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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 06:15pm Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9115 of 9126)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

"Today, suicide bombings are a prime tool of terrorism. Researchers documented 286 incidents from 1983 to 2000 in Lebanon, Israel and Turkey, but bombings were also a part of the civil war in Sri Lanka, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam formed elite army units for such missions and used them to assassinate two heads of state. Among recent suicide attacks were the 1998 bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

"The prototype for Muslim suicide bombers is young, single, caught up in religious fervor and, often, desperate. They are usually promised financial security for their parents and told that they will be greeted by 70 black-eyed virgins in heaven. Though suicide is prohibited by Islamic law, some leaders have said there is an exception for soldiers in what they see as a holy war.

"We have nothing with which to repel killing and thuggery against us except the weapon of martyrdom," Dr. Ramadan Shalah, secretary general of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, was quoted as saying in an article by Mr. Sprinzak last year in Foreign Policy magazine. "It is easy and costs us only our lives."

"In the article, Mr. Sprinzak cited the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism: no escape routes or rescue operation are required; there is no risk of captured perpetrators divulging information; and the public feels extraordinarily helpless.

""One of the virtues of the suicide bomber is that it's very simple technically — no sophisticated detonators, no time delays — it's much simpler to bring off and thus you're much more likely to get through," said Martha Crenshaw, a professor of government at Wesleyan University who specializes in the issue. "This operation, the hijackings, was very complicated. You certainly needed more than one person to pull it off. You had to have a small group of people who worked together, who knew each other and trusted each other."

"Small group dynamics, Ms. Crenshaw said, may propel the mission beyond any individual's commitment. "What keeps them fighting is what keeps soldiers in a platoon fighting," she said. "They don't want to let their buddies down."

"Ariel Merari, a political psychologist at Tel Aviv University who is writing a book on suicide bombers in Lebanon and Israel, said the average age of the 74 he studied was 22. Documents show that one of this week's suspected hijackers was 41, another 33; two were 28, two 26 and three 25 (ages were not available for all 19 suspects).

"Mr. Merari's study of previous bombers showed that virtually none were married or engaged. But investigations of the suspected hijackers reveal suggest that Abdulaziz al- Omari, one of those aboard the plane that hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, lived with his wife and four children in a stucco house near his Florida flight training school. And contrary to the image of the fundamentalist Muslim, Mohammed Atta, who was aboard the same plane, was seen drinking and playing video games at a Florida sports bar last week.

" Ms. Crenshaw said that seemingly secular activity could have been part of a ruse, noting that a training manual cited in the embassy bombing trials instructed suicide bombers: "When you're in the outer world, you have to act like them, dress like them, behave like them."

" Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School who examined some of the suspects in the embassy bombings, said evidence of older, better educated and more stable suicide soldiers might indicate that individuals' rage had resonated to become endemic to a culture.

""The kind of horrifying prospect is that Osama bin Laden and what he represents has sort of crystallized a moment in history that has an evil and a horror to it that's sort of akin to what Hitler was able to crystallize around him," Dr. Grassian said. "

rshowalter - 06:16pm Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9116 of 9126)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

. . .

To call these people "evil" seems right enough -- but it is incomplete. And we need to understand more. Stakes are high, and it seems to me that care, and a rational degree of fear, make sense.

Escalating fights, which for tactical reasons we lose, may be just what these people have in mind. They've been pretty competent lately - - and we need to be, too. If " rage has resonated within a culture we need to understand why, and do what is both prudent and morally right. That doesn't rule out military action by any means. But it is a warning that military action has to be very carefully, workably chosen. And action that will make these people look good to millions of already angry people needs to be avoided - - even if it looks good to the Western press for a little while.

Ivanov said recently that terrorism was a more pressing threat than rogue missiles. That's surely right. It is here now.

almarst is angry for reasons -- reasons we should adress. Reasons that would make it easier for us to face these terrorists, in the eyes of the world, effectively and with clean hands.

rshowalter - 06:19pm Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9117 of 9126)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

We have to face things.

But to face things with balance, it seems to me that we have a lot of mourning to do.

McNamara thinks this new century will involve 300 million deaths from war. I think the world could end -- and if you think about it just a little, and look at how our nuclear weapons are controlled, that's not so unreasonable.

Time to be right, and careful. We ought to find ways of doing better.

lunarchick - 06:20pm Sep 15, 2001 EST (#9118 of 9126)
lunarchick@www.com

~ http://www.kidon.com/media-link/afghanistan.shtml ~ http://www.afghanradio.com/azadi.html

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