MEDIA ROOTS – Dr. Ursula Wilder, a clinical psychologist and Fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote a piece entitled Inside the Mind of a Terrorist, in which she offers “provisional thoughts about [the most recent terrorist] bomb maker’s psyche.” Instead, her rudimentary, superficial insight about terrorism unintentionally exposes the shroud of ignorance under which the U.S. war machine functions.
Wilder describes the bomb maker as shadowy, enigmatic, compelling, fascinating, repellent, disciplined, meticulous, logical, adaptive, imaginative, and persistent. These daunting adjectives depict a formidable mastermind. However, she never mentions how the plot would never have gotten off the ground without CIA entrapment. Regardless of the standards to which a “terrorist” inventor adheres, entrapment by security apparatuses are increasingly becoming the defining trait of so-called “terrorist plots.”
The article claims without evidence that the bomb maker is unwilling to compromise ideologically, but completely neglects the rigid ideological underpinnings of the U.S. War on Terror. According to Wilder, the bomb maker’s “unrestricted quality of thought is evident in the very concept of a device that conceals lethal explosives beneath the groins of operatives.” Grasping at straws, she affords the bomb maker too much credit. He is simply trying to circumvent airport security measures. Placing bombs around one’s groin is merely a tactical exigency, yet Wilder classifies this act as being “eerily free” from the “boundaries of common decency.”
Wilder never considers that dropping bombs of awesome power from an altitude of 30,000 feet is far more indecent. U.S. government sponsored bombs and missiles rain down on civilians and resisters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere on a daily basis. Meanwhile, a lone “terrorist” underwear bomber sputters to get off the ground once a year. Working within the blinding saturation of the War on Terror meta-narrative, Wilder insists positioning a crude bomb within underwear means the bomb maker’s mind lacks “some critical element endemic to the human spirit and to moral psychology.” Wilder’s hypocrisy is deafening. According to her rationale, those who invade, occupy, displace, murder, and rain terror, do not merit psycho-analysis; a lone bomber is the one who clearly lacks the fundamental attributes of humanity.
Continuing down the path of illogic and imprudence, Wilder affirms that the bomb maker views “the bodies of terrorist operatives and the anonymous bombing victims” as mere “tools” and “not the foundation of their personhood.” The same can be said about U.S. war machines vis-à-vis innocent victims, except the U.S. public actually profit financially from war with the latter. What about the collateral damage from our tools? Wilder unintentionally answers this question when stating “terrorism is about hijacking the attention of the public with scenes of random carnage, and what locks the attention of viewers is fear and sympathetic horror.” Although she intended to describe underwear bombs, her words accurately portray the slaughter of U.S. bombings, night raids, and drone strikes.
When applied to the U.S. war machine, Wilder’s words are quite precise. She describes the bomb maker as lacking courage, since “courage requires persevering in the face of danger that is fully understood in all its facets – physical, psychological, moral, spiritual.” But it is the generals, the rear-echelon feather-merchants, and the executives of war corporations that lack courage, since they deliberately ignore all academic, moral, and psychological traits of the “terrorist” fighting against the U.S. war machine. When attempting to summarily describe the bomb maker, she unintentionally defines the main deficiency of U.S. militarized foreign policy: “Judgment – that ephemeral mental quality that captures maturity, wisdom, sympathetic understanding of the totality of reality, including tolerance for the complexities and ambiguities of shared morality – is quite broken.” Wilder’s ultimate failure – typical of most individuals who are tied so intricately to the military-industrial teat – is her inability to introspect.
The sad truth is: we are the pathologically deficient. We, citizens of the most powerful nation, could have used the trillions we spent on war since 2001 on good deeds. Instead, we use trillions to kill on a mass scale. We could have ended deforestation of the Brazilian rainforest, saving our planet’s lungs and enriching the lives of every living being on the planet. We could have provided years’ worth of shelter and food for all U.S. citizens. Instead, our pathologically noxious society idles, wages interminable war, deliberately pollutes our only environment, and exists in intentional disharmony with nature. Who are the real fiends?
Written By Christian Sorensen for Media Roots
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Photo by Flickr User Red-Pill Photo Gallery
