Terrorism,Counter-Terrorism and Religious Sacrifice

As President Barack Obama proceeds with the inherently flawed idea of a “Two-State Solution” in the Middle East, he will inevitably fail to quell certain still-impending anti-American terrorism. In this connection, Mr. Obama would be well advised to recognize that the core basis of Jihadist terror will likely have little if anything to do with worldly strategy and tactics. Rather, it will be, fundamentally, an expression of religious sacrifice.

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This point will be difficult to understand and acknowledge at the White House; yet, determinative links between religious sacrifice and politics actually have a long and pertinent history. President Obama should look first to ancient Greece. There, Plutarch’s SAYINGS OF SPARTAN MOTHERS reveals the female parent as one who rears her sons for civic sacrifice. This mother was always relieved to learn that a son had died “in a manner worthy of his self, his country and his ancestors.” Indeed, those Spartan sons who failed to live up to this standard of sacrifice were reviled. One woman, whose son had been the sole survivor of a disastrous military engagement, killed him with a tile. It was the correct punishment for his apparent cowardice. The eighteenth-century philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, citing to Plutarch, described a certain citizen-mother as follows: “A Spartan woman had five sons in the army and was awaiting news of the battle. A Helot (slave) arrives trembling; she asks him for the news. `Your five sons were killed.’ `Base slave, did I ask you that?’ The slave responds: `We won the victory.’ The mother runs to the temple and gives thanks to the gods.” The roots of Jihadist terror originate, in part, from cultures that embrace similar views of sacrifice. In these cultures, however, the true purpose of sacrifice goes far beyond civic necessity. Here, sacrificial practice is a sacred expression of religion. In these cultures, sacrifice derives from a desperately hoped-for conquest of personal death. Above all, with such practice, the Jihadist terrorist hopes to realize an otherwise unattainable promise of immortality. The Jihadist terrorist insistently claims to “love death,” but this is a lie. Paradoxically, he kills himself and innocent others only to ensure that he will live forever. The so-called “death” that he expects to suffer in “suicide” is merely a momentary inconvenience on every martyr’s fiery path to life everlasting. “Martyrdom” operations have always been associated with Jihad. After all, unequivocal and celebratory invocations for such killing can be found in the Koran (9:111), and, even more explicitly, in the canonical hadith. For President Obama, the survival implications of this doctrinal fusion of religion and violence now warrant very careful study. Convinced that Shahada (“Death for Allah”) violence against the United States will lead to martyrdom, the Islamist terrorist can never be deterred by ordinary threats of reprisal and retaliation. Falling outside the usual boundaries of “rationality,” Jihadist terrorism should compel us to seek very different and more purposeful measures of dissuasion. This means that to keep America safe, President Obama will have to look far beyond orthodox military and political solutions to terrorism. Ideally, of course, he would also abandon his ill-fated plan to carve a Palestinian state from the still-living body of Israel. It is precisely the Jihadists’ unique and overwhelming terror of death that leads them to “suicide.” Ironically, because dying in the act of killing “infidels” and “apostates” is presumed to buy freedom from the penalty of death, these terrorists aim to conquer mortality by “killing themselves.” In the fashion of its Islamist enemies, America still imagines, for itself, life everlasting. But unlike these enemies, America does not see itself achieving immortality, individually or collectively, by mass killing of “others.” Rather, we generally see our national survival as the logical product of both mainstream diplomacy and traditional military power. America and its terrorist enemies have decidedly different orientations to “peace.” This stark asymmetry puts the United States at a foreseeable disadvantage. While America’s enemies manifest their “positive” expectations for immortality, individual and collective, by the intended and doctrinal slaughter of “heathen,” our leaders have thus far remained unaware of these enemies’ murderous decisional calculus. America’s president now faces a real and expanding threat of unconventional war and unconventional terrorism. Faced with adversaries who are not only willing to die, but who also seek their own “deaths” - because this sacrificial death is presumed to yield personal immortality – Mr. Obama should quickly understand the critical limits of ordinary warfare, national homeland defense and deterrence. The danger to America lies at two discrete but interrelated levels. First, it exists at the level of the individual Jihadist enemy who chooses “martyrdom” through a path of terrorism. Second, it exists at the level of states, the individual “self-sacrificers” in macrocosm, which may someday soon choose collective self-sacrifice through their frenzied initiation of chemical, biological or nuclear war against the United States. Such a war might not be fought for traditional military purposes, but for “liquidation” of “infidels.” Any such choice would represent the unholiest of marriages between aggressive war and genocide, two clearly codified crimes under international law. The root problem here is Jihadist death fear and the consequent compulsion to sacrifice certain despised “others.” This compulsion, in turn, stems from a widespread and doctrinal belief that killing unbelievers, and also being killed by unbelievers, is the path toward immortality. Terrorist unwillingness to accept personal death leads, then, to the killing of others to escape this death. The ironies are staggering, but the connections are real. For so many of our terrorist enemies, both individuals and states, killing Americans offers an optimal immunization against death. The death fear of the enemy “ego” is lessened by the killing, the sacrifice, of the infidel. This generic idea has been captured by Ernest Becker’s paraphrase of Elias Canetti: “Each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.” The Jihadist enemies of America do not intend to do evil. Rather, they commit to the killing of Americans and other “infidels” with conviction and purity of heart. Perversely sanctified killers, these enemies will gleefully generate an incessant search for “profane” victims. Though mired in blood, this search will be tranquil and self-assured, born of the presumption that its warrior perpetrators are neither infamous not shameful, but sacrificial and sacred. Dr. Louis René Beres is professor of international relations and international law at Purdue University. Educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971), he is the author of many books, monographs, and articles dealing with Israeli security matters. Louis René Beres lectures and publishes widely on matters of terrorism, strategy and international law. The author of several early books on nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, he is closely involved with Israeli security issues. Professor Beres’ most recent articles have appeared in International Security (Harvard), and in the Policy Paper series of the Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel). His opinion columns appear in such major newspapers as The New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, Indianapolis Star, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz (Israel) and The Jewish Press.

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