Terrorists: Red vs. Islamic




Dear Friends,

I recall the *real-world* meaning of "suicide mission" in the 
military. The term indicated a high-risk mission from which 
casualties were expected. But that's at command level. Everyone 
of the men on "suicide missions" for either side of our 20th 
Century Wars that I knew considered half his mission to destroy 
the assigned objective and the other half of his mission to get 
back alive. "Commando" operations classically have more 
intelligence value than anything else, for they require 
penetration into the belly of the beast and then escape. Along 
the way, as trained, one observes a lot and notes the discrepancies 
between that which was provided from piece-meal and from at a 
distance info into a composite, often much at variance with what 
one actually confronts. The adaptive ingenuity of men half devoted 
to destroying their objective and half to get out safely is a 
fascinating trip into the resilient determination of humans to 
succeed and to survive.

In that context, what I know from contact with terrorists in Europe, 
Asia and the Middle East was much revived by Phillip Karber's very 
astute analyses for our govt. of terrorist patterns of behavior, 
done in the 1970s-80s.

I do not lump together espionage with commando or terror operations. 
While the latter are men fit and well trained, the former is usually 
a non-descript lumpy little middle aged person who desperately tries 
to look as if he is what he is not to hide the fact that he is trying 
to literally sneak through walls of concrete and secrecy. Such people 
are not team players like the commando or terrorist (the Red bloc 
sanitized the name to "sapper") whose task it was to destroy. The 
spy is a probe, hopefully as unintrusive as can be. Because spies 
are not invisible, they have to be many people that they are not 
and to be so convincing that the keepers of the secrets are fooled. 
Since the spy has as ultimate goal not to destroy but to deceive, 
he becomes very inwardly insulated and has great difficulty with 
intimacy. As a deceptor he invariably is repelled by the best 
deceptors God ever created-- women-- and so he tends to stand 
out because of his inability to be drawn in by them like a moth 
to fire. That does not mean that he doesn't fall victim to them, 
just that he does not prioritize the bedroom as did the fictitious 
007. Despite his gregarious disguise, he is clearly the type who 
builds a wall of verbiage to hide a silent inner core. He thus must 
SEEM the most outgoing of people when, in fact, he is very withdrawn 
and self-alienating.

Now let me point out that commandos, be they regulars or irregular 
guerrillas, have a strong esprit de corps and are bonded to a very 
narrow group, weakly linked to the larger cause for which they fight 
by abstract allegiance only. But key to their activation-- as opposed 
to motivation-- is training. For them the *means* are everything and 
the ends are something they do not allow to distract from their focus. 
That is why many become mercenaries after released from duty. In the 
end, the means predominate over the ends and are easily transfered 
from one "adventure" to the other. Command rapport and discipline 
are the ultimate factors that assure their allegiance. All the rest 
is gilding.

Most Viet Cong, Palestinian and Central European terrorists with whom 
I have dealt were young men motivated by a desire to prove something. 
That a cause picked them up and gave them the needed challenge can be 
said to be how they ended up willing to immerse themselves into an 
intense kill-- and kill often-- or be killed situation. Achieving a 
"PRE" moment that is unhesitating and followed-through without 
confounding sentiments was the ultimate goal. The rest was all: how 
hard am I? Amongst the perks of this attitude is an ability to deal 
purely on the basis of relative force with others, be they male or 
female, be it a personal, social or command situation. Least 
appreciated by the "long-timers" were novices who waxed about "the 
cause." They called them "virgins, who need their asshole opened 
wider" or "still girlish, looking for love." These two expressions-- 
one Palestinian, the other Vietnamese, respectively-- seem to indicate 
the dominance over self by the means rather than cumbersome issues 
such as: why we fight? It would not seem surprising, therefore, that 
characteristically, these men were interested only in knowledge related 
to means rather than intellect-- much like the auto mechanic vs. the 
auto engineer. Such men, once seasoned, cannot be "de-programmed" 
unless "turned." But whatever side they worked for, it tended not to
reflect their philosophical proclivities, rather their disciplined 
sense of duty. The deciding factor was always the commander of their 
unit and the bond of the men to each other. That alone insured an 
obedient and effective terror machine, not the ideology or the cause. 
Lastly, once demobilized these men, exquisite skilled in totally 
useless means, withered and deteriorated from boredom and inactivity 
due to unusability. Family ties, because of their training, were 
fragile and prone to violent breach, especially as these men aged. 
But let me emphasize, please, that these men above all did not want 
to die. No matter how fearless they may have come to be of death, 
death or disability on assignment meant for them that they failed 
in their mission. Thus, that same inexhaustible drive to survive as 
to complete their mission made the two inseparable to the whole. It 
was the death of others that was stoically accepted. One's own death 
was seen to be a degrading testament to one's INabilities.

Such a terrorist profile seemed to me constant over most of the globe. 
A suicide mission was never meant to be a suicide mission; it was 
understood to be a mission in which one gives one's abilities at 
the means of terror the ultimate test and succeeds by returning 
alive; to die was as humiliating as to trip and fall in a footrace-- 
and no "hero" hooplas of appreciation would change that. The MEANS 
totally consumed the guerrilla, not the ends.

The above type of terrorist (eg. PLO "fighter")is totally different 
from the type of terrorist we confront today (eg. alQaeda "martyr"). 
For the latter type, the ENDS are everything. How these are achieved--
ie. the means-- absolutely does not matter. The terrorist "cells" are 
very different from the commando or guerrilla "units" we confronted 
in the past.

First of all, the martyr must above all acquire serine and sublime
imperviousness to the confounding effects of reality. He is in a 
transcendental state in contact with God almighty, hence always at 
peace. Any sign of anxiety or agitation indicates that the personal 
bond with the Master has been broken. It is automatically assumed 
that this resulted from impure thoughts and doubts on the prospective 
martyr's part. Prayer is his only way back, and mantras from 
scriptures how he regains his focus, his disconnection with mundane 
every day realities and "things of the flesh." Beginning with fasts 
and rituals one learns to let the world go by. One learns to feel 
the greatness in his serene state by feeling the pettiness in the 
things around him. To lesser beings he appears detached, his stride 
unbroken by the irregularities in reality. From smoothness he goes 
to grace and from grace to a sublime state of focus on his only master, 
for whom he is ready to die. It is ONLY THEN that he is selected to 
train for a mission in the use of the needed means. But never is he 
very well trained or very skilled or very disciplined.

Let us recall that all this is a subjective standard, both from the 
point of view of the observed and the observer. And, it is a state 
hard to maintain for more than a limited amount of time. As a result, 
one oscillates and vascilates between earthly feelings and the sublime. 
Always the issue is THE WAY BACK to God. That way is through intense 
PRAYER. So, a prospective martyr may seem like a totally normal man-- 
with even all the baser drives of men-- if one does not observe the 
"martyr" during his hours RETURNING to the way of ALLAH.

Ultimately, however, the martyr is a terrorist whose mission is of 
a moment's duration in which he destroys himself and many others. 
But until that moment, he must suppress all signs of doubt that 
would express as awkwardness or hesitancy. That is why all "failed 
martyrs" (victims of technical glitches, not hesitancy) insist that 
from the beginning of the day to their moment of destiny, "I was 
calm and showed no emotion because my faith freed me from concerns 
that might interfere with my mission."

Every martyr is allowed to experience the benefits of such an exalted 
status in the eyes of his peers, his religious congregation and, 
above all his family. He is also given the opportunity to see them 
as beneficiaries of a SMALL SLICE on earth of the pie that will be 
his in Paradise, when he meets Allah after performing his deadly 
suicide act. They are given money goods or housing. In this way he 
is incriminated, locked into the face-losing consequence in case 
of failure to perform his martyric mission. How important is FACE 
to men on a Godly mission has, in my view, been grossly underestimated 
by anti-terrorism authorities. Humiliation of the man or his faith 
in a captive controlled environment-- with only limited assistance 
from psychopharmacologic agents (to tranquilize and disinhibit)-- 
and then offering him a new path to SAVING FACE can make him a most 
reliable and useful turned-operative. Of course, if some burly 
interrogator tortures him-- as unfortunately, the Israelis tended 
to do-- then that interrogator DRIVES him into a trance of faith, 
the very escape from adversity for which he was trained all along.

What I hope is that all this hints to you how much there is in the 
current Moslem War against the West which GOOD intelligence operatives 
can exploit to turn the martyrs against their martyrdom. Unlike 
guerrillas, they are not team player. They operate ultimately in 
a personal relationship with their God and their pride. By monitoring 
their failings in that relationship with God, we can fairly easily 
and reliably manipulate their relationship with their pride-- eventually 
with their reason!

The strength of the terrorist network is that the cells are only 
gatherings of convenience to faith or to mission. There is no 
clear dividing line where one's faith suddenly transforms into 
one's mission. We must, therefore, consider all gatherings for 
rituals of faith as potential formations of martyr cells for 
terror through suicide. 

Mr. Bush's attack at the middle of the snake, was hitting the 
right place but with the wrong means. NATO intelligence networks 
and the Russians have excellent assets in Afghanistan. These 
should have been used to, what I called, "pick up the garbage." 
So frequent are assassinations and kidnapings in the Middle East 
that we would never be assumed to be the actor of first suspiscion.
These assets can be worked, incriminated and their face exploited 
to make them inside sources. Instead we chose to indiscriminantly 
bomb Afghanistan as if to say, "a dead Moslem is the only useful 
Moslem." But in this broad approach and in our blind alliance with
the "Northern Alliance" we are only demonstrating our total 
blindness to their inner workings because we are forcing them 
into an inescapable defensive unity. We assume Moslem Fundamentalism 
to be a seamless steel bearing, when it is a lumpy fractured pile 
of camel dung. So vile are the Moslems that one can only assume 
that-- with all our faults and our despicable characteristics-- 
we are so much more pious, relatively speaking, that God may well 
have chosen us as his sword of retribution against them.

I cannot deny that the Moslem faith is a holy faith, and I would 
never want to. But the Moslem culture which preceded the faith, 
has long out done us in larcenous and deviant norms. To assume 
that deep faith moves these "martyrs for Allah" in what they do 
is the same as assuming that cattle stampeding off of a cliff are 
trying to make a point. Very bright young men are put into a trance 
of faith, laced with the most devilish aspects of hedonics (virgins 
in heaven) and conceit (face). Filthy and morally corrupt men are 
provided a way to regain the afterlife Paradise they fear they 
forfeiting with their devious and lecherous lives. All that is needed 
is one moment of activity and the choice is irreversibly made. It 
really is easy-- once you are in a trance and incriminated onto a 
no-way-back path.

We can work with that and we can confound the lonely solo martyrs 
awaiting their appointed hour, like the Sept 11th killer paying $50 
a pop for cheap whores on Sept. 10th. They are in the belly of the 
Great Satan for a year or two of debauchery, knowing full well that 
in one moment they are going to redeem themselves, washing off their 
sins in the blood of many infidels by their suicidal terrorist act 
of  ultimate sacrifice.

We, like the Israelis, have chosen to show the Moslem Fundamentalists 
that we are tough by using our airpower. We failed to realize that 
it is only when they are fully engaged in the joys of life that we 
can generate in them paralyzing fear(ie. when they are at their  
Western-made computer, driving their new Mercedes, humping away at 
a whore, counting the take from their shops, hoping at the mall, 
gathering with their families etc.). But if we bomb them and kill 
their children and their parents, burying them under debris, we 
only generate hysteria and hate. How can you reason with them in 
such a condition? How can you freighted or subdue them in such a 
state?

We must first and foremost sort out all their legitimate grievances 
against us (and there are many), offering to sit and resolve them. 
We must liberate ourselves from their putrid culture based on face 
and deception by liberating ourselves from their oil. We must try to 
understand what is making so very many Moslems abandon their world to 
live amongst us, as part of us. Above all we must improve our 
intelligence so that we can differentiate between those relatively 
few who are vermin and the very massive majority who are people just 
like us, struggling with modern good, evil and hypocrisy. Ultimately 
we have to make clear to them that since they want OUR world far 
more than we want THEIR world, it behooves them to find the vermin 
in their homelands and take care of them THEMSELVES (or at least 
point them out), in which case, we'll come over and take out the 
garbage for them.

People are basically all the same. But once swallowed up by various 
cultures they tend to loose their own consciousness. We have had it 
so good until now that we don't hate anybody. But. on the other hand, 
we don't realize that we can't go and invade other cultures with our 
culture just because we think that it will enrich us with more 
customers. Perhaps the world IS made up of immiscible peoples which 
no promises made about a global economy can mix. We have lied so 
much and promised so much nonsence that our "snake-tongued salesman" 
approach has gotten us labeled "Great Satan." That should have 
signaled us that maybe we should retreat to a smaller global economy 
of like minded peoples, leaving those who profess to hate us to 
themselves. In a live-and-let-live relationship we could make clear 
that acts of aggression will be responded to with immense deadly 
force, instead of pretending to fit into their culture by acting 
like the Unix trying to be "one of the boys." Talk softly and carry 
a big stick was good ancestral advice. The bluffing "snake-oil" 
Clinton presidency has added disrespect to the dupability 
attributed by the Moslem World to Pres. Bush Sr. The Middle East 
is a crooked casino, where the house ALWAYS WINS. And all those 
hoping to get rich there are only bringing us back death and 
terror. We must infiltrate the region with skilled agents so as 
to know-- not so as to direct-- what Moslems do. And we must 
break free of our dependence on them (rather on their oil) so 
that they can no longer call us "Great Satan" on one hand, and 
use our troops as mercenaries in their own internecine wars, on 
the other. Only when they respect and fear us will they stop 
trying to kill us. And they will not respect us so long as we 
overestimate and underestimate them as terrorists and allies. 
To call one group "ally" and another "enemy" is to exhibit 
ignorance to the bonds between them despite their abuse of 
each other. How can so ignorant a giant be respected?

Daniel E. Teodoru