Wright Is Wrong

Robert Wright writes on the topic of how to deal with terrorists in the light of a report which claims political assassination, or as we call it in Israel, "targeted killing", and which the quoted study terms "decapitation", doesn't work:

...Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago...published her findings last year in the journal Security Studies...Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect.

Particularly ominous are Jordan’s findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent...Jordan’s findings — that decapitation just doesn’t work, and in some cases is counterproductive — does make sense when you think about it.

For starters, reflect on your personal workplace experience. When an executive leaves a company — whether through retirement, relocation or death — what happens? Exactly: He or she gets replaced. And about half the time (in my experience, at least) the successor is more capable than the predecessor. There’s no reason to think things would work differently in a terrorist organization...You’re not going to end the terrorism business by putting individual terrorists out of business.

...Of course, if you did enough killing, you might make the job of computer executive so unattractive that companies had to pay more and more for ever-less-capable executives. But that’s one difference between the computer business and the terrorism business.

Now, without actually asking terrorists why they replace leaders and whether they adopt more or less terroristic methods following decapitation, the study is not complete. As we were taught in Poli. Sci., in-depth interviews are inavluable.

But the example of comparing to the business world is lame and wrong.

Business is money. Terror is not.

But the point is, why replace at all? Well, because the executive is not doing his job properly. So, if terror is not proper -m and I hope Wright holds to that - then you have to replace. And if he doesn't want to be replaced?

He's fired. Which is a nice form of decapitation.

Which brings us back to the George Bernard Shaw paradigm: we know what has to be done and we are just quibbling about the how.

True, you could establish a counter-terror group to use terror against the terrorists. Western liberal democracies would shudder at the thought. But Wright's argumentation leads us to that conclusion for if we cannot use relatively surgical strikes (and I am aware how poorly aimed those strikes have been), and if we do agree that the terror is bad, something must be done.

Wright, you do agree something needs be done?