A Nobel Prize for War?

Alfred Nobel

The Times headline read, “Boko Haram Ranked Ahead of ISIS for Deadliest Terror Group," (NYT, 11/18/15) and the story went on to report that “Boko Haram, the militant group that has tortured Nigeria and its neighbors for years, was responsible for 6664 deaths last year,  more than any other terrorist group in the world, including the Islamic state, which killed 6073 people in 2014.” The figures come from an organization The Times identifies as the Institute of Economics & Peace, but it makes one think that there's a crying need for a central clearing house where the success of terrorist plots, murderers, beheadings are all tallied with the aim of presenting year end awards to organizations which have been most successful in promoting terror. Boko Haram and ISIS may have ranked first and second, but where how did al-Qaeda fare? Competition is one way to build excellence in any field and there are undoubtedly many other fledgling terrorist organizations who would be helped if they could have their sights set on some kind of prize which like the Nobel might even come with a financial reward. We hear about how wealthy ISIS has become, but there are terrorist groups in Chechnya, in Malaysia, in the Philippines and Myanmar, (where there’s the seemingly oxymoronic prospect of militant Buddhists who want to rid the country of Muslims) all in sore need of funding so that they fulfill their dreams of killing thousands of people and one day finding glory as the winner of a prize. Studies will undoubtedly show that terrorist groups who win awards are also more feared than those who remain relatively low on the food chain in terms of recognition. Perhaps there should also be a terrorist hall of fame, like the one that celebrates our great baseball players, in Cooperstown. We vilify the Nazis, but during the Third Reich, many of those we regard as criminals today were considered heroes who would definitely have been qualified to be championship terrorists. If the world continues on its present course, perhaps someday there will even be a Nobel Prize for War.

To Be or Not?

Dresden February l945 (German Federal Archive)

In a Times Sunday Review piece “Do I Have a Right to Be?” (NYT, 7/5/14)  Peter Atterton, quotes the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas thusly: “What is natural becomes the most problematic. Do I have the right to be? Is being in the world not taking the place of someone?” Attterton is positing a variation of Edward Lorenz’s “Butterfly Effect” which he describes as “the manner in which small occurrences (like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings) can have enormous consequences.” His “Barbarian Effect” is slightly larger in scope since it asks about the effect of genocide and proposes the notion that for every living person there is someone who did not come into existence because of mass extinction--whether it’s the Holocaust, the Inquisition or the Lisbon earthquake which Voltaire memorialized in Candide. But Atherton’s point is actually more profound since it is pointing to the fact that our current devils whether they are Boko Haram or ISIL have no monopoly on terror. We are all creatures whose existences have been predicated on calamities. Some of them are accidents of nature like the plague, but many others are man made. How many native Americans didn’t come into the world due to colonization. How the West Was Won was the title of a popular 60’s movie. Besides the 6,000,000 murdered in the Holocaust, there are Hiroshima and Nagasaki which claimed almost 250,000 and Dresden in which approxiately 25,000 may have died in one concerted aerial attack. Life settles down and the illusion of normalcy occurs, but history is like a haunted house filled with the ghosts not just of the murdered, but of those who never had a chance to live.

Death Wish

In Syria and Iraq the young are killed by ideologies, by other minds. In America, it is the mind that kills. “Why Do Doctors Commit Suicide?” (NYT, 9/4/14)  was the title of a Times Op-ed piece by a recent medical school graduate, Pranay Sinha. Why would a graduate of a top university who has succeeded in being accredited in one of the world’s most respected professions end his or her life? And it’s not only about medicine. There was a period when Sweden, a country which provided semi-Utopian conditions to its citizens, experienced the highest suicide rate in the world (Sweden no longer heads the list). Can we hypothesize that perhaps a society where outward cares are less an issue becomes more inward turning? And is this not somehow the case with America where the jihad can come from within? In his famous Suicide: A Study in Sociology Emile Durkheim argued that suicide was less evident in highly structured societies. One wonders about the prevalence of suicide in the Taliban controlled portions of Afghanistan, among Boko Haram in Nigeria and naturally ISIS and al-Qaeda controlled territories. However, horrible the idea, can we say that jihad itself, with its hatred of the other, is an insurance against self-annihilation (with the exception obviously of suicide bombers)? And is it possible to conclude that in societies like Sweden and the United States which preach tolerance and freedom, and which demand relatively little social conformity, that the thanatos  or death drive which Freud described as a natural part of life (Todestrieb) is more likely to be unleashed on the self?

A Humane Lynching?

 Lynching in New Orleans (1891)

Is it necessarily OK to be on the right side of a lynch mob? It’s enjoyable to feel self-congratulatory and seemingly good intentioned outrage? It’s almost like the catharsis that classical Greek tragedy provides. It’s relieving to finally have something to hate. But such hatred is the scourge of a society whose jurisprudence is predicated on due process. And is it any better than the hate generated by terrorist groups like ISIS or Boko Haram? What both have in common is a manichean view of the universe in which good and evil are simply defined? Great amounts of effort are expended on the rescuing of an American soldier, who it turns out might have been a deserter. A white cop shoots a black teenager under suspicious circumstances. A football player punches and knocks out his fiancé in an elevator. All three incidents have created a lynch mob attitude. Wouldn’t the biblical “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” be a better starting point in all manner of judgment?  Sometimes it seems like the ends—in this case punishing seeming cowardice, ending the murder of innocent black teenagers or preventing extreme domestic abuse—justify the means. But the whole nature of American democracy and what differs it from totalitarianism, in its political or religious iterations, is its emphasis on individual rights. It’s truly disconcerting when usually independent minded media pundits, who have trumpeted the ideals of a free and open society, stoke the fires of revenge.