Screwie speaks: Terrorism, Murder, War

I was sipping a gin-and-tonic on my tiny, urban “deck” yesterday, reflecting on how fast the summer speeds by when you’re living on the wrong side of the political looking glass, when I saw my cousin Screwie roll up at the end of the driveway on his fixie. He seemed agitated as he chained his bike to the railing with the “Do Not Chain Your Bike Here” sign on it. That boy is a born anarchist.

I didn’t quite hear what he was muttering as he came toward me – I just picked up the words “Not Terrorism”, so I knew I was in for an earful.

“Hey”, I said. “Want some gin?” I was just being polite as I saw that he had his usual six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon with him, and I knew I wasn’t going to have to get up. He plopped down in the other Adirondack chair.

“Anything wrong? You seem a little distracted. In fact you seem like you’re gonna pop a vessel”.

“Yes, there’s something wrong,” he sneered. “Barcelona is wrong. Barce. Fucking. Lona.”

“Yeah, such a great place. Awful. Terrorism”, I offered, knowing full well it didn’t matter what I said.

“Yes it’s awful,” he said, “But it’s not terrorism.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it’s terrorism. A twenty-something Jihadi drives a van through an unsuspecting crowd, killing a dozen or more, probably screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ for all I know. How do you figure it’s not terrorism?”

Screwie says, “Because there’s no ‘terrorist’ objective. Terrorism is meant to accomplish something – to get the victims to modify their behavior somehow. The bad guy wants you to ‘end the occupation’ or ‘release the political prisoners’ or ‘recognize the caliphate’ or ‘stop publishing cartoons that offend me’ or ‘stop supporting the apostate royalty’. Or something.

“Sometimes they just want you to be so uncomfortable and afraid you’ll move out of wherever you are and leave it to them. But terrorists want something, and the implication is that when you give it to them, they’ll quit blowing things up and go back to being humans.”

“Hmm”, I astutely responded. “So you’re saying the Barcelona guys had no ‘terrorist’ objective. I guess I see that. So, if it’s not terrorism, what do you think it is?”

“I think it’s murder. But it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what they think that matters. Until we understand what they think they’re doing, there’s absolutely no hope we’ll ever get on top of it.”

“And what do they think it is, if I might be so bold to inquire?”, says I.

“They think it’s war. They have no objective beyond killing you. They don’t care if you promise to recognize the caliphate, or if you require everyone in Europe to wear a burqa or anything else. They just want you dead. If they lose two of theirs blowing up or running over eighty of yours, it’s a huge battlefield win. Multiply it by a zillion and you get the picture of what they think they’re doing. And the point is that the battlefield is everywhere in their war, not just Syria or Afghanistan or wherever else you might want to think it is.”

“Crack another PBR and try to enjoy what’s left of the summer”, I offer.

“Don’t be a wise-ass. No one likes a wise-ass. Look, remember after 9/11 when we all were trying to understand what it was about? ‘Why do they hate us?’ was the mantra.  Remember the Wall Street Journal guy who went up into the mountains so he could get the al Qaeda side of things, and put the word out so that we could all understand their thinking and their grievances? Daniel Pearl was his name.

“When he got there, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed cut his head off. We were all totally confused. Pearl was going to give them a platform and they killed him? Are they crazy? We still don’t get it.

“They don’t care about a platform. They don’t care about getting their message out to us. They don’t care about compromise or negotiations or getting you to do some particular thing, after which they’ll go back to being like everyone else. What they care about is making you dead.

“The reason we were so shocked by 9/11 and by every attack that’s come after is that we didn’t understand that they had declared war on us and were proceeding accordingly. We were arguing about whether their ‘crimes’  should be treated as civil or criminal offenses, where to try the bad guys and under what law, what rights they should have, and so on. And we’re still thinking that way.”

“So what are you saying?” My cousin’s getting inside my head now. “If treating these guys as terrorists or criminals isn’t going to work, what’s the right answer?”

Screwie seems a little spent now that he’s got these thoughts on the table. He takes a long pull on his beer and says, “That’s above my pay grade. But I’ll tell you this – Step One is to understand what they think they’re doing and we’re not close. It’s the third-rail of political incorrectness to agree with them that it’s all-out war. And who needs it? I’d rather sit here and drink beer than go out and shoot someone. Who wouldn’t?

“But it’s really not so hard to take Step One if you’re up to it. It should have been done long ago. Bin Laden put it right out there in black and white in his 1998 Fatwa. Why not take him at his word? Like the other side does.”

“Huh? Remind me”, I respond with my usual brilliance.

“It’s short and sweet”, Screwie says. “I have the important part committed to memory. It says,

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it… “

The sun was starting to set. I looked up the end of the driveway and saw a kid with bolt cutters working on Screwie’s bike lock. But I didn’t mention it. Why stir things up?