THE MIND OF A TERRORIST
Business is proceeding as usual during rush hour on September 11, 2001 at 8:45 A.M. around the World Trade Center in New York when suddenly a 767 commercial jet runs into the north tower, followed eighteen minutes later by another 767 ripping into the North tower. A third jet is spotted circling the white house, but then turns and dives into the pentagon at about 600 miles an hour. A fourth jet goes down near Pittsburgh with its real destination unknown.
Hijackers had taken over four commercial flights for terrorist purposes. Hundreds of people aboard the planes died in the crashes along with the terrorists, and thousands of people died at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. This event was one of the worst acts of terrorism on the United States soil since Pearl Harbor.
In the U.S. most terrorist acts involve small extremist groups who have designated objectives (source date). Federal and State law enforcement officials monitor suspected terrorist groups and try to protect Americans from theses acts. The U.S also keeps in close contact with other countries to limit economic support for terrorism. This paper explores the effectiveness of U.S. governmental agencies in protecting us from the terrorist mindset, or mind of the terrorist.
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
What goes through the minds of terrorists who commit horrific acts is largely unknown. Terrorism is defined as the use of force or violence against persons or property in violation of the criminal laws of the United States for purpose of intimidation, coercion, or ransom (source date). According to FEMA (date), a federal emergency management agency, terrorist acts can take place in several forms. It depends upon the political issues motivating the attack, the technological means available to terrorist, and the points of weakness in targets. Bombings are the most frequently used method of terrorism (source date). Targets include transportation facilities, utility companies, and other public services. Targets hit by terrorism in the U.S. include the World Trade Center, the U.S. Capital building, and Mobil Oil headquarters.
According to Neil Kressel, the author of Mass Hate, The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror, the twentieth century has been a century of hostility, an epoch in which the brutality of humankind has erupted and flowed more expensively then ever. During the past eight decades mass hate has reached genocidal proportions in Turkey, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, Bosnia, and now to our surprise the United States and many more countries. During the latter part of the century the power to wreak bloody havoc in innocent civilians across the globe has fallen in the hands of terrorists whose hate knows no bounds. Kressel (date) also says that people ask whether mass hate could ever again flourish as it did in Nazi Germany. Only Americans, optimistic by nature, uneducated in world affairs and protected by the constitution can try and deny the obvious, that we can be a target of terrorism, and are.
Our century has taken hate to a new level. It has brought great minds to evil and introduced nightmarish technologies. Ceramic knives, plastic explosives won't trip a metal detector and why? It is sad to know that the safest way to travel could now be called the deadliest. Now the federal government has said that it is going to take over control of security at the airports, staffing them with more and better training guards. But new technology will clearly play a part. According to Jim Francis of the security firm Kroll Inc., "We all can expect to be scanned, probed, and sniffed by new devices at airports and in public buildings, gaining reassurance at a cost in dollars, convenience, and personal privacy." (Newsweek September 24,2001)
Christopher Dodson and Ronald Payne, writers of
The Terrorist, Their Weapons,
Leaders, and Tactics ask, "What really makes a terrorist?" Some
come
to it by chance, some come to it by design, "For wide is the gate and broad
is the way." All terrorists share a common heritage, having come
under the influence of political thinkers such as Osama Bin Laden who
preach that violence is essential to make a world a better place for the masses.
In the words of Abraham Maslow, a psychologist, "Sick people are made by a
sick culture; healthy people are made possible by a healthy culture. But it is
just as true that a sick individual makes their culture more sick and that
healthy individuals make their culture more healthy." (Toward a Psychology
of Being, 2nd ed.) The bombing of the world trade center by Muslim extremists and
other attempted attacks on United States targets show the impunity with
which hate driven terrorists can penetrate through our defenses. Our goal in this
should be to uncover meaningful and valid reasons for this hated, not for the sake of
knowledge but to suggest strategies to help reduce crimes of hate in the future.
Still the question of why people participate in these horrible acts of
hate remains unanswered. Many explanations of why people take part in these mass atrocities are
inadequate. Many think these people are mentally ill or have psychological
disorders. While the acts of terrorism are terrible, the terrorists are not
"crazy" or "insane". Insanity would imply that they don't
understand the wrongfulness of their acts or the death and destruction that will
result from it. Dr. Park Dietz, the head psychiatric consultant for the FBI and
founder of the Threat Assessment Group Inc. says " it is unlikely that any
of the terrorists from September 11th suffered from serious illness, In fact it
would have been quite the opposite, in order for them (the terrorists) to have
been chosen for such a mission they would have needed to prove themselves
trustworthy, reliable, and dedicated to the cause". Kressel states that the
preponderance of crime of mass hatred can be traced to those who psychologists
would regard as "normal". In addition, most participants become
involved for other reasons that do not have any direct conflict. These killers
are rarely free of hateful beliefs, and they may be committing these acts for
different reasons. And many who plan to carry out these plans of mass
destruction show no signs of hateful attitudes or aggression on a personal
level. A truly aggressive person may not be as trusted, they may lack the
ability to render an impulse and be a less desirable tool. Look at the hijackers
that flew in to the World Trade Center, Many of the accused lived and traveled
in the united States for months even years undetected. The University of
California's Dr. Mark Levy explains that some people have the "Capacity to
divide their consciousness" into two separate and often confliction
identities. A terrorist living in America may be able to "isolate
behaviors" that they even find morally reprehensible while they at the same
time live in a community, have families, and " blend in as a normal
person". (ABC News September 21, 2001)
Still to try and understand why an individual participates in mass murder, one must consider many possibilities. They may participate because 1) they fear punishment by superiors if they do not; 2) they are deeply committed to an ideology of hate; 3) they lack awareness of the consequences of their actions; 4) they possess very weakly developed consciences; 5) they seethe with hatred for the targeted group; 6) they see murder as a means of obtaining material reward; 7) they want revenge for real or imagined offenses; 8) they fear retaliation or punishment for crimes already committed by their groups; 9) they encounter situations where they cannot control their aggression or sexual drive; 10) they cannot muster personal resources to disagree with their peers; 11) they perceive no justification for disobeying orders from legitimate authority; or 12) their sense of identity depends on continued association with the killing group.( Israel W. Charny, "The Psychology of Denial of Known Genocides" )
Individuals may take part in terrorist acts for any of these reasons, but it is possible to classify crime of mass hate into two broad categories: crimes of submission and crimes of initiative. These categories reflect the psychological activity or passivity of the killer(s). Crimes of submission reflect individuals that take in some aspects of the principals of hate, but lack a deep belief in a personal commitment to the principals. They are not driven by a strong hate for the targeted group. They often have regret for their involvement and they may have felt obligated to follow orders given to them, even if they disagree with them, or they may simply fear standing up to their peers and disagreeing. Most of the time terrorists do not committee crimes of submission because situational pressures seldom push one toward involvement in a terrorist act. When a person is allowed to desist from participation in a crime of submission, he or she is often relived, and the person no longer shows murderous behavior.
In crimes of initiative, the participant rarely feels guilt
and may even feel disappointed when the killing has to cease. Only one factor
has to be present in every crime of initiative: the participant wants to be
active and take steps to increase his or her involvement in the planning or
implementing strategies. The individual may be driven by identification with the
regime, its leader, or its ideology of hate. They may be fanatics, whose sense
of meaning and purpose in life and their identity are tied up with the service
of the cause. Many times these killers think of themselves as idealists and may indulge in what one psychologist has called
"superego-tripping", or acting on the assumption that whatever behavior
best satisfies the demand of one's superego will be effective in attaining one's
realistic goals (Source date). If you judge the effectiveness of your overt acts in terms
of whether they make you feel good morally, rather then whether they have
changed external reality in the ways you had planned, you are superego tripping
(Alan C. Elms, Personality in Politics, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1976: 50) The superego is
Freud's name for the individual's conscience and values, and Elms uses this concept
to explain the ineffectual behavior of some American leftists in the 1960's.
However, the superego tripping concept also applies well to those terrorists and murderous extremists who feel driven by their plans for a new
world.
RESEARCH METHODS
Appendix C of the U.S. Department of State's Patterns of Global Terrorism typically provides useful information about patterns and trends over five year time periods. Information is sparse on the current 2001 year, but an analysis of trends over the 1995-2000 time period would appear to offer the best research strategy for examining the facts.
The North American region has generally avoided terrorism in the past...
American citizens have generally avoided becoming the victims of terrorism in the past.
Anti-US sentiment, however, is widespread overseas, and the methods and targets of terrorism have distinguishable patterns.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
“Conflicts between groups is like a sturdy
three legged stool. It is sturdy because two legs are universal
ineradicable psychological processes, ethnocentrism and stereotyping, and the
third leg is a state of society, unfair distribution of resources, which has
always existed everywhere.”
Roger Brown, Social Psychologist, Harvard University
So finally to understand what goes throw the minds of
these Terrorist we must first understand that they are not crazy but
maybe they are just fanatics. “Fanatics always seem to be sprouting evil
schemes, through their ideologies vary from place to place,” says Neil Kressel.
We must realize that these people who take part in these terrible acts of
violence are fundamentalists, who believe in there cause, what ever it may be,
that they are willing and ready at all times to die for it.
Maybe we, as a nation can take steps that will lower the
probability for acts of mass hatred to continue. Nobody
to this day has presented a clear, comprehensive strategy for encouraging
and maintaining a nonviolent society. According to Kressel the theory is that a
society would resist mass hatred more effectively if many people possessed the
courage of their convictions, the strength to assert their independence and the
ability to distinguish between just and unjust
directives. Others think that programs to build greater caring and
superior ethics would be appropriate. Two noted scholars of genocide, Robert Jay
Lifton and Eric Markusen, rest their anti-genocidal policy on hopes for the
development of a “species mentality.” They explain : Species awareness inevitably extends to the habitats of all
species, to the earth and its ecosystems. Our awareness of our relationships to
the sun, to the oceans, to the earth’s resources of food, energy, and
materials of every kind, to all animals and plants
becomes intensified as both we and that ecosystems are simulated
threatened. (Mass Hate) Sensible
people may hope to one day live in a world where there are no stereotypes and
hatred but before this happens we our selves must learn to try and understand
that we all are so different in very many ways. It may seem wishful to think
that this could one day be reality. NO one can deny that building a caring
society is a laudable goal, but it seems a remote strategy for reducing the
casualties of mass murder in the foreseeable future.
REFERENCES
Kressel, Neil (year) Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror (publisher)
Roger Brown, Social Psychology: The second Edition (New York: Free Press, 1986)
Alan C. Elms, Personality in politics (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976)
Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being, 2nd ed. (New York: Van Nostrand, 1986)
The Terrorists, Their Weapons, Leaders, and Tactics Christopher Dobson & Ronald Payne
The will to Kill, Making Sense of Senseless Murders James Alan Fox and Jack Levin
The Psychology of Denial Of Known Genocides Israel W. Charny,
ABC News September 11, 2001
Newsweek September 24, 2001
Last updated: 11/25/01