Inside The Terrorist Mind, One U.S. Headline at a Time
Thursday, August 30, 2007
By Mike Baker, CIA Veteran
In counterterrorism there’s an old concept that essentially goes… to prevent a terrorist attack you have to get inside the mind of the terrorist.
You have to be able to understand the terrorist mindset well enough to think like they do.
This is similar to the law enforcement approach: To catch a criminal you should think like a criminal. This works equally well for a wide variety of other dangerous subjects, including toddlers, dogs and presidential candidates.
Here’s the thing… let’s say you got inside the mind of a terrorist for a moment or two. Now, for the sake of moving things forward, I’m going to suggest our terrorist is a fundamentalist, radical jihadist with strong allegiances to Al Qaeda and an unswerving hatred of the West.
Even though he’s never actually been insulted or slighted by a Westerner, he knows what he doesn’t like. In anyone but a terrorist that’s an admirable quality.
Now I don’t mean to imply by choosing an Al Qaeda supporter who happens to be a radical Muslim that all terrorists are Muslims. It’s just a convenient example, since so far the vast majority of terrorists we’ve been dealing with for the past decade plus are radicalized Muslims with an overbearing, if not altogether predictable, bad attitude towards all things American.
But as a disclaimer, just so we don’t tick anyone off, I’m not profiling.
So we have our imaginary terrorist, and let’s say he’s sitting in a little safehouse somewhere in, umm, Pakistan. Again, not implying anything, just needed a location for scene building. Now remember, terrorists don’t operate in a vacuum… Al Qaeda is very media savvy and many of their supporters are intelligent and focused on the world around them.
There he is, just finished up some breakfast, and now he’s perusing the past week’s headlines in the Waziristan Daily Examiner (motto “Dog bites Infidel, that’s not news. Infidel bites dog, that’s not only news, it’s an indication of the Infidels desire to wage war on Islam.”)
Scanning the news from the despised West, here’s what our terrorist would be looking at this past week…
By Mike Baker, CIA Veteran
In counterterrorism there’s an old concept that essentially goes… to prevent a terrorist attack you have to get inside the mind of the terrorist.
You have to be able to understand the terrorist mindset well enough to think like they do.
This is similar to the law enforcement approach: To catch a criminal you should think like a criminal. This works equally well for a wide variety of other dangerous subjects, including toddlers, dogs and presidential candidates.
Here’s the thing… let’s say you got inside the mind of a terrorist for a moment or two. Now, for the sake of moving things forward, I’m going to suggest our terrorist is a fundamentalist, radical jihadist with strong allegiances to Al Qaeda and an unswerving hatred of the West.
Even though he’s never actually been insulted or slighted by a Westerner, he knows what he doesn’t like. In anyone but a terrorist that’s an admirable quality.
Now I don’t mean to imply by choosing an Al Qaeda supporter who happens to be a radical Muslim that all terrorists are Muslims. It’s just a convenient example, since so far the vast majority of terrorists we’ve been dealing with for the past decade plus are radicalized Muslims with an overbearing, if not altogether predictable, bad attitude towards all things American.
But as a disclaimer, just so we don’t tick anyone off, I’m not profiling.
So we have our imaginary terrorist, and let’s say he’s sitting in a little safehouse somewhere in, umm, Pakistan. Again, not implying anything, just needed a location for scene building. Now remember, terrorists don’t operate in a vacuum… Al Qaeda is very media savvy and many of their supporters are intelligent and focused on the world around them.
There he is, just finished up some breakfast, and now he’s perusing the past week’s headlines in the Waziristan Daily Examiner (motto “Dog bites Infidel, that’s not news. Infidel bites dog, that’s not only news, it’s an indication of the Infidels desire to wage war on Islam.”)
Scanning the news from the despised West, here’s what our terrorist would be looking at this past week…
posted by jillosophy at 8/31/2007 01:38:00 PM
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