Winnipeg Sun: NEWS - Terrorists 'normal'

Winnipeg Sun: NEWS - Terrorists 'normal'

My thanks to Jihad Watch for making this article known. It is worth reprinting in full since it is short and to the point.

Sun, August 8, 2004

Terrorists 'normal'

Suicide bombers fit their culture, psychiatrist says
By CP

TORONTO -- Suicide bombers are rational, sane people whose choice to end their lives as they kill others is considered perfectly normal in societies they grow up in, the Globe and Mail reported yesterday from a southern Ontario religious conference. In a chilling analysis of what makes a terrorist, a U.S. psychiatrist who worked for the U.S.Central Intelligence Agency said most extremists who use violence are not emotionally disturbed.

In fact, they would be expelled from their organizations if they appeared to be unbalanced, the Toronto Star said from Orillia, Ont.

"Most terrorists are quite normal. It's hard to understand
but quite true," Jerrold Post said Friday.

APPEAL BROADENING

Post, who interviewed terrorists in a 21-year career with the CIA, said
the appeal of suicide bombing is broadening.

The practice was once limited to very young men, a huge percentage of them teenagers.

"Now women, mothers, have joined this pathway, and middle-aged men, a 43-year-old
father," he told the Globe and Mail.

"I see it as a trend."

He said his colleagues have given up asking people why they join their militant
organizations to become suicide bombers.

"Because we would get these weird looks: 'Why do we join? Everybody is joining. It's only the weird individuals who don't join,' " said Post, who's now at George Washington University.

Post said suicide bombers are driven by deep despair over the forces they see arrayed against them.

He said "psychological warfare," or education, is the most effective weapon against terror. Young people must learn the version of Islam in which they have been indoctrinated has nothing to do with mainstream Islam.

Over and over, we must stress, we are fighting a WAR OF IDEAS, not a lunatic asylum. Islam molds otherwise normal people into a way of thinking that inflicts on us these dangerous Jihadists. We are beginning several series of articles delineating the how and why in 6th Column Against Jihad.

There are nut cases which gravitate to every organization. These most often are people of limited abilities and self-esteem who are looking for an exoskeleton, psychologically speaking. Hitler rose to power with the help of the Storm Troopers (SA), or "Brown Shirts." The SA were a polyglot of many varieties of "ne'er-do-wells," to put it kindly. These "paths" (sociopaths, psychopaths, criminals, addicts, etc.) had too little discipline to go where Hitler wanted to go, so he purged them in 1934 and granted full authority for his evil doings to the SS.

Though it may be hard to believe, the SS had mostly normal men and women. What explains the behavior of the SS? They were EVIL. They acted on the horrible ideas which permeated the culture from Kant to Hegel to Schopenhauer to Nietzsche and assorted other philosophers who primed the German pump. Don't forget that Eichmann proudly proclaimed, before the Israelis executed him, that he was a Kantian.

The CIA psychiatrist is very right when he emphasizes the value of ideas. If we can get to Muslim kids when they are very young, we can start turning this Islamic mess into fertilizer. Islam has a very effective system for making its Muslim Killbots. Permanent changes, thus peace, requires us to stop Islam before it mutates its young. This is a very long range, and very worthwhile endeavor, and I see little evidence of it happening right now.

Right now, we have Islamic killers coming at us, and we must annihilate them and their supporters, as we have covered.

My biggest bone to pick with the psychiatrist comes when he says, "Young people must learn the version of Islam in which they have been indoctrinated has nothing to do with mainstream Islam." No, no, no!!! Mainstream Islam IS the problem. As the 1992 presidential campaign said, and I paraphrase, It is Islam, Stupid! This is one of the biggest idea hurdles we Americans must get over.

IT IS ISLAM, STUPID!