Empathy (part 2)

First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?

Strange but true: I used to write training manuals for a private security company. One of those manuals was about protecting against and responding to terrorism.

Working on that handbook was a fascinating and sometimes terrifying project as I got to interview several security experts, each of whom had his own nightmare scenario, each of which really induced nightmares. These guys were an interesting bunch. Ex-Marines who had guarded embassies in dangerous places. Ex-special forces guys who just glared at you like you were crazy if you asked them where they had served or what they had done there.

One of the latter said to me something like this, "Look, if you want to stop theft, you can't think like a security guard, you've got to think like a thief. Same thing with terrorism. You want to stop terrorism, you've got to think like a terrorist."

He did not mean, as the Bush administration seems to think, that we ought to adopt the methods or the morality of the terrorists -- embracing indiscriminate killing, abandoning the rule of law and dismissing the Geneva Conventions as a "quaint" luxury we can no longer afford. He meant getting inside their heads and imagining how and why and what they're thinking. He meant stepping back and seeing ourselves through the eyes of a hostile outsider.

He meant viewing our enemies with empathy.

The idea that we should consider our enemies with empathy is often mocked as the ultimate form of squishy, bleeding-heart liberalism. Such mockery is both foolish and dangerous. Such empathy is not a sign of weakness, but of wisdom.

It's easy enough, and far more pleasant, to try to understand what our friends are thinking. It's also not really necessary to do so. They are, after all, our friends, and they have our best interests in mind.

It's much more difficult and unpleasant to imagine what it is our enemies might be thinking, and why, but being willing and able to do so may be the only way to ensure our safety.

The objection to this seems to be that our enemies don't deserve such consideration. That's beside the point. What they do or don't deserve really doesn't matter. It's not about them, it's about us.

What do terrorists want? What are they thinking? And why?

Such questions are often dismissed out of hand: "I don't care what they want. I don't know and I don't want to know." That's an option, a choice. But to choose "I don't want to know" is, by definition, to choose to be ignorant. The fact that such ignorance is deliberately, even defiantly, chosen doesn't make it any less stupid.

Refusing to view your enemies with empathy limits you, not them.

I suppose the real worry behind this objection is the fear that empathy will, inevitably, lead to sympathy. It sometimes does. It often doesn't. It often, instead, clarifies how very urgent it is that some people be opposed. ("To know all is not to forgive all," Quentin Crisp said. "It is to despise everybody." A bit overstated, but often accurate.)

But whichever way empathy leads -- toward sympathy or toward antipathy and a heightened, informed vigilance -- it is better to know than not to know. It is better not to choose ignorance.

Comments

[cjmr]

Look, if you want to stop theft, you can't think like a security guard, you've got to think like a thief. Same thing with terrorism. You want to stop terrorism, you've got to think like a terrorist.

To a parent, this kind of thing seems self-evident. If you want to know what things in your house are dangerous and attractive to small people that are 30 inches high--you have to make like a toddler and get down on their level and look around from their perspective.

They tried to teach us this concept back in cashier training. Think like a shoplifter. When you are ringing up a customer, look in toolboxes, look between nested opaque storage tubs, lift up large heavy things to scan them rather than just letting them sit in the cart and reaching around them to find the bar code.

I'm sure it is a sad commentary on my thinking, but now when I go downtown to DC I look at buildings and think things like, "Hmmm, that building is vulnerable. You could drive a truck right between that tree and those two slightly misplaced bollards." And I grumbled to myself mentally when the security guards at a museum seemed more worried about my nail file than they were about the lump of what I knew was silly putty that I had in my purse. I mean, I knew it was just silly putty, but would those guards recognize a lump of plastic explosives if they saw one?

[Puck]

> I suppose the real worry behind this objection is the fear that empathy will, inevitably, lead to sympathy.

Why is this a worry? I think it might be the solution. The government, it's neo-con policy wonks, it's capitalist lobbies - have all told us who "our" enemies are - and maybe we should ask outselves - why? Why should I agree with them?

Arabs, Muslims, those angry at American foreign policy are not my enemies.

A deeper understanding of the problem with "who our enemies are" is not in the meaning of the word "enemy," it's in the meaning of the word "our."

[Edward Liu]

This is a lesson that Sun Tzu was teaching centuries ago: you have to understand your enemy and yourself in order to achieve victory. There are woefully few people in positions of power today who seem capable of comprehending this.

We do not need to understand "terrorists" in order to gain sympathy to their cause. We need to understand them so we can fight them more effectively.

Sometimes, there seems to be an unstated fear in those who say "I don't need to understand them" (whoever "they" happen to be) that there are ideas so toxic that they'll corrupt anything they touch and seduce the unwitting to the point of view that they fear or hate. I've seen this underlying fears of organized religion, terrorism, homosexuality, and political leanings. That may ultimately be a fear of too much empathy rather than too little, but really that just strikes me more as a lack of confidence in one's own critical thinking skills.

[Peatey]

Fred, if ignorance is bad, is not some knowledge (such as of good and evil) bad?

[Sharon]

I just finished rereading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and that's the whole idea of why this family is full of supergeniuses. What makes the kid the best soldier ever is that he understands his enemy inside and out; this allows him to find their weakness and defeat them. But what makes that skill such a trauma for him is that in the moment when he knows them well enough to defeat them, he is so close to them and knows them so well that he also loves them.

It's the thing that makes Ender such a tragic character, but also what makes him a great general. Go figure.

[Deoridhe]

I'm sure it is a sad commentary on my thinking, but now when I go downtown to DC I look at buildings and think things like, "Hmmm, that building is vulnerable. You could drive a truck right between that tree and those two slightly misplaced bollards." And I grumbled to myself mentally when the security guards at a museum seemed more worried about my nail file than they were about the lump of what I knew was silly putty that I had in my purse. I mean, I knew it was just silly putty, but would those guards recognize a lump of plastic explosives if they saw one?

I do the same thing. My mother works for the government, and I used to occassionally go to pick her up. They'd instituted a rule tha tyou couldn't stop your car in front of the building, some 100 feet from the lobby, so I had to wait for her around back, about 10 feet from offices with neither security cameras nor security guards in sight.

I remarked to her, once, how easy it would be to bomb that building; just park a car around back. As an added bonus, people's offices are RIGHT THERE. More human death == more terror.

And don't even get me STARTED about my safety scissors being confiscated when I went in for Jury Duty. At lunch I went out to a little park to eat, inside of the "security primeter," and you could pass stuff from the street into the secured area.

[Puck]

You all just assume that we share an understanding of "us" and "them." Who are they? And who is "us?"

In a global war by those who see religion as their enemy, against those who see the West as their enemy, on behalf of those who see Christianity as their enemy - whose side should I be on?

If you don't mind - I'll just sit this war out.

[Bugmaster]

Ender's Game is a good analogy to bring up. As you recall, the war between the Humans and the Buggers happened because they could not, in principle, understand each other. Both sides did make repeated attempts at communication, but they all failed, because their respective psychologies were just too different. In light of this, both sides realized that war was the only option -- it's us vs. them, because the alternative is just them, no us.

Sometimes, I think that this is the situation we're facing today. We do not understand the Muslim terrorists, but maybe this is because our psychologies are just too different, and the Muslim terrorists cannot be understood, in principle. They are just too alien.

If that's true, then I foresee a lot more war ahead...

[wintermute]

Puck: The problem with defining who a terrorist group considers to be an "enemy" is that they're notoriously indiscriminating. Many Catholics nationalists have been killed by the IRA, and many Islamist arabs have been killed by Hamas and Al-Qaeada. I'm willing to wager that the next time there's an attack, they won't do you the courtesy of making sure that everyone who gets injured is their enemy.

In short, anyone who considers colateral casualties to be not only acceptable but encouraged is my enemy. After all, there's no way of knowing when I might become one of those innocent bystanders.

[MTG]

The documentary Fog of War that came out a few years ago had some interesting observations by Robert McNamara about how our country's ability to empathize with enemies affected US foreign policy for good and bad in the 60s. The ability of a former ambassador to empathize with Krushchev helped avoid a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the failure of US leaders to empathize with the Vietnamese caused the Vietnam War to drag on for years.

[Andy]

Even worse than just dismissing empathy for terrorists out of distaste for squishy liberalness is claiming that you know exactly what they're thinking when you have no idea. As we approach five years after 9/11, this nation still has not had a candid, honest discussion about who and what Al Qaeda is and what its motivations are. Bush is wrong; they are not attacking us because "they hate our freedom." It's not that simple. At the heart of this dilemma is outrage in the Arab world over constant meddling by western powers in their regional affairs. Any 12 step program will tell you recovery begins with acknowledging you have a problem; we haven't gotten there yet.

[bulbul]

We do not understand the Muslim terrorists, but maybe this is because our psychologies are just too different
I'm afraid it's much worse than that. I'm afraid your experts understand them very well. Well enough to know that there is no such thing as a "muslim terrorist" but rather a number of different groups who have their own agendas. And if you paid enough attention you would find out that some of those groups are not that different from some "Christian" groups in the US and that there is very little psychological difference between, say, a Palestinian suicide bomber. Any half-decent expert would tell you this and more, the information is out there. The problem is that most people are not willing to listen to experts. I just don't know why.
Some time ago I interview for a job at the Slovak Intelligence Service. The tests were rather humiliating since they consisted of a lot of personal questions, but there were several questions in the line of "If you were a terrorist, what would you do?" I was pleasantly surprised seeing that some had actually done some thinking and I came up with about twenty ways to kill thousands of people and wreak havoc. Slovak security is beyond lax and it is no accident that most dumb-blonde jokes are popular in the stupid-cop version around here. Poisoning the water supply would be dead easy, same goes for food, knocking out the powerlines or using natural gas lines as a weapon... Thank God a) I am not a terrorist, b) most terrorist go for publicity, not death toll.

[J]

I gave up on Orson Scott Crud after the execrable, interminable "Memory of Earth" series.

But the "We-can-never-really-understand-each-other" theme is treated pretty well in Stanislaw Lem's (of "Solaris" fame) "Fiasco."

"Sometimes, I think that this is the situation we're facing today. We do not understand the Muslim terrorists, but maybe this is because our psychologies are just too different, and the Muslim terrorists cannot be understood, in principle. They are just too alien."

I dunno, there's something lazy and self-justifying about that line of thought. People who claim to be dispassionately describing the "war of civilizations" seem to move a little too easily among circles of people who WANT a clash of civilizations. There's a sort of emotional excitement to being able to cast aside the morals that normally dictate our behavior. It's a kind of lust, "All the rules are off. They don't value anything we do, so really anything we do to/against them is justified."

[bulbul]

Andy: for the most part, I agree. As for the al-Qaida, check Juan Cole's blog (see Cloud of Witnesses to your right), he's probably THE expert in the blogosphere and I agree with most of what he's got to say.
If I were to pick the biggest problem in the "West vs. Islam" debate, it would be seeing unity where there is none. That is why I don't like using the term "Middle East". It usually refers to countries from Algeria to Afghanistan and at least 5 conflict zones (but more like 10), each of which has it's own history and each of which is substantially different from the others.
And I also hate it when people like analysts and politicians refer to "Islam". There is no such thing as one Islam. There is sunna, there is shi'a, there is salafiya, there are the Muslim Brethren... There is a whole number of nations and groups who each have their own understanding of what islam is.

[bulbul]

Once again re: but maybe this is because our psychologies are just too different
Not true. Medieval Spain up to 1492 and the Crusader states prove very well Christians and Muslims can understand each other, just as long they approach each other as equals.
IIRC, Usama bin Munqidh has some interesting thoughts on the subject.

[Axiomatic]

Sure there is! Just like there is a one single Christianity whose members never disagree with each other and always hold the same position on any given subject!

[madjoey]

Bugmaster writes: We do not understand the Muslim terrorists, but maybe this is because our psychologies are just too different, and the Muslim terrorists cannot be understood, in principle. They are just too alien.

Sam Harris has interesting things to say about this in The End of Faith. First of all, our psychologies are not too different -- they believe in God, an afterlife, and that proper acts in this lifetime will influence the quality of life in the afterlife. Western Christians believe this too. Christianity and Islam are founded on the same (mostly) unspoken principle: This life is hard, the next one is better. We just think that as Westerners our "proper acts" are more civilized; we forget that a hundred years ago we were perpetrating similar atrocities in the name of God.

But getting into the heads of "the enemies of freedom" (tm 2001 BushCo) isn't difficult, just hard to stomach. Shorter Muslim terrorist psychology: Killing the enemies of my faith will bring me closer to God.

The way Harris argues it (and I agree), empathy is a useful tool, but it only goes so far when you realize that Muslim philosophy in general proscribes behavior that, were you to engage in it on the playground, would garner you a cuff across the head and an admonition to "knock it off already." Simply put: Muslims believe things that are dangerous to non-Muslim bystanders. The Koran and the Hadith are full of "wisdom" that make "Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord" seem like a tea party. Islam is not a religion of peace; it's a religion of war, vengeance, retribution.

Perhaps the most empathetic thing we can do is to conclude, "Muslims believe some crazy sh*t that has them do dangerous things." I believe that if we were to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, give Israel back to the Palestinians, airlift Sudanese Christians to Nigeria, pull out every American from Saudi Arabia, and otherwise give Muslims all the political concessions they demand, they'd still end up blowing things up and killing themselves in sectarian violence. It works for them to do that. It's consistent with what they believe. Maybe what we need to do is get out of the way of that.

[bulbul]

Axiomatic: oh, right, I forgot :o)

madjoey: Muslims believe things that are dangerous to non-Muslim bystanders.
a) See my comments on the illusion of unity above.
b) Evidence, please? I take quotes from the Quran and sunna (Sahih Bukhari, if possible, it's the only collection I got in full).

I believe that if we were to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, give Israel back to the Palestinians, airlift Sudanese Christians to Nigeria, pull out every American from Saudi Arabia
Again, see my comments on the illusion of unity above. You are making the same mistake every half-bake analysts makes: you assume all those conflicts are the result of Islam. They are not.
But I agree with you, up to a point: if the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, the fighting there will continue. But it was the US who caused it, not Islam.

Perhaps the most empathetic thing we can do is to conclude, "Muslims believe some crazy sh*t that has them do dangerous things."
That's not empathic. That is not even informed.

[bulbul]

airlift Sudanese Christians to Nigeria
Excuse me? Nigeria? Out of the fire into the frying pan say anything to ya?

[Skyknight]

Be careful about taking ideas from Harris. He does seem to be of the inclination that free will is not only impossible, it would be inherently evil (at least, if I read that part of the book correctly)...Although, if there's no free will, how does responsibility work?

Anyway, I notice that conservatives tend to think of the terrorists and bombers as cold-blooded slayers, and liberals tend to see them as desperados. I have a feeling it's a mix of both. For the calculating ones, you have the leaders and mentors (i.e. the ones whose wisdom makes them indispensable). For the desperate, you have the recruits. Managing to instill more peace in the Middle East probably wouldn't put a stop to the former's desire and efforts to rid the area of the (to them) chimera of Israel, but it WOULD begin drying up their source of expendable troops.

[Mike T]

I've come to the conclusion that Americans, and perhaps Westerners in general, and perhaps people as a whole, like things to be unified. We like to see a monolithic enemy - it makes it easier for us to fight them. So, during the Cold War, despite every evidence to the contrary, the US insisted on seeing a monolithic "Communist" threat, as opposed to a number of different Communist factions that could be dealt with independantly of and differently from each other. IE, we could have negotiated with Cuba while stonewalling Russia, and things would have worked. Nixon showed quite conclusively that we could talk to China and Russia as if they were sepparate entities - because they WERE sepparate entities.

But the ideas of shades of grey and a variety of factions - these are "liberal" ideas. Black and White is so much easier.

[Lila]

Semi-OT: on the subject of security precautions, I really like Gavin DeBecker's work (The Gift of Fear, Protecting the Gift, Fear Less). My favorite thing about him is that he draws a sharp dichotomy between doing things that will actually decrease risk, and doing things that are designed to make it LOOK like you're doing something to decrease risk.

This applies to situations as diverse as declaring war on Iraq and banning plastic knives from school lunchboxes.

[mg_65]

You're absolutely right. I worked as a security systems technician, designing, installing, and maintaining many different kinds of security systems, and that's how you design a security system: you go to the site, and you examine it, inside and out, from the burgler's point of view.

And I taught my students this.

But it takes imagination, and realizing that the burgler is, in fact, a human being just like you... that's the empathy you're talking about. You can't do this if you're committed to the idea that the "bad guys" are subhuman, or absolutely Other. And when you can't or won't design security this way, you end up with weak, ineffective security--or none at all.

[little cicero]

"He did not mean, as the Bush administration seems to think, that we ought to adopt the methods or the morality of the terrorists -- embracing indiscriminate killing, abandoning the rule of law and dismissing the Geneva Conventions as a "quaint" luxury we can no longer afford. He meant getting inside their heads and imagining how and why and what they're thinking. He meant stepping back and seeing ourselves through the eyes of a hostile outsider."

No, I disagree both with your representation of Bush's interpretation and your own interpretation. What was meant by this statement was simply "If you want to stop a terrorist, you have to know what his next move will be" If you've ever played a game of chess, you don't just think about your own moves, you have to think about what your opponent will do. This is simply a restatement of long-standing conventional military wisdom.

As far as empathy, if you do not believe that these terrorists are evil, it is understandable for you to believe that we can have empathy for them, but to draw on the tired Nazi analogy, should we have had empathy for the Nazis, or for the Japanese Imperialists? You cannot have empathy for a mind that is filled with evil. The reasons: 1) it results in legitimizing the thoughts of those terrorists, 2) We are not even capable of understanding evil because of the nature of evil. The Palestinian terrorists simply hate Israelis as has been proven by their voting in the HAMAS party.

Would you have empathy for other evil hate organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or the Aryan Race? Would it do any good?

[cjmr's husband]

Little cicero:

It is vitally important to have empathy for all of the groups you mention, otherwise it would be virtually impossible to defeat them.

Anyone who has sympathy for them, of course, probably should be drawn and quartered.

[bulbul]

The Palestinian terrorists simply hate Israelis as has been proven by their voting in the HAMAS party.
You don't know anything about Palestinian politics, do you?

[bulbul]

You cannot have empathy for a mind that is filled with evil.
To quote the facilitator from my PCA course: to empathize DOES NOT mean to condone, let alone to agree.

[bulbul]

The Palestinian terrorists simply hate Israelis as has been proven by their voting in the HAMAS party.
Crap, I almost missed how you implied that all Palestinians are terrorists.

[jhlipton]

bilbul:
A sufficient number of Palestinians believe that to have a supposedly less-corrupt Hamas run things (with significantly less funds from the West) than the PA. They may not have thought the referendum was "pro-terrorist" vs "anti-terrorist", but I doubt that they were so naive as to think that the West (or even Arab nations) would see it that way.

From the point of view of a Jew living outside Israel, the PA has done little to curb Hamas (or, now that they're "reformed", Islamic Jihad). To me, the elevation of Hamas to the legitimate government shows that the majority of voting Palestinians have no problem with the destruction of Israel.

Can you empathize with my point of view [grin]?

[Walter]

silly me. i thought palestinian terrorists showed their hatred ot israelis by ... blowing them up. and those vast majority of palestinians who *don't* blow people up (of any nationality) - what do they think? well, perhaps that's where empathy comes in. though when it's possible (as it is here), i always like the idea of overtly asking the question.

somewhere, i'll have to post photos from the eid al-fitr (pardon the spelling) party my israeli cousins and their arab friends/neighbours threw. good times. israelis and palestinians enjoying each others' company! little cis, can you believe it?

[little cicero]

There were two parties in the last Palestinian election: One that was anti-Israel, and one that was anti-Israel to such an extent that their party platform calls for the destruction of Israel. There is not moderation in their disapproval.

The Palestinian People as a whole hate Israel. The terrorists who see themselves as representatives or protectors of those people are the ones who kill innocent civilians. Bulbul is twisting my words to make my comments sound like Bull-Bull, so I thought I'd clarify my thoughts.

[bulbul]

There were two parties in the last Palestinian election
It is as I suspected: you don't know anything about Palestinian politics.

Bulbul is twisting my words to make my comments sound like Bull-Bull
Nice wordplay there :o) As much as I would like to take credit, I must admit you don't need me to make your words sound like a load of bull.

[pharoute]

cross posting from empathy 1 "Terrorists who blow up civilian buses do not deserve empathy- they must be killed before they kill more civilians."
How do you spot these terrorists before they get on the bus? They could be anybody.
- "BLOW THEM ALL UP!!"

[Mabus]

Andy, you said: "At the heart of this dilemma is outrage in the Arab world over constant meddling by western powers in their regional affairs."

Perhaps I am a fool, but it seems to me that since the early 90s most of our "meddling" has simply been an attempt to undo previous meddling. In essence, "We are so sorry that we thought the only way to protect you from the Commies was to let a less powerful dictator who opposed communism rule you. We will now remove him and let you return to your previous lifestyle. We repent in dust and ashes."

If you are saying that the Arabs do not see it that way, I can understand why they are outraged, but I cannot see why they would not see it that way. Can you explain?

(All this excludes our defense of Israel from frothing-at-the-mouth suicidal jihadis, which I cannot find any way to consider unjustified.)

[Sophist]

You cannot have empathy for a mind that is filled with evil.

Yes you can. It's just hard for most people to get past their revulsion.

The reasons: 1) it results in legitimizing the thoughts of those terrorists...

Firstly, this is a reason why we shouldn't empathize with terrorists, not a reason why we can't.

Second, thoughts do not gain legitimacy simply by being know and understood. If something turns out to be legitimate after you take the time to understand it, it was always legitimate. You were simply ignorant of that fact.

2) We are not even capable of understanding evil because of the nature of evil.

Please elaborate.

[bulbul]

We are so sorry that we thought the only way to protect you from the Commies was to let a less powerful dictator who opposed communism rule you.
I do not believe this describes the aforementioned 'meddling' very well and applies to Afghanistan (mujahedeen) and Iran (the Shah) better than to the Arab world. Most of the Arab resentment towards the United States is based on the continuing financial support of Israel. 'The US delivers the weapons they (i.e. IDF) use to kill our people' my Palestinian friends would say. Then there is Iraq (which the US supported as long as they were fighting Iran) and the continuous presence of the US troops in Saudi Arabia - although from what I've read and heard it appears the letter is merely a propaganda bit to some.
How does the US protect Israel from the 'jihadis'?

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

The moment you start characterizing your enemy as "a mind filled with evil," you are back on the track of dehumanizing him. That lets you off the hook of even attempting to figure out what's driving him; once he's just "evil" you no longer need to address him with anything but hate.

Hate is not an emotion that leads towards long-term solutions. More often than not it leads to mimicking your enemy's atrocities. Then who's the good guy?

Dehumanizing the enemy has pragmatic disadvantages. It allows you to think of them as a fluke, rather than something that any human can become; and that in turn makes it hard for you to recognize the warning signs in other people. Dehumanization allows you to start thinking carpet bombing and nukes are good ideas. It allows you to justify actions which will convince uninvolved civilians that you are the one who just wants to annihilate them, you are the one with religious genocide on the mind, that you are the one whose mind is filled with evil and thus cannot be empathized with. How, exactly, does this help?

There is a passage in C. S. Lewis's Perelandra in which our hero realizes that he has finally encountered an enemy for whom hate is appropriate, and the realization is something of an epiphany. It's worth noting, however, that said enemy was no less than, essentially, Satan. We aren't facing Satan. We're facing humans. We always have been, since the beginning of time. It is dangerous on all sorts of levels to allow ourselves to believe otherwise.

[bulbul]

jhlipton: A sufficient number of Palestinians believe that to have a supposedly less-corrupt Hamas run things
Exactly. The dislike of the PLO and Fatah runs pretty deep.
And there is also the fact that Hamas gets shit done, like hospitals, schools, lending money and even providing a form of social security.
As I see it, PLO did not try to curb Hamas for two reasons: a) they did not have the means; b) they wanted to be able to show the West someone who was worse then them and thus make sure they would stay in power. Apparently, it didn't work.

To me, the elevation of Hamas to the legitimate government shows that the majority of voting Palestinians have no problem with the destruction of Israel.
I get that and I respectfully disagree. The vast majority of the Palestinians I know are realists and they know there ain't no way in hell anyone will wipe Israel off the map. They know they will have to live with the Israelis and they have given up any hopes of driving the Jews into the sea (if they ever held them) long time ago. The majority of the Palestinians I know are unemployed, weary and desperate. They knew that it wouldn't get better with the old administration and so they voted for the only other option that seemed viable. I doubt most of them had really read, let alone cared for, the Hamas Covenant.

I would have empathized with you, but since you misspelled my nick, you will have to do with "I understand you" :-)

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

Anyone who has sympathy for them, of course, probably should be drawn and quartered.

*shudder* Thought police much? Inquisition, maybe?

Would you send the man with the long sword after me if I told you that there are ways in which I do sympathize with them?

Would it help if I assured you that I sympathize not with their destruction, but with whatever suffering led them to believe destruction was a good decision?

Analogy: A man loses friends and family on September 11, 2001. He is grief stricken. Anyone who wouldn't sympathize with his loss is probably not someone I want for my friend. However. This man then goes and shoots to death the first person in a turban he sees. Anyone who would sympathize with his act is probably not someone I want for a friend.

His past loss does not become less pitiable because of his present crime; his present crime is not excused by his loss. I grieve with him; I abhor the way he has reacted to his grief. Complex, no?

I suspect the pattern repeats itself in Palestine and Isreal.

See Skynight's post about drying up the pool of potential recruits.

[Angelika]

Little cicero:
You wrote: You cannot have empathy for a mind that is filled with evil.

Either you are an angel and completely untouched by any evil in your own mind, in that case please kindly forgive the following - or you are just utterly lacking selfcritic.

For all bipeds I encountered so far in this world (including my very self) have their minds crossed by evil thoughts every now and then (- that is, I'm not entirely sure about the penguins.) I guess you know the like: 'I wouldn't have that many problems, if so-and-so wouldn't exist.' Of course, most of the time I don't act on thoughts like that, and of course, I do have some control over how strong I allow these thoughts to get in my minds. Though - to my experience - the control gets ever harder the more pressing the problems become and the more socially acteptable the thought seems to be. And personally it sometimes takes me quite a while to realize - despite of my anger - that thoughts like that (to be specific: Hoping for somebody to cease his or her existence) are actually evil and not justified.

However, my point is here: I have experienced evil thoughts and - to a certain degree - how they can become strong in my mind and I'm reasonably sure you did too, to some degree. Thus, empathy becomes very easy - just think of your own evil thoughts and realize that they start in other people quite similarly. And then just add to it, that their anger might be just a tiny bit stronger than yours and their selfcontrol just a tiny bit shakier... and there you are: A mind filled with evil and still not that different from your own.

[Axiomatic]

I'd say that the notion that someone is filled with evil (by which I take it he means they're 100% evil) demonstrates a spectacular lack of empathy suitable for a Campatin America comic and nowhere else.

[Skyknight]

Or one of LaHaye's Left Behind or Babylon Rising novels...

[Axiomatic]

Or that. I suppse that would be putting Captain America (cry your pardon for the misspelling earlier) in worse company than it deserves. I mean, it may have been a stupid comic, but not THAT stupid.

[jhlipton]

Sorry bulbul.

I would like to get your thoughts re the First Intifada and this one. Is it just my imagination, or was the first much more peaceful than this one?

[madjoey]

My belated responses to bulbul:
madjoey: Muslims believe things that are dangerous to non-Muslim bystanders.
a) See my comments on the illusion of unity above.
b) Evidence, please? I take quotes from the Quran and sunna (Sahih Bukhari, if possible, it's the only collection I got in full).

"But the infidels who die unbelievers shall incur the curse of God, the angels, and all men. Under it they shall remain for ever; their punishment shall not be lightened, nor shall they be reprieved." (2:162)
"Saly them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage... If they attack you put them to the sword. Thus shall the unbelievers be rewarded: but if they desist, God is forgiving and merciful. Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme." (2:190)
"Those that deny God's revelations shall be sternly punished; God is mighty and capable of revenge." (3:5)
"The only true faith in God's sight is Islam... He that denies God's revelations should know that swift is God's reckoning." (3:19)
"Believers, do not make friends with any but your own people. They will spare no pain to corrupt you. They desire nothing but your ruin. Their hatred is evident from what they utter with their mouths, but greater is the hatred which their breasts conceal." (3:118)

Don't worry, there's plenty more where that came from...

me: I believe that if we were to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, give Israel back to the Palestinians, airlift Sudanese Christians to Nigeria, pull out every American from Saudi Arabia
bulbul:Again, see my comments on the illusion of unity above. You are making the same mistake every half-bake analysts makes: you assume all those conflicts are the result of Islam. They are not.
While the US invasion of Iraq was clearly wrong, the current meltdown in Iraq -- the civil war that's breaking out -- is sectarian.
Afghanistan is heading towards sharia under the Taliban again.
The Palestinian conflict is fueled by opposing religious viewpoints on the rightful ownership of land. Jews, Muslims and Christians are all complicit.
The genocide in Sudan is a Muslim-driven extermination of Christians.
Islam's fingerprints are all over all of this.

But I agree with you, up to a point: if the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, the fighting there will continue. But it was the US who caused it, not Islam.
Wrong. I assert that a full withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will not cause sectarian violence to decrease. In fact, it's safe to say that the majority of violence in post-withdrawal Iraq will be religion-based.

2) We are not even capable of understanding evil because of the nature of evil.

Sophist (I wish I'd claimed that pseudonym before he got a hold of it!) requests elaboration, so here goes:
To have empathy is to be able to look into the mind of another in order to rationalize or comprehend their thoughts. A mind that is evil is completely irrational and is filled only with negative impulses and negative energy, usually along with a few sorted concepts in the context of gross falsehoods.

Hitler is such a case. While there were surely psychological factors to which his irrational hate can be attributed, there was something more about his character that reflects an engrained negativity within his soul. I am open to the idea of his having had certain neurosis or neurological disorders, but whatever the techinal explanation for the unexplainable evil of the man, it was not accessible to human minds.

Palestinian terrorists went after civilian targets, there purpose being not to simply destroy their enemies, but to terrify the innocent. This was done with what they saw as a ritcheous goal, as were Hitler's exterminations, but to be able to murder innocents intentionally without regret, one must have a force within allowing such behavior, and motivating it. That is evil, and it is not accessible to the minds of loving individuals.

[bulbul]

madjoey:
I will return to the Quran quotes later.

While the US invasion of Iraq was clearly wrong, the current meltdown in Iraq -- the civil war that's breaking out -- is sectarian.
I agree, the current meltdown is indeed a Shia vs. Sunni conflict. The whole mess that is Iraq, however, is the result of British colonial policies.

The Palestinian conflict is fueled by opposing religious viewpoints on the rightful ownership of land.
Yes, "fueled". Not caused. The Israel-Palestine conflict is the result of British colonial policies, the prevailing attitudes of the time and the secular Sionist movement (I would be more than happy to discuss the details with you, jhlipton :o). Islam was thrown into the mix a little later, mostly for propaganda purposes (Arab unity and that sort of BS). So was, incidently, socialism and communism.
Funny thing, history: my home land, Czechoslovakia, shipped weapons to Israel on Stalin's orders in 1948, when Stalin was hoping to create a foothold for the communist revolution in the "Middle East" (all the kibbutzim weren't just an accident :o). When this didn't work out, we turned around and supported Egypt in the Six-day war. Wacky fun...
And, incidentally, most of the parties in PLO are communist.

Afghanistan is heading towards sharia under the Taliban again.
Not at all. The main problem now isn't the Taliban returning, it is the absence of a government and the centuries old ethnic conflicts resurfacing.
The very fragile balance was upset with the communist coup in 1978 and the Soviet invasion and it all went downhill from there. Taliban is the perfect example of what can happen after society breaks down: before 1979, Afghanistan was modern muslim country. After the civil war, it was a country ruled by chaos and full of religious nuts of all kinds (especially Saudi wahhabis, like our good friend Usama bin Ladin). Fanatic leaders recruiting young men who grew up in refugee camps without any traditional social bonds (what a perfect material) using their distrust of women and strangers and fueling their hate for Tajiks and Uzbeks - it's psychology, not islam.
For more info, try this. It's the best book on the subject I have read (and I've read them a lot).

The genocide in Sudan is a Muslim-driven extermination of Christians.
Wrong again. It's ethnic - as in Arabs vs. non-Arabs -, not religious. And it's that weird sort of ethnic conflict, where people on both sides look exactly alike, but one of them boast an Arab name, complete with ism, kunya, laqab and nisba, and considering himself better than the other guy.
The CIA factbook informs us that only 5% of Sudan's population are Christians, while over 25% are animists (aka indigenous beliefs). It is estimated that out of the more than 2 million killed, the vast majority were animists. But "Muslims kill pagans" probably doesn't look that good on the news.
I recommend this for more info. Not really up to date (1997), but gets the ethnic stuff right and, to be frank, not much has changed since then. Pay close attention to the "The Response of the Jellaba Government" section.

I assert that a full withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq and Afghanistan will not cause sectarian violence to decrease.
And I agree. I'm just saying that the current mess was directly caused by the US invasion and their lack of... well anything.

[little cicero]

To bulbul, I don't think I like you.

I said there were two parties implying the two major parties. Of course there were others, but the two major parties were HAMAS and the incumbant Fatah party. Would you correct me if I alluded only to the Republican and Democratic Parties, and not the Green Party? You are simply trying to trash me as being ignorant so that you look better in this debate!

[bulbul]

jhlipton: re: first intifada.

To be quite honest, I did not follow the first intifada as closely as I followed the second one. I was a kid back then and my interest in all things Middle Eastern (culminating in my PhD thesis which, I swear, will be the death of me) only began at the time of the Oslo accords. But looking at it now, I must agree: it appears the first intifada was indeed much more peaceful than this one. Most notable is the absence of suicide bombings. IIRC, the first suicide bombing in Israel/Palestine occurred in 1994 as a response to the Ibrahimi Mosque incident.
If I were to analyze why that is so, I would call my buddy who is an expert on Israel and Palestine :o)

[cjmr's husband]

Unnamed One:

If a human did it, it is accessible to a human mind. If you are having trouble understanding Evil people, consider what a Good person might do in any given situation: then consider the opposite. It's not really that hard of a concept.