Thinking Like a Terrorist
Mike German
Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2008
In Thinking Like a Terrorist former FBI agent Mike German applies his undercover experience infiltrating domestic white supremacists to offering universal truths and policy advice for a country he considers misguided in the war on terror. The author begins with a definitional arabesque about how one country’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Eventually, though, he produces food for thought.
This is the meat. German argues that the end game for terrorists is not spectacular massacres but a political victory attained by maneuvering their targets into oppressive measures that ultimately turn popular sympathy in the terrorists’ favor. This strategy is a contest for legitimacy. The terrorists’ audience begins with its own constituency, or identity group, blending the radicalized and the indifferent majority of a group sharing a religion, ethnicity, or other unifying feature. As the targeted government overreacts to terrorist attack, it institutes more and more repressive measures, often at the expense of the identity group. Ultimately, the government cedes legitimacy, yielding the moral high ground to the terrorists, who exploit the situation to prove their case and appear as the more injured party before an increasingly hospitable world stage. The targeted government falling into this trap may win battles but, ultimately, the terrorists win the war. The only way to avoid this pitfall, as German has it, is to investigate and prosecute terrorists as criminals, thereby denying them a platform and the legitimacy they crave.
This reasoning avails, up to a point. That point is where the author saturates every dish with this same sauce: investigate and prosecute. Having investigated and supported prosecution of white supremacists before they carried out domestic attacks, German makes this approach his only hammer and sees every terrorist as a nail.
German concedes little previous exposure to counterintelligence or classified information. So how does he address their role in the war on terror? He dismisses them. Everything done in secret must lack sufficient oversight. Another analyst, Benjamin Netanyahu, anticipated German by a dozen years but thought otherwise. Netanyahu credited successful defenses against terrorist groups by European countries which had to resort temporarily to secret tribunals and special police powers without jeopardizing the civil liberties that German holds dear.[1] In France, for example, secret tribunals to judge terrorists proved more useful than dead or intimidated judges and juries.
German’s offhand dismissal of security measures as wasteful (p. 181) is equally one-sided. He dwells on poor security spending without addressing the value of engaging the public in its own defense. By contrast, others who share German’s concerns instead counsel public awareness and involvement in meeting security threats, declaring, “We are all citizen soldiers.”[2] Similarly, Israeli security specialists like Tomer Benito, having defended critical infrastructure and airliners from Palestinian terrorists, now teach Americans to detect and deter possible terror attacks at the early phase of target selection – without waiting to investigate and prosecute, as German would prefer.[3]
Thinking Like a Terrorist offers food for thought, not a complete meal.
- Nick Catrantzos
Notes: 1. Benjamin Netanyahu, Fighting Terrorism (Collingdale: Diane Publishing Company, 1995) pp7-10. Netanyahu, publishing the book shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing and before his rise to Prime Minister of Israel, also explains how Baader-Meinhof, Red Brigades, and Japanese Red Army terrorists remained marginalized in their respective societies, without gaining public sympathy. Evidently, the author’s interest in terrorism is rooted in personal tragedy and his founding of the Jonathan Institute in Israel to study terrorism. Jonathan Netanyahu, Benjamin’s brother, led the raid to Entebbe, Uganda, which succeeded in freeing Israeli hostages with only a single Israeli casualty, Jonathan Netanyahu himself.
2. Joseph A. Ruffini, When Terror Comes to Main Street, (Denver: Archangel Group, 2006) p. 183.
3. From “Art of Deterrence” workshop, February 27 – March 1, 2007, Los Angeles, by Tomer Benito, principal, Synergy. A former El Al security officer, Benito now teaches target selection, protective response, and anti-terrorist approaches from the Israeli point of view.
Subscribe Now
AddThis
Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.