.... new insights into the terrorist mindset — some of them controversial — are now emerging from research on the hundreds of terrorists captured since Sept. 11, 2001. The conclusion: The average terrorist is young, a family outcast with little formal education or money who was raised in a region of economic and political instability. And, says a U.S. Army expert familiar with the research, many are mentally ill.
| Any observer with a bit of objectivity would note the high proportion of loons, psychoceramics and nutballs involved in Global Jihad™. We've noted here a time or two, I think... |
"It is surprising the number of Axis I psychological disorders we have among that population," Colonel Larry James, chief psychologist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., said in a recent talk to Ontario psychologists in Toronto. (The disorders classified as Axis I in the psychologists’ bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, include most of the major mental disorders: anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and phobias.) .... Previous studies have generally concluded mental illness was not a factor in determining who becomes a terrorist. Blind commitment to the cause, not a mental defect, drives terrorists, the argument goes; only Hollywood terrorists are crazy. .... But that was before the war on terrorism. In particular, it was before hundreds of terrorists were captured and taken to places such as Guantanamo Bay, giving experts a rare chance to collect psychological data on a large pool of subjects and to develop a profile of what makes them tick.
| In the pre-post-modern world, empirical observation took precedence over theory. Today, such observations are "controversial." |
"Mental illness is a factor," Col. James said in an interview. .... "The leaders or the mastermind figures may or may not have mental illness, but again among the foot soldiers, that’s where you’ll see more of the psychiatric types of problems."
| The leaders and masterminds are a separate category, and I'd suggest megalomania and psychopathy are probably the most common afflictions... |
Col. James believes the reason why psychological disorders have not before been widely detected in terrorists is that the people testing them have not asked the right questions. "We need a new way of conceptualizing these men and women, because the categories we have, they don’t fit neatly into." The thinking that drives al-Qaeda — that Westerners are devils and that killing them is serving God — in itself should raise questions about the sanity of its adherents, he says. "That begs the question: Is that a normal healthy thought process?"
| You mean outside a mosque, right? |
Radical Islamic terrorists might breeze through a standard psych test, he says, but they would surely fail what he called the New York City Taxi Driver Test: Even a cabbie with no formal training could tell that an al-Qaeda member was just "not right."
Psychologists have long argued that some high-ranking terrorists may be psychopaths or have personality disorders, while those in lower-level positions such as suicide bombers are more likely to have mental deficiencies or depression, making them easier to manipulate. ....
| It takes a special kind of man (or woman) to make an evil minion... |
But are most terrorists mentally ill? "Yes and no," says Steven Stein, CEO of Multi-Health Systems and a Toronto psychologist who specializes in the field.
| That's a pretty classic beg on a question.... |
"While some terrorists may have mental health problems, I don’t think it is a basic cause of terrorism. There are millions of people worldwide with mental health problems and only a small percentage of them are violent. Much more pervasive among terrorists is being indoctrinated in a culture of hatred. There are much stronger links between hatred and terrorism than any particular mental illness." ....
| Which raises the questinio of whether mental illness can be induced. My opinion is that it can. Various incidences of brainwashing, dating from the Korean War through various cults and sects, shows that it can. Jim Jones seconds my opinion and toasts it with Kool-Ade. |
Aside from mental illness, terrorists tend to have a low level of education, which makes it easier to indoctrinate and manipulate them, he [Colonel James] says. "A large number of them are functionally illiterate. The average foot-soldier terrorist is not a rocket scientist. That’s a factual statement. I’m not talking about the Osama bin Ladens and the guys who are chemical engineers and have masters degrees and come from tremendously well-educated families. That may be one of the mastermind-type people behind it, but the person who gets on the train or the bus ... with a bomb strapped to their back typically doesn’t have a PhD."
| The requirement is for somebody who's cheap and easily replaced. Rocket scientists have other uses. It's easier to find slack-jawed yokels to wear the boom belts and wave the AKs. The dumber the better, in most cases. Reminder: 50 percent of everyone you meet is of below-average intelligence. |
Family dynamics also play a role, he says. "The folks that are looking for a sense of belongingness, family outcasts.... This person tends to be the black sheep of the family and really doesn’t connect well with the rest of the family. If you look at Osama bin Laden, same thing. If you look at his mother and father, he was born to an intact family, very wealthy, very well-educated but for whatever reason ... he’s the one family outcast, long before he got involved in al-Qaeda. So these folks will go out and seek out other organizations, and they are ripe psychologically."
| Same thing shows up in the prison population — not in every case, but enough to fill the middle of the bell curve... |
Then there is economic status. "The average terrorist really is fairly poor and doesn’t have a stable job or goes from job to job ... and so here comes an organization that’s willing to take them in, feed them, clothe them, educate them and, in their interpretation of the Koran, make them a soldier for the cause and pay them some nominal wages." Indeed, some terrorists are "soldier-of-fortune-mercenary" types, he says. "These are the more sociopathic-type characters. ’Hey man, there’s a fight and you’re willing to pay for it. Sign me up, brother, I’m with you.’"
| He's describing a group that's separate from the cannon fodder. These are the guys who're more likely to be the controllers and runners. They've got more on the ball than Mahmoud al-Kaboomi... |
Perhaps least surprising is the finding that terrorists tend to come from regions that are in economic and political upheaval, partly because governments lack the will or the resources to challenge terrorist groups that set up shop in such environments, he says. These parts of the world have a plentiful supply of idle youths, who are the cannon fodder of terror. "It’s more likely to see younger adults and children involved in this. Why? Because they’re more vulnerable."
| By the time all the endocrine adjustments have been made within the body, the urge to display one's ferocity has receded, to be replaced by the urge to procreate and raise young. If we were still apes, it wouldn't be the silverbacks waving AKs, but the young 'uns, just run out of the group. Doing a quick scan of cannon fodder we've run across in these pages, the average age is probably 22 or 23. Runners and controllers tend to be older, and there are precious few 40- and 50-year-olds to be found. The guys at the top are old farts. |
Up to a third of the combatants in Afghanistan were under 13 years of age, he says, and many were in the 9-15 range. "This was truly a different kind of war." Many of those boys were abducted and forced to fight, and a large number were sexually abused by the commanders at terrorist camps.
| The abduction part skews the figures, but he's making the same point: the cannon-fodder's to be found in the post-puberty to young-married age range. |
"When we look at a lot of these terrorist organizations, these boys meet the criteria of all the things I just laid out. Things are not going well in their family, they’re typically not doing well in school, they’re kind of social outcasts, they’re looking for a place to belong, they’re 13, 14, 15, so they don’t have a way of supporting themselves."
| ... and the average IQ is somewhere between 85 and 95... |
Some researchers have documented how terrorists gradually become divorced from reality as they live underground to evade capture, making it possible for them to kill masses of people in the name of the cause of their leader or organization. ....
| That's the cult-sect part of it, with continuous reinforcement of the groupthink. Reality's replaced by the construct, and as time goes on the construct becomes more disconnected from reality. I might add that this is all subject to the bubble-burst principle: when it finally occurs, the end of the war on terror may actually come quickly, as the masses of the easily led are subjected to sudden disillusionment. Islamism will evaporate in the same manner as Communism (capital C) and Fascism (capital F). |
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