Neurological Correlates

Who are the Iraqi suicide bombers? What is the process of making people agree to turn themselves into a cheap human weapon? The answer is what you’d expect if you give it half a minute’s thought: young men, largely shunned by their group and families, who have legitimate gripes against authority.

Excerpts from, “US Draws Portrait of Iraq Bombers,” By PATRICK QUINN, via Associated Press 0 3.15.08 (Associated Press writer Lily Hindy in New York, the AP’s News Research Center in New York and Maggie Michael in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.)

I posted the remainder of this article on January 9, 2008, but here it is again, given the recent attention in the mainstream media. There is also a “Countering Insurgency and Terrorism Summit” conference this week, and reports indicate not a lot of optimism. To me, if you have societies which only provide protection of the group, with no alternatives for individuals who feel unfairly treated, probably there will be disaffected people willing to join groups to demolish perceived authority. My point is this: with the amount of money spent on the war, you could give all the jihadists-in-training a 2-year scholarship to just about any community college – AA degrees are at least a start.

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Over here at Neurological Correlates, and at our world leader in Machiavellian-psychopath analysis site, The Top Two Inches, we do deep thinking about Machiavellianism. We’ve talked about Hitler and Nazis. Now we turn to Jihadists.

To be brief, bribing young Jihadists to get away from their horrific leaders may do the trick, psychologically.

Terrorism in 2006

From the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center’s Annex to the Country Reports on Terrorism
(numbers are approximate) 2006

14,352	Terrorist attacks worldwide
74,545	Noncombatants killed, injured, or kidnapped
20,570	Civilians killed
1,800	Children killed or injured
430	Students killed or injured
215	Teachers killed or injured
129	Journalists killed or injured
8,200	Police officers killed or injured
1,300	Government leaders, workers, and bodyguards killed or injured
15,855	People kidnapped
Over 50	Percentage of Muslim victims
9,000	Terrorist attacks with unidentified perpetrators
300	Groups identified as connected to remaining attacks
19,500	Schools, businesses, other structures, and vehicles struck
350	Mosques targeted or struck

Jerrold Post , (see his long list of credentials at the link), has studied the psychology of terrorism. I caught him on C-span, my favorite TV station – ultimate reality tv. Sort of like MTV “Real World”.

But I digress.

Good, ol’ fashion bribery might do the trick here real quick to turn around the psycholological underpinnings.

Here’s the math:

About 1.8 million Islamic Jihadists (although only about 300,000-400,000 on the government list)

About 1 Trillion for the war (conservatively)

$1 trillion/1.8 million = $555,555 each

That’s enough to get a Mullah to retire and move to Scottsdale.

But I digress again.

Basically, Dr. Post layed out, step by step, the psychology involved in getting a person to turn themselves into a bomb on behalf of a Jihad.The individuals are not “crazy” — they know right from wrong — they aren’t delusional or having hallucinations. Rather,

There is a multiplicity of individual motivations. For some, it is to give a sense of power to the powerless; for others, revenge is a primary motivation; for still others, to gain a sense of significance.

Rather than individual psychology, then, what emerges as the most powerful lens through which to understand terrorist behavior is that of group, organizational, and social psychology, with a particular emphasis on “collective identity.”

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How did these terrorists justify the extremity of their actions in pursuit of their cause? One answer was especially telling:
An armed action proclaims that I am here, I exist, I am strong, I am in control, I am in the field, I am on the map.
So it is power for the powerless, significance for the insignificant. This helps explain why it is so difficult to leave the path of terrorism.

eJournalUSA-Foreign Policy Agenda, May 2007 at 12-13

Now, if the US were to give each 17 year old jihadist boy, say, a $25,000 scholarship to come to the US and attend college — would that be enough to re-route the group-identity wiring?

$25K x 1.8MM = $45B – –

To put it in crass, economic terms, much less expensive than bombs and tanks and US soldiers, and probably much more effective.