Fighting terrorism has come to be the justification for much of what government does these days, particularly in the Bush administration’s campaign for freedom and democracy. “The only force powerful enough to stop the rise of tyranny and terror,” said President Bush in this year’s State of the Union address, “is the force of human freedom.” Last August, Bush explained his thinking on how to fight terrorism: “I believe that democracy can take hold in parts of the world that are now nondemocratic, and I think it’s necessary in order to defeat the ideologies of hate.”
In the abstract, a formulation that marries such positive concepts is appealing. Freedom is a good thing, democracy is a good thing, and putting an end to terrorism would also be a good thing. But empirically, does the relationship hold? Is it true that in free and democratic countries terrorism doesn’t occur?

Let’s start with the United States. Since the mid-1960s, this country has seen, by my count, 16 domestic terrorist organizations, including the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the Jewish Defense League, the Weather Underground, the Posse Comitatus, the Omega-7, the May 19th Communist Coalition, the Covenant, the Aryan Nations, the Earth Liberation Front, and Puerto Rican groups including the Macheteros and the FALN. The Weather Underground alone was responsible for some 800 bombings from 1969-72, including explosions at the University of Wisconsin Center for Mathematical Sciences, a U.S. Senate office building, and the Pentagon. In addition to the organized groups, we have seen individual terrorists, including Ted Kaczynski, the ardent environmentalist whose letter bombs killed three and injured 29, and Timothy McVeigh, who, with the aid of Terry Nichols, killed 167 in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Just about every other democracy has suffered from indigenous terrorists: Britain has had the IRA and Ulster Freedom Fighters (10,000 bombings, 3,000 killed); Basque terrorists in Spain were killing over a hundred people a year in 1979 and 1980; the Red Brigades in Italy have been responsible for thousands of incidents, including the grisly kidnapping and murder of former premier Aldo Moro; Germany had its Baader-Meinhof gang; Japan has had three terrorist organizations; France has seen two. Terrorists have sprouted up in most of the democracies of Latin America, including Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay. Colombia, the country with the longest record for freedom and democracy in South America, also holds the record for the largest, longest-running terrorist organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Founded in 1964, the FARC has over 10,000 armed combatants and has committed thousands of atrocities, including a car bombing of a Bogota nightclub in 2003 that killed 30 people.

The theory that freedom prevents terrorism doesn’t work for Muslim countries either. Turkey and Indonesia are among the most democratic Muslim countries, and both face serious domestic terrorist organizations. Indonesia has the Jemaah Islamiya, responsible for the bombing at the Jakarta Marriott Hotel as well as the Bali bombings that killed over 200. Turkey is practically a Wal-Mart of terrorist groups. There are at least eight Islamic terror groups, seven Kurdish organizations, and seven that are Marxist. These terrorist groups have killed thousands of people in recent decades.

Does democracy really prevent the growth of “ideologies of hate,” as the president alleges? When I first noticed that claim, I immediately thought of the classic ideology of hate, the fascism of Adolf Hitler. Where did that vicious movement grow up? In the flowering of freedom and democracy of Germany’s Weimar Republic, 1919-1933.

One could say that in Iraq the president has contrived a direct experiment of his theory. Iraq today is freer and more democratic than it was under Saddam Hussein. Are there fewer terrorists there now?
The idea, then, that freedom and democracy prevent the rise of vicious political movements like fascism, communism, or radical Islam goes against the evidence. It also goes against political theory. If anything, freedom promotes or at least enables the growth of violent partisan groups, because it provides an opportunity for extremists to organize and proselytize. The point was perhaps first made by founding father James Madison over two centuries ago in Federalist number 10 in discussing the causes of “the violence of faction.” As he put it, “Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.”

If spreading freedom and democracy won’t prevent terrorism, what can we do that will have a useful effect? It’s a difficult question; the following is one possible, partial answer.

We can start with the observation that extremist movements all seem to need a vivid enemy, a belief in a sinister force intent on destroying all that is good and true. To the terrorist, the extreme evil of this enemy justifies his use of extreme violence to combat it. Much of terrorist ideology dwells on conspiracy theories that supposedly explain how and why this monstrous foe operates. These theories may be more or less convincing. When they are vague or easily contradicted by obvious facts, they don’t serve very well to help terrorists recruit for their cause. The more clearly the enemy stands out as an obvious and guilty malefactor, the more numerous and more motivated the terrorists will be.

For example, for the Marxist-Leninists of yesteryear, the devil was the capitalist class. Capitalists were held to seek the exploitation and oppression of working people, relying on their devious control of every aspect of society: politics, culture, and so on. The problem was that when workers were content with their jobs, this image didn’t fit the facts very well. Sometimes Marxist leaders would try to make the world fit Marxist theory better. They would push unions into violent strikes and thus provoke bloody clashes between workers and security forces. These clashes would help to radicalize workers. “See,” said the Marxist leaders, “how vicious and oppressive the capitalists are!”

In a similar fashion, Muslim terrorists are motivated by a belief in a sinister oppressor. For them, the demon is the West, especially the leader of the West, the United States, sometimes referred to by the radicals as “the Great Satan.” The U.S., they believe, is using diverse and devious means to destroy Muslim religion, culture, and society. There are many strands to this conspiracy idea. Muslim leaders point to American cultural imports of movies, music, and magazines that seem to be undermining traditional Muslim religious and social values. They point to its Christian religion. They point to American companies that introduce western styles of dress and consumer goods.

These points are rather diffuse evidence for the evil intentions of the United States, however. They don’t create the vivid picture of oppression that is needed to fire up recruits to the terrorist cause. To radicalize the population, the Muslim terrorists need exactly what the Marxist labor leaders needed: the actual show of physical force by the enemy. When the “oppressors” act out the role of oppressors in steel and blood, then you have a persuasive picture of a real enemy.

Time after time, terrorist movements in the Mideast have been galvanized by the intrusion of western military forces into these countries. As University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole puts it, “It’s obvious that it [Muslim terrorism] comes out of a reaction to being occupied by foreigners.” He points to the early example of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which grew up in reaction to British occupation in the 1940s. This organization grew to half a million members in 1948 and was responsible for numerous assassinations of British officials and Egyptian politicians.

In more recent times, the United States has played this role of military intruder in the Muslim world. Lebanon is one example. We have sent troops there twice—1958 and 1983—thus helping to make that country a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. Other American military interventions include Somalia in 1992-94, as well as air strikes against Libya in 1987, and cruise missiles against the Sudan in 1998.
In 1990, the United States stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s holy land. One person who was shocked and radicalized was Osama bin Laden, who later said that this move completely transformed his perspective. His reaction of disgust and anger took him to Afghanistan to organize a jihad against America. The rest, as they say, is history. Did Pentagon planners have the slightest inkling of this kind of danger when they stationed American troops in Saudi Arabia?

Then there is Iraq. As we just noted, it flatly contradicts President Bush’s theory that the extension of democracy and freedom damps down terrorism. It clearly supports the idea that the introduction of American troops into a Muslim country generates it. In the first weeks after the American victory, there was practically no terrorism and only a handful of combatants. Today there are hundreds of violent actions every week and thousands of terrorists.
If U.S. policymakers want to limit the growth of Muslim terrorism, they need to be very careful about sending troops to Muslim trouble spots. There may be times, like the case of Afghanistan, when this is absolutely imperative, but one still pays a price. The Muslim world community has over one billion people. Probably something like 100 million of these are naïve, impressionable youths capable of being recruited to the Islamic terrorist cause. If ill-considered American troop deployments cause just one-tenth of one percent of these youngsters to conclude that the United States is an oppressive monster bent on subjugating the Muslim world, that will mean something like 100,000 more terrorists for the U.S. to deal with.

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James L. Payne has taught political science at Yale, Wesleyan, and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His latest book is A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem.

April 11, 2005 Issue