The Ash Twins Blog

Today was the first meeting of this semester’s Francis Leiber Colloquium on Law and War. The speaker was Columbia Law Professor Phillip Bobbitt, discussing his new book Terror and Consent. Some parts of the colloquium were informative and engaging, but other parts were remarkable for exemplifying America’s broken discourse on the war on terror.

Constitutional Law Professor Kendall Thomas, after making a helpful distinction between formalist and functionalist conceptions of terrorism, mentioned that “states of consent” have historically engaged in terrorism. He gave an example from Italy, but the most striking aspect of his statement was a prefatory remark in which he said he wouldn’t give an example of the US government supporting or engaging in terrorist acts because he didn’t “want to be polemical.” Even among supposedly leftist Columbia Law professors, admitting that the United States have engaged in acts that could be fairly described as terroristic is considered “polemical”–unnecessarily combative, contentious, or disputatious.

In my question, I asked whether–in light of the $612 billion budgeted for 2009 military operations–we should think about spending some money to facilitate economic growth and opportunity in those underdeveloped areas that breed hatred and resentment toward wealthy Western nations. Prof. Bobbitt did not respond to the dollar figure–nor was it thereafter mentioned. He agreed that the US should aid other countries, but he didn’t think that foreign aid should be part of the counterterrorist strategy. Bobbitt believes that terrorists are not motivated by economic factors or even political factors; when asked what does motivate them, he shrugged and threw his hands up. He doesn’t know what motivates terrorists, and he just doesn’t care to find out. Prof. Bobbitt thinks we should be concerned instead with using laws and military actions to deter and eliminate terrorists.

As “evidence” for his argument that terrorists are irrational and there’s no point in uncovering their motivations, he offered the unfortunate example of Bruce Ivins. Bruce Ivins is the government scientist fingered by the FBI as the anthrax attacker from 2001. But, as documented by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, Ivins has not been convicted in a court of law (he committed suicide before the case went to trial), and the FBI’s case is gaping with evidentiary holes.

The bad evidence supports a bad argument: Ignoring the motivations of potential terrorists is, in my view, an absolutely horrible idea, even if those motivations oftentimes have nothing to do with poverty. Meanwhile, conditions in Afghanistan appear to support the view that relying on law and military might not be the best solution to the terrorism problem.

The fact that Bobbitt is such a successful scholar (and that Thomas avoided “polemics”) demonstrates the fundamental failure at the heart of the American market of ideas. Ideas do not gain traction through their truth, but rather through their memetic fitness in the current intellectual environment. That environment, as it stands today, is geared toward lubricating the ascension of militaristic, blindly pro-American ideas and rhetoric. Establishmentarian individuals in the public sphere celebrate Bobbitt’s views, improving his scholarly reputation and increasing his book sales. Those who would mention the US’s astounding military budget or its history of abuses are ignored.

Most other questioners focused on insignificant legalisms–about a dozen questions tried to pin down Bobbitt on the difference between a terrorist and a criminal. Bobbitt himself punctured the charade, saying that he was just a lawyer who could define his terms as he saw fit. “Make up your own definitions,” he quipped.

Those questioners didn’t realize that there is no objective conceptual distinction between criminals and terrorists and warriors; these are just useful terms for discussing (and hopefully resolving) real-world social problems.