Culture » June 28, 2005

Terrornomics

By Phyllis Eckhaus

Why can’t we come to terms with terrorism? “Terrorism” is like “pornography”—we think we “know it when we see it,” still, the word evades useful definition because it covers aspects of human existence we’d rather ignore than understand.

Indeed, the shock of 9/11 was not entirely unlike discovering the parish priest with triple-X videos of local altar boys—we were suddenly confronted with a predatory underworld we do our best not to see. It’s one of the great privileges of middle-class American life that we typically navigate our days in flight from boredom rather than murder, starvation, disease or rape—and we remain blithely oblivious to our precarious privilege and the portion of the world that lives otherwise.

Loretta Napoleoni looks under that rock. In Terror Incorporated, Napoleoni, an Italian economist who quotes Noam Chomsky and consults for the Department of Homeland Security, attempts to do an end run around politics by applying the “dispassionate tool” of economics. She expresses hope that by taking terror out of the political realm, she can help facilitate a “worldwide consensus … as to its definition.”

Of course, hers is a futile aspiration, as the only way to come to consensus on “terrorism” would be to agree on what constitutes a just world and the appropriate means of obtaining it. What makes a claim to power, land or resources legitimate? Osama bin Laden calculates that at $135 dollars a barrel or $4.05 billion a day, U.S. appropriation of Arab oil means America owes the Muslim world a fortune.

Describing terrorism as big business, Napoleoni showcases Yasser Arafat as a brilliant innovator, the Henry Ford of armed struggle. Frustrated by the fickleness of his state sponsors, Arafat decided to make the PLO self-sufficient by setting up shop in Lebanon and turning PLO-occupied regions into bases for criminal enterprise, which seeded legitimate businesses worldwide. Allegedly, the PLO once owned so many poultry farms in Africa it could have supplied eggs to every Arab army. By the early ’80s, the group had accumulated such wealth that Arafat’s transfer of cash out of Lebanon accelerated collapse of the currency.

Others have followed Arafat’s lead, seeking financial independence through legit and illegit business. And here is Napoleoni’s real theme: She argues that Islamist “terror” is fueled not by religion but economics, a desire to break the West’s stranglehold on markets. Napoleoni compares Islamist Jihad to the Crusades, which she characterizes as a campaign to bust up Arab control of international commerce. But as a rationale of terrorism, why favor economics over fundamentalism? The rise of Muslim extremists parallels the ascendance of Christian conservatives within the Republican Party—arguably facilitated but not subsumed by an unholy alliance with profiteers.

Napoleoni is earnest and thoughtful, yet her book is enormously aggravating. She presents Islamism as monolithic and calls the pipeline channeling financial support from abroad “the Mosque Network”—would any good editor have let her describe Jewish support for Israel as “the Synagogue Network”? Utterly indiscriminate in her references, she even cites Lyndon LaRouche’s Web site as a credible source. Her sloppy research means many of her “facts” fall apart upon close scrutiny.

Most upsetting, Napoleoni concludes her book with a rousing endorsement of the Patriot Act, praising it as “the first financial counter-terrorism measure” that other nations would do well to emulate. This supposed solution to terrorism presumes that “good guy” governments given unchecked power will righteously deploy it to shut down “bad guy” armed groups. Yet as Napoleoni herself seems to acknowledge, there are no “good guys.” Even alleged human rights heroes like Jimmy Carter practiced ruthless realpolitik, underwriting Indonesian terror in East Timor and provoking a war in Afghanistan between the USSR and our then-friends the Mujahedin.

Besides, who’s a “bad guy”? Napoleoni’s single swipe at defining terrorism cites three characteristics: “its political nature, the targeting of civilians and the creation of a climate of extreme fear.” Surely, this encompasses virtually all contemporary wars, as bombs and guerrilla tactics replace hand-to-hand combat. What was Shock and Awe if not a terror campaign?

Napoleoni grants states an exemption from the terror label they don’t deserve. Indeed, she seems not to recognize that state-sponsored inequalities foment terror far more effectively than lax banking laws. Ultimately, combating terror in a vastly unjust world is like trying to stop a flood from below sea level. There’s no prospect of success without moving to higher ground.

• Help In These Times publish more articles like this. Donate today!
• Subscribe today and save 46% off the newsstand price!

• subscribe to print magazine

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments

  The weakness of the liberal mindset is the inability to distinguish good from bad. Targeting and killing civilians - as the terrorists do - is bad. Always.

  But all wars kill innocents. This does not make all wars terrorist activities. Removing a madman from power and, in the process, possibly inciting a civil war may be a good thing. In a decade we will know whether it was in Iraq or whether it was just a failed attempt. The best analogy is that of a hostage rescue. . .

  Posted by howCrazy on Jun 29, 2005 at 8:23 PM

  The weakness in the conservative mindset is that conservatives are two lazy and/or stupid to engage in any meaningful analysis.  It’s so much easier to simply fall back on their primative, survival instinct for tribalism and label everything either black or white, good or bad, us or them, and be done with it.  (Grey areas are to complicated and intimidating for conservatives).  That’s why conservatives are so hateful and fearful of anyone different from themselves - the tribalistic “enemy camp” mentality.

  You comments about innocents dying in war is a diversionary tactic. The issue, as to Bush’s war in Iraq, is that he has committed the greatest breach of public trust in U.S. history by lying about the need for war, covering up the true intelligence, all so that he and his family could make money war profiteering. That and trading with the enemy has been the Bush family business for the past 80 years.

  Posted by Lefty on Jun 30, 2005 at 8:24 PM

  “The weakness in the conservative mindset is that conservatives are two lazy and/or stupid to engage in any meaningful analysis.”
  When calling someone lazy and/or stupid you might, at least, get the grammar of your insult right, as it only makes you look lazy and stupid.

  “(Grey areas are to complicated and intimidating for conservatives).” So is the correct us of to, too and two for Lefty.

  Posted by E.B. White on Jun 30, 2005 at 9:14 PM

  E.B.,

  Thank you for pointing out my gramatical shortcommings.  By the way, when you wrote: “So is the correct us [sic] of to, too and two for Lefty,” I presume you meant “use.”  Right? LOL.

  You and I must have attended the same grade school. LMAO.

  Posted by Lefty on Jul 1, 2005 at 1:27 PM

  Lefty - are you aware of how Roosevelt “lied” to get us involved in WWII? Was it immoral or ok?

  Americans are inclined to be both insolations and antiwar. This is a good thing, but has its limitations. (Note that Bush began his first term as an isolationist, but 9/11 drastically altered his - and much of the worlds - perceptions.)

  Posted by howCrazy on Jul 1, 2005 at 1:59 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 8 posts.

Also featured Thanks, But Well Do It Ourselves
Battling Big Cola
Environmentalism is dead. Whats next?

Full contents
Previous issues
Subscribe and save!

Also by Phyllis Eckhaus

• A Wingnut in Sheeps Clothing
  It's deluded to imagine that human beings are rational creatures. Fearmongering works, which… morePosted on January 30, 2007
• The Northern Slave Trade
  The hidden history of slavery in New York calls myths of American morality into questionPosted on January 6, 2006
• Empire Made Easy
  Banish those nasty guilt twinges over America's ambitions to empire. Getting a jump… morePosted on November 4, 2005
• Hiroshima: The Falsehood Fallout
  As the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima arrives, two recent books examine the history of atomic weaponsPosted on August 6, 2005
• The Uses and Abuses of Race
  Race facilitates rule. If race did not exist, the powers-that-be would have had… morePosted on May 11, 2005