Letter 119: Violent Extremism by the Numbers

"If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace."

-- President Franklin Roosevelt

"'Such fanatic and desperate movements emerge usually in response to a profound crisis. Yet, their demise is usually rapid because of their tendency to be nihilistic,' [Professor Azzam] Tamimi said. They 'fail miserably when it comes to winning over the normal and decent', he added."

                               -- Dr Azzam Tamimi, quoted by al-Jazeera in 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azzam_Tamimi 

INTRODUCTION. A recent discussion with friends about violent Islam raised the question of my being anti-Muslim. Such a reaction is neither unique nor surprising in that opposing violent Islamic extremism can be – and likely often is – deployed as a cover for a wider devaluation of, and ill-will toward, Muslims. We have seen people use this issue for personal or political gain.

Sincerely, I do not believe that I am ant-Muslim. My concern comes down to simple arithmetic in the number of suicidal sociopaths masquerading as Islamic faithful. There are three outcomes of hours of calculation and moments of intuition on the number of the violently nihilist fighters who demean a great faith by masquerading as being among the faithful:

• the scary top-down scenario of 4.4-17.5 million;
• the modest but still unwelcome bottom-up scenario of 77,000; and,
• my stubborn gut feeling of 10,000 (outside of ISIS, Taliban, Hizbullah and Boko Haram regular troops; these people are more akin to the 'accidental guerillas' of Kilcullen).

In the top-down example, I use the two highest numbers possible murdering jihadists to establish an upper bound.

BLUF (bottom-line up-front): ISIS et al. do not represent an existential threat by the numbers, at least to non-Muslims outside of the Muslim-dominated territories. The threat to Western and secular values is the real issue, however, and one on a level of that posed by the Nazis. Moderate Muslims need our support rather than blame.

DISCUSSION on a VERY ROUGH METHODOLOGY. The two calculated scenarios (i.e., bottom-up and top-down), I believe, represent end-points on what the magnitude of the threat really is. There is one significant point that explains a small part of the wide gap. The top-down analysis tends to point toward the number of actual killers over time whereas the bottom-up relies upon one year of statistics from the United States.

The bottom-up analysis deals with the United States and applies the implicit assumption that the number of murderers corresponds with the number of murders. We know that, with incidents like Newtown and Columbine, this assumption overstates the number of murderers in the U.S. population in any one year. This forced and erroneous assumption is intended to account for societies in conflict where murder rates are higher and for the fact that there are new murderers coming on-blood-line each year.

Nevertheless, to reconcile the difference between the lowest calculated number of jihadists wedded to killing in the top-down analysis (4.4 million) and the number generated in the bottom-up analysis shows how overblown my own anxiety has been. Specifically, if such assumptions were pin-point accurate ex ante, and remained constant, for the bottom-up one-year number to catch up to the lowest top-down would require one of two parameters (or a mix of both):

• a 21% growth rate for every year for the next generation of twenty years (or more than ten times the current growth rate of the Muslim population world-wide); or,
• almost two centuries with a annual growth-rate of 2.0% (i.e., the growth-rate of Muslims world-wide).

These numbers are precise and precisely wrong. In any case, they represent a wide range. My own intuition leans toward the lower figure of the bottom-up analysis, actually well below it.

The TOP-DOWN TERROR ANALYSIS. There are approximately 1.75 billion Muslims in the world. Based on assumptions held in my family when I was growing up, the vast majority of any group (98%) is decent. If that 98% figure were accurate, some 2% would be suspect or evil. So, let's assume half of these people (1%) are willing to kill or aid in killing other people, that figure is 17,500,000 people. Say only a quarter of these goons are the killers; that leaves 4,375,000 trigger-men.

Now, if these bastards killed 12-13 people each (about the ratio in Paris), we would be looking at death tolls approaching those of World War II (55 million). 'Experts' believe that 30% of the world's Muslims are sympathetic with the ISIS régime. That is a figure I contest. I analyzed statistics from the Pew Foundation, the source cited by those making the 30% assertion. Those data suggest that only 15% of the Muslims surveyed around the world thought that suicide bombers defending Islam were occasionally or frequently justified in their actions.

Sympathy recorded in a passive poll is a long way off from an activated predisposition toward killing people. Yet if 5% of these 'sympathizers' (0.75% of all Muslims) were willing to murder people in the preferred method of ISIS, we are now talking about more than 13 million people; they would need take out four or five each to approach WWII death rates.

The Bottom-Up Crime Scenario. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2014, there were 1,165,383 violent crimes recorded in the United States of which 1.2% were murders. That translates to 0.004% of the population being murderers in a given year. As stated earlier, that number is over-stated since many murders involve more than one victim and the statistic itself ignores future killers.

Applying this percentage to the global Muslim population of 1.75 billion people, the number of murderers would approach 80,000.  Implicit in this scenario is an assumption that every murderer were an violent jihadist on either sides of the Sunni-Shi´ite divide looking to kill innocents as apostates or as infidels.

Obviously, that is yet another heroic assumption. Such gangsters would have to take out 714 people for each one killed – or four to five times the number of the terrorist master-stroke realized on the day of ignominy (11 September 2001) – to approach the number of deaths in World War II.

CLOSING THOUGHTS. While any of these numbers of dedicated killers are frightening and hopefully overstated, the magnitude of the threat is obvious. My gut says that such jihadists number less than twenty-five thousand, perhaps as low as 10,000; this figure is in addition to trained participants in irregular warfare of 50,000. Nonetheless, such a number can inflict considerable harm and wreak havoc. The threat of violent wrongdoers is not existential; the number of deaths to date are more dramatic than they are significant. 

Nevertheless, this irreligious and totalitarian ideology strikes right at the very core of Western values and is bent on attacking the West for reasons that many have divined but few, if any, really know. What to do? Fortunately, the great majority of Muslims are moderates who reject this literal / fundamentalist and violent world-view. Their perceived silence does not imply complicity but fear.

These innocent Muslims don't have the guns. ISIS has threatened to kill them as apostates if they speak up and the overwhelming majority of terror victims are Muslims within Muslim dominated territories. The key here will be empowerment of these many decent and moderate Muslims so that, together, common humanity can eradicate this pseudo-religious ideological nihilism from all of our lives.

APPENDIX l: EFFECTS of MASS-MURDER to DATE. Estimates run as high as 140,000 people being murdered by terrorists since 2000; my personal estimate is that there have been at least 60,000 across the Islamic belt stretching from Morocco to Pakistan; up to Turkey and down to Nigeria and Somalia. Of the events I can remember in the West (including Australia, Bermuda, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Israel), I can only recall roughly 4,500 innocents murdered outside of this belt.

The point behind these numbers is to emphasize that while the numbers are high, they are lower than what I would have guessed. These smaller numbers are sobering in face of the vastly higher numbers killed by military forces, including those of Syria, Iran, Russia, ISIS, Iraq and the United States. Though I deem several of her policies unjust, I exclude Israël because, notwithstanding a lot of publicity, the number of civilians killed by the Israeli Defense Force has been quite low.

A decade ago, two friends of mine and I combed through every statistic we could find on birth-rates, death rates, displacement rates and emigration rates in Iraq, since the last census had been compiled in the early-to-mid 1990s. We found a gap in the Iraqi population of where it was at the time (i.e., 2008) and where it could reasonably have been expected to be that ranged from 800,000 to 1,200,000.

That does not mean U.S. troops killed that many people. American soldiers were responsible for 7-12% of these deaths. The rest came from sectarian conflict, sectarian terrorism and an accelerated death-rate owing to the lack of essential services for several years after the invasion.

APPENDIX II: an ANALOGY with NAZISM. The distinction between the ISIS ‘troops’ and the mad-bombers is roughly analogous to that of the SS / Einsatzgruppen, who represented 8% of the Army with a far smaller core dedicated to the genocide of Jews and mass-murder of Gypsies.

What the West faces is not a religious war from Islam but a totalitarian ideology with a fanatically murderous core membership reminiscent of the Nazis. The SS had up to 100,000 foreign fighters (from Europe) in its ranks as time went on. As social constraints loosen, many people otherwise law-abiding through fear, rather than obedience, are now free to give reign to their darkest impulses.

As angry young Germans found themselves rewarded, especially in the seven years following Kristallnacht, for service to state by burning synagogues and by committing progressively harsher depredations, so too are young and angry Sunnis enticed by the same incentives to act out against Shi´ites and Christians. All of this with a cult of personality of a new Caliphate.

Letter 116-A: Why the 'Hill Pill' gives me the slick willies.

Postscript. While I have disagreed with most of the policies of President Obama, I believe that he has served us well or, at least, to the best of his considerable talent. His inability to compromise lay not with him but with a cluster of Republicans bent on undermining his Administration. President Obama did not compromise often enough because he was not in a position to do so. Like the tango, it takes two to compromise. Besides, he has faced an almost overt racism. Many of my fellow Republicans disagree with me on this point, often vehemently. 

Their argument is that nothing has been said overtly against the President that is racist. I agree. Yet, my criterion is simple, perhaps simplistic. When a Representative like Louie Ghomert says some of the things he does – and he is far, far from alone in doing this – to former Attorney General Holder or about President Obama, I ask myself, “Would (s)he likely say such things, with these words and in this tone, to an unpopular white man with similar views (e.g., President Carter)?”

Hillary’s ticking slime-balm.  BLUF (Bottom-Line, Up-Front). The last human being I want to see anywhere near the White House is President Bill Clinton.

During the campaign, should Secretary / Senator Clinton get the nod, President Clinton will undoubtedly be cited as a President who knew how to compromise and his Administration will be held up as a golden era. Undoubtedly, there is merit to this view. Nevertheless, most of his ‘compromises’ were nothing of the sort; they were concessions of his principles, calculated – in the manner of Senator Cruz – primarily for personal political benefit.

President Clinton signed the D.O.M.A. bill, a brutally repressive law toward gays. Of course, I am not proud of the Republican sponsorship of that bill and my uninformed acquiescence to it. The Supreme Court wisely swept that law into the great dust-bin of history. Had President Clinton had a moral rudder inside his soul, he would have vetoed the measure and made the Republicans explain themselves.

A Republican Congress, with some momentum triggered by Mr Perot in 1992, forced President Clinton to balance the budget. For those who believe the good old days will return with the election of Secretary / Senator Clinton, please remember Juanita Broddrick and several other women; Messrs Chung and Huang; a possible even likely betrayal, through permissiveness or outright complicity, of missile technology to China; cash carrying Buddhist monks; Group Lippo; as well as, other transgressions.

In an aside, and to set the record straight on Monica Lewinsky, whom I judged as severely as anyone else -- considering her a trashy slut -- this Ted-Talk clears up just how brutal the treatment of her was.  Beyond shaming, she was simply savaged (https://lnkd.in/dwzXtE2). For my part, I do not recall articulating my nasty and hasty judgement to others; at least, I hope I did not. After all, by then I detested President Clinton. Like him or hate him, the President had taken advantage of his power over a an intern.  

While Ms Lewinsky's timely words from 2015 sweep aside the regrettable misjudgement that I and others had made, and the violent verbal abuse too many had puked out, the $19 trillion question still remains: ¿Do we want this kind of man running around the White House, yanking on the levers of power formally, as the Senator / Secretary suggests he will, or otherwise? Count me out.

Additionally, a friend of mine in the military intel trade throughout the 1990s, serving as a uniformed officer in the United States Navy during those years, confirmed in 2008 the transfer of technology secrets to China in the mid-1990s by the Clinton Administration, an action he and his colleagues viewed as a betrayal. He explained that, apparently, President Clinton’s rationale was to forestall another arms-race, this time between the U.S. and China. 

If that is true, the rationale makes sense. A question, however, remains unanswered. Why was the President not transparent about this intention?

Obviously, President Clinton knew that the American people and Congress would not permit it. So, at least to me, it now appears the President Clinton took an extraordinary action in a manner that the politically paranoid (e.g., me) might view as treasonable. Now, these various actions provide the elements of why I came to believe that President Clinton’s impeachment was not “all about the sex” with "that woman...Miss Lewinsky".

Lying about fellatio was the only piece of the puzzle that Kenneth Starr, working on five separately appointed 'special-prosecutor' investigations at once, could prove. It was obvious to me in early 1996, as I stated ad-nauseam at that time to my liberal (soon ex-)girl-friend and repeatedly to very patient friends, that President Clinton would be impeached and removed from office in his second term. At the time, I was still a faithful Democrat. Think Al Capone and tax evasion. 

As one more aside, Kenneth Starr was, and is, a fine public servant. Unfortunately, like so many others (e.g., Christopher Hitchens), the more familiar Mr Starr became with President Clinton, the more he detested him. That intense dislike of President Clinton over-rode his otherwise good judgement to induce him to post, on-line, the content of discussions with Ms Lewinsky and bits of previous telephone conversations, recorded without her knowledge. The intention was to hold the President accountable in a 'no-spin zone' of cyberspace; the consequence was the near destruction of Ms Lewinsky.

IMPLICATIONS for Senator / Secretary Clinton. Of themselves, these actions do not necessarily impugn Secretary / Senator Clinton’s candidacy or character. Frankly, I suspect that, venal as she comes across, the Senator / Secretary has significantly more integrity than does her husband. She was an effective Senator in New York, though some of her stances were troubling; that, however, is par for the course for any particular candidate with any particular voter. Her record as Secretary of State is mixed but not really the stuff of demonology.

An informal assurance (to me) of the assertion of Mrs Clinton's higher level of integrity is based on how Chelsea Clinton has turned out. This young woman has emerged into a decent person, despite what must have been a tortuously tortured time growing up. Many complain about her making a boat-load of money. Yeah, I surely envy that, too. But the last time I checked, being wealthy does not make a person wicked; a deeply flawed character does.

PARTING THOUGHT: hopefully super-delegates will do the right thing: over-ride dubious candidates -- if the e-mails turn out truly to be damning of Secretary / Senator Clinton -- in favor of others fit for the office of the presidency.

Letter 116: Time to Toast these Crumpets

Introduction. This letter obviously has a political bent since it discusses the current primary contests in both major political parties for the presidential nominations of 2016. This essay will be vague since I do not want to get into specific issues. Frankly, I am too old and too burned out on ranting to bother. What concerns me are the non-political dimensions of the campaign, namely those attendant with 'character'.

To get my politics out of the way, my dream race has long been one where Senator Bernie Sanders squares off against Governor John Kasich. Both men, in my view, are blessed with wisdom. Our country faces big questions about our future. Their politics are very different but their devotion to what America should stand for remain beyond question.

What really counts. That said, I really believe that political theory and philosophy – not ideology – are the most important factors, and key indicators of character, of any candidate. Greatness also lies in a willingness to entertain the opposing view. Only then can opposing sides look for that overlap between two intersecting circles of a Venn diagram that permit compromise without corrosion of either side's stated principles.

While pragmatism speaks for itself through its results, thinking guided by principle remains paramount because any President going into office will have to decide questions beyond his or her expectations or world-view. That leader, trapped inside the Oval Office, will need that moral rudder to guide the country’s way through the storm (‘tormenta’ in Spanish) or tempest, depending upon the magnitude of the stakes.

The Democratic Race. This race basically boils down to a classic rivalry of polite pragmatism versus passionate progressivism. Senator Sanders reminds me more of the Democrats of the last two generations who dreamed big, fought hard, and often lost bigger; these were men and women willing to risk everything for what they viewed as an America that could be great, truly great, from the inside out. 

Yes, many had charisma but, like Senator Sanders, their primary appeal lay in "radical" possibilities deeply considered. Frequently, their ideas surfaced later as mainstream policy debate, thus securing an often forgotten but enduring legacy. And, usually, it was the pragmatists, persuaded over time, who realized these ideas. 

Senator / Secretary Hillary Clinton has some tough questions to answer about her character. Polls indicate that most voters find her to be less than trust-worthy, by varying degrees. To me, at least, the Secretary / Senator has a reasonably high level of integrity in view of the competing pressures and temptations that politicians face and the personal faults with which each human being must contend every day. 

For me, the rub is the prospect of President Clinton being back in the White House.

Unlike her husband, the Senator / Secretary appears to have a moral rudder.

The lingering question with the Senator / Secretary is whether any of her shortcomings rises to the level of a tragic flaw. Senator Sanders as a President might very well fail during his tenure but succeed in the longer term as legacies migrate from passion to polemics to policy over time.

With Senator / Secretary Clinton, the country may trend back toward a venality in politics (as the turning gears of calculation click inside her head audibly and incessantly). Nevertheless, the Secretary / Senator should prove to be adequate and, without the shadow of the ex-president, possibly great. 

The Republican Race.  As I wrote four years ago, I was hoping that the G.O.P. would go through then the ideological convulsion that we are seeing now. In 2012, Governor Romney was a decent man but proved to be a weak candidate; Representative Ron Paul was my preference. The racist elements and demagoguery of the Tea Party were already visible. The worst part of this element is that it sullies the better parts of conservative thinking.

Unfortunately, these emerging elements of discord failed to precipitate the catharsis necessary to bring the Republican Party back to its roots as the ‘Party of Lincoln’. President Lincoln and other greats like, among many, Presidents Roosevelt, Ford, Reagan and Bush; Senators Vandenburg, Goldwater and Dole; as well as, Representatives Kasich and Paul shared two traits in common. 

• First, each assigned a paramount value to integrity.  
• Second, they held a deep and abiding faith in the capacity of Americans, ordinary Americans, to make their lives meaningful, their children’s lives better, and their country exceptional. 

American legitimacy rests on the divine inspiration of democracy and not on a divine right to rule conferred by an accident of birth. These men – and women like Secretary Rice and Senator Hutchinson – had variations of these basic values, to be sure, yet their convictions were sincere and broadly pointed toward a conservative philosophy. 

That philosophy had traditionally consolidated previous gains by the progressives to make them fiscally sustainable; this push-&-pull of historical currents came to be the American liberal tradition of Louis D. Hartz. Sometimes, if the policy had been ineffective or repudiated by a decisive majority of the citizenry, the conservatives would reform or reverse it when pragmatists failed to do so. Nevertheless, each of the Republican leaders mentioned above knew, again in various degrees, how to work with the other side to forge compromises that benefitted their belovèd America. 

The Exhaustion of Contemporary Conservatism. Often Mr Trump is compared to Hitler. In my mind, if we resort to colorful historical metaphors, ‘the Donald’ reminds me more of Mussolini – not very bright but very self-important and definitely authoritarian. Hopefully, Mr Trump’s followers will not be administering the castor oil treatment to errant delegates in Cleveland! Mr Trump represents the worst type of opportunism: the politics of vengeance. The politics of vengeance entails identifying a responsible party as a scape-goat. 

Yet, our elected leaders, people we voted into office time and time again, created the conditions we face today. Truthfully, those conditions that we all dislike – the uncertainty, a hollow economy, and frightening scenarios for the banking sector – are nothing like those that the Weimar Republic faced. How we have arrived to this state of fear and disappointment is a mystery to me. Yet Mr Trump blames others and vows to make us “great” again.

Mr Trump’s bluster begs the question of who did these terrible things to us.  We hear about Mexicans and Muslims today. Who comes next? Jews? Gays? Blacks? Mormons? And those groups are only for internal consumption. What about countries like Japan or China? This man has mastered political theater, even threatening to unleash his version of black-shirts (Mussolini’s brown-shirts) in Cleveland.

Mr Trump is not another Mussolini but acts like a Yankee version of Huey Long

Senator Cruz is not another Hitler but could be another President Nixon.

Senator Cruz strikes me as even worse; at least, Mr Trump is obvious. That opinion of mine may change to induce me to vote for the Texas Senator; I frankly doubt it. Like Mr Trump, Senator Ted Cruz impresses me as an opportunist. What scares me about the Senator is that he conflates his opportunism with a personal ideology through a tactical brilliance. As such, he could destroy the Republican Party. The Republic herself might suffer, too. Cults of personality can be a very nasty business.

To me – and this feeling is intuitive and, therefore, irrational – Senator Cruz is more of a Hitler type: very smart, very opportunistic, as well as amoral toward people in his way or those who exist outside his conception of what 'good' citizens should be. While the Hitler analogy may strike people as extreme, I view the Senator as at least a possible President Nixon. His campaign has had its fair share of dirty tricks already. The tragedy for the Republicans in 2016 remains the presence of several better candidates, all bullied out of the field except for a brave Governor Kasich. 

While I support Governor Kasich whole-heartedly, he has been unable to do well in the South or West; his base is simply, and sadly, too narrow. The G.O.P. field had four or five active candidates aligned with the best traditions of American conservatism. They all faltered, leaving Senator Rubio and Governor Kasich as long-shots at a contested convention. The Party of Lincoln can do better than a tin-horn or a hypocrite.