Shrinking the Terrorist
The recent (2/28/2010, pp. 1, 10) New York Times
story on "frustrated strivers" who wage jihad offered some
interesting insights into the question of why this boy rather
than that one might wage war on the U.S. The psychiatrists
and psychologists are not wrong in arguing that
"frustration-aggression" and "blocked mobility" and
working class "violent subcultures" can combine to
"explain" a particular clinical syndrome—the "true
believer/suicide bomber." It is probably true that working
class kids like me, who have tenure at large public
universities in the United States, are less likely to bomb
abortion clinics because we fell in with bad companions at
the Newman Center of our undergraduate community or
state college campuses.
The problem is that this perspective on terrorism
focuses attention on the mind of the terrorist, which is
probably the least important ingredient. The fact that Al-
Quaida cells were recruiting students to fight the Soviets
with the support of the U.S. is almost lost in the article.
The effective recruitment strategies and the ample financial
and social-cultural support make this a perfect storm. The
rich kids who ran away from (or with) mommy and daddy's
money (such as Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush) are
actually much more dangerous than the upwardly mobile
(or would-be achievers), because they have the money and
the social and economic networks required to mobilize
others to do their bidding. Both bin Laden and Bush are
better examples of the dangers of terrorism. People who
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