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Insanity and terrorism......And many suffer from mental illness
np ^ | March 27, 2004 | Stewart Bell

Posted on 03/28/2004 9:35:07 AM PST by dennisw

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1 posted on 03/28/2004 9:35:08 AM PST by dennisw
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To: dennisw
flip
2 posted on 03/28/2004 9:35:37 AM PST by dennisw (“We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.” - Toby Keith)
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To: dennisw
Sounds like a branch of the Lib mental disease doesn't it ?
3 posted on 03/28/2004 9:40:11 AM PST by Uncle George
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To: Uncle George
It is. Claim victim status, blame others for your problems, deny the basic humanity of those others, claim to be bound by a different set of rules (not those of basic civilization and humanity), and kill as many people as possible in a naked quest for power.

Yep. Lib disease gone wild!
4 posted on 03/28/2004 9:51:34 AM PST by thoughtomator (Voting Bush because there is no reasonable alternative)
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To: dennisw
"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."

Aaah. But isn't this "succumbing" to terrorism via "hatred" itself the link to a diseased mind? Concepts such as the "survival instict" are subsumed to the surrender to all consuming hatred.
The same mechanism can be seen in many Americans, who through ignorance or some other as yet unidentified trigger are incapable of seeing the obvious, oblivious to the simple concept of cause and effect.

For instance, when "palestinians" whine about another Israeli attack on their terrorist enclaves, they never acknowledge that it is always in response to an atrocity on civilians. And the useful idiots (fellow neurotics?) among us parrot the same nonsense. And do it with the conviction and straight face that can only be the result of mental illness.

5 posted on 03/28/2004 9:58:30 AM PST by Publius6961 (50.3% of Californians are as dumb as a sack of rocks (subject to a final count).)
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To: dennisw
The war on terrorism CAN be won...

... by massive airdrops of PROZAC !

6 posted on 03/28/2004 9:59:33 AM PST by traumer
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To: dennisw
YEEEEEEAARRRGHHAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW !!

7 posted on 03/28/2004 10:00:33 AM PST by traumer
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To: Publius6961
By the way, I see no reason whatsoever to substitute this analysis of mental illness among the mass murderers as a substitute for destroying as many of them as possible as quickly as possible.
It makes no more sense than wasting time on the bromide, "why do they hate us?".
8 posted on 03/28/2004 10:01:00 AM PST by Publius6961 (50.3% of Californians are as dumb as a sack of rocks (subject to a final count).)
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To: thoughtomator
Good assessment. Our home-grown libs can only see terrorists as insane, because they are unwilling to recognize that the terrorists say and advocate the same things they do, just taking it a step or two further. It's like Marxists or communists who say they don't want Stalinism. Well, it's just a logical extension of their doctrine, but if they admit it, they everything they stand for is proven wrong. So Stalin, bin Laden, et al., "must be insane."
Nope, it's the libs who are insane.
9 posted on 03/28/2004 10:01:31 AM PST by Cincinnatus.45-70 (Accuracy counts, but caliber is important, too.)
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To: Publius6961
"By the way, I see no reason whatsoever to substitute this analysis of mental illness among the mass murderers as a substitute for destroying as many of them as possible as quickly as possible."

Publius, Your point is very well taken. The libs' knee-jerk response to "mental illness" claims from domestic criminals is to let them go to hospital instead of being jailed. In my view, there are some sufferers of mental illness caused by organic problems -- a brain tumor, for example. PERHAPS they might be excused full punishment. But the type of "mental illness" suffered by terrorists, and many domestic criminals, is indistinguishable from evil.

These are people who have willingly, consciously, adopted evil as a way of "life." I have no problem with destroying as many as possible on that basis. Of course, refusing to allow someone to be held responsible for their actions is almost a definition of the modern liberal, so they can never agree.
10 posted on 03/28/2004 10:18:41 AM PST by Cincinnatus.45-70 (Accuracy counts, but caliber is important, too.)
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To: dennisw
Problem - some of them are describing captured Taliban not really terrorists. All the political science and opinion research data suggests Islamicist ideology spreads must strongly among intellectuals of an Islamic middle class, particularly after exposure to foreign environments, or when formal education vastly exceeds actual economic achievement. But that describes a different group from the Afghan or Pakistani kids recruited into the madrassas. Who are more like the young uneducated poor illiterates he describes. None of the 9/11 hijiackers were such uneducated poor illiterates.

Second problem - utter ignorance on the interviewers' part of the substance of Islamicist ideology. Saying things like "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?"" It is textbook Islamicist thought, straight from the pages of Ibn Tamiyya. If the interviewer does not know the whole intellectual system it stems from, they have no way to take its bearings. It is a "romantic", religiously fanatic, bigoted view of the world, but there is nothing insane about it.

Nor is mere bravery insane, as some of these comments seem to suppose. It is not rational to prefer life to the exclusion of all other considerations, when no other considerations make the overly concerned immortal. Nor are beliefs in literal afterlife insane. They may lack evidence, they may be wrong, they may sometimes be based on wishful thinking rather than rational considerations. But they are also normal, in all of human history (burial, anyone?)

It is normal in practically all human cultures for self-preservation to matter to the individual, but to be sacrificed for the goals of the society. (Libertarians, please note you don't have to like that for it to be so). Societies that can't convince some members to face death for the society's goals cannot survive in competition with ones that can.

The interviewers may not understand the versions of that they are seeing, but they may not be seeing anything more than that. It is not crazy to be willing to die for something. Nor is this the terrorists' problem; nobody reasonable objects to it in more moral contexts. It is their deliberate killing of innocents, not their willingness to die, that is the problem.

11 posted on 03/28/2004 10:32:58 AM PST by JasonC
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To: JasonC
It is their deliberate killing of innocents, not their willingness to die, that is the problem.

Agreed. I find it interesting to try and analyze the mindset of the terrorist, but I don't find drawing conclusions to be meaningful. The reasons for this that you state are valid, but also the concept of metally weak persons being caught up in terrorism is not hard to understand. After all Jonny Jihad, the middle class Californian who joined the Taliban after his father divorced his mother for his male lover was a confused youth. I would not say he was mentally ill, but doubtless he hit some of the criteria from the psycologist's manual. The islamic world keeps many of their youth from real education and leaves them susceptable to the radical teachings of Mohammad.

There is ample evidence of good solid mental behavior among the terrorists, E.G. the use of technology and the choices they make to kill as many as possible are examples not of mental illness but cleaver scheming. So we should not draw any conclusions. They need to be killed, they need to be left in the street. There is no good reason to condone this evil at all. It only needs to be defeated.

12 posted on 03/28/2004 11:28:35 AM PST by KC_for_Freedom (Sailing the highways of America, and loving it.)
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To: dennisw
Jessica Stern much?
13 posted on 03/28/2004 12:08:06 PM PST by MegaSilver (The Clintons left the lying, hypocritical mark on their party--just look at Kerry)
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To: dennisw
Kindly DISREGARD my post, I'm on the wrong thread..
When I saw the headline, I thought this was about KERRY.
(hahaha)
14 posted on 03/28/2004 12:17:18 PM PST by Condor51 ("Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments." -- Frederick the Great)
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To: JasonC
The article simply says that many terrorists have "issues". Very big "issues". Many are mentally deranged. I agree with it. Take a look at Richard Reid the would be shoe bomber. Was Mohammed delusional and mentally ill?

Does committing mass murder, as in Madrid, make you a homicidal maniac? How about a sociopath?
15 posted on 03/28/2004 12:47:10 PM PST by dennisw (“We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.” - Toby Keith)
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To: JasonC
Polygamy in Islamic cultures also prohibits less affluent but perhaps well educated men from access to a larger procreation pool which can breed hostility and resentment and a rush to the embrace of Islam's promises
16 posted on 03/28/2004 12:54:52 PM PST by wardaddy (I want that peckerhead Clarke's head on a pike after he's eviscerated....slowly...)
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To: wardaddy
Polygamy in Islamic cultures also prohibits less affluent but perhaps well educated men from access to a larger procreation pool which can breed hostility and resentment and a rush to the embrace of Islam's promises

Also leaves more pissed off, frustrated single men to fight in Allah's army. Islam has it's evolutionary psychology down pat.

17 posted on 03/28/2004 12:57:35 PM PST by dennisw (“We'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way.” - Toby Keith)
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To: dennisw
No committing mass murder does not make you a homicidal maniac. Homicidal mania can make someone commit murder, mass or single. It applies to someone like Jeffry Dalmer, murdering people for a sexual satisfaction he took in it. But so can lots of other things that have nothing to do with homicidal mania - greed, robbery, extortion, cynical silencing of a potential witness or critic - and, the case before us, political calculation, war, fanaticism, etc. Homicidal mania is not a free-floating denuncifier, a way of saying someone did something wrong, or a way of saying you don't consider him rational or nice, or synonymous with having killed people.

Men dropping daisy cutters in Afghanistan were killing lots of people, without the least trace of homicidal mania. Gestapo in France executing 100 civilians every time a German was killed by the resistence were certainly engaging in mass murder of innocents, but not homicidal mania. (Though they may have employed some sick individuals as torturers or executioners, they did that for cynical reasons of twisted policy, not personal gratification).

Are there probably some seriously unhinged characters working for terrorists today? Certainly. Men who get hard ons watching Daniel Pearl's throat being cut on videotape are not normal, and certainly exist. But that is not the primary cause of the whole ideology or war. Which has colder reasons behind it than that. Colder and more rational or calculated does not mean nicer or better or moral. Words are not two direction up or down emotional indicators, but have actual meaning. The problem with the terrorists is that they kill innocents which is immoral, not that some small subset of them get their rocks off doing so.

18 posted on 03/28/2004 2:31:02 PM PST by JasonC
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To: wardaddy
I doubt very much that is the problem. In fact, Islamicists have the opposite problem with female sexuality. They are appalled by the whore-ishness they see in the west, personally shocked by it, and when it nevertheless aroses them they feel tempted by Satan and personally polluted. They are prudes. Read Qutb sometime. A western woman who came on to him on a trip once, is in all seriousness one of the root causes of his hatred of the west and his conviction of the moral superiority of Islam. You aren't wrong that there is something pathological in Islamicist attitudes towards women, but polygamy and imaginary poor romantic prospects are not it.
19 posted on 03/28/2004 2:37:49 PM PST by JasonC
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To: JasonC; wardaddy
I doubt very much that is the problem. In fact, Islamicists have the opposite problem with female sexuality. They are appalled by the whore-ishness they see in the west, personally shocked by it, and when it nevertheless aroses them they feel tempted by Satan and personally polluted. They are prudes. Read Qutb sometime. A western woman who came on to him on a trip once, is in all seriousness one of the root causes of his hatred of the west and his conviction of the moral superiority of Islam. You aren't wrong that there is something pathological in Islamicist attitudes towards women, but polygamy and imaginary poor romantic prospects are not it.

So that's why the 9-11 hijackers spent so much time in Florida nudie bars.

20 posted on 03/28/2004 2:45:48 PM PST by Vigilantcitizen
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