyone and anyone from diverse people, with diverse aims, for diverse reasons ..... And that is darn right scary.
Love, Greg
posted by gpLoinan | 7:57 AM
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