# What really helps terrorist groups to recruit? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2017, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750 "2017-02-13T12:38:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/1 "2017-02-13T12:38:21Z")
Eli Lake argues that the Muslim immigration ban is not much of a factor: [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-10/trump-s-travel-ban-is-not-recruiting-more-terrorists](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-10/trump-s-travel-ban-is-not-recruiting-more-terrorists) > [@](#): > > This is a familiar line to anyone who has followed the national security debate since 9/11. Democrats in particular have argued that the Iraq War, the Guantanamo Bay prison and anti-Muslim web videos help to radicalize otherwise peaceful Muslims to murder us at random. Hence Trump’s travel ban is now a “recruitment tool.” > > If only jihadi recruitment were so easily disrupted. Sadly it’s much more complicated. > > To start, the process by which an individual gets sucked into the death cults of al Qaeda or the Islamic State cannot be reduced to a single cause. Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, the research director for the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, put it like this: “The argument that the Trump policy will radicalize people is predicated on the flawed premise that people radicalize as a response to government policy. The reality is it’s a highly complex process that involves religious and personal factors. A government policy may play a role, but it’s one of many factors.” > > Meleagrou-Hitchens’s program released an invaluable report last year that studied motivations of Americans who had declared allegiance to the Islamic State. It found that the motivations ranged from sympathy for the plight of Syrians suffering under their dictator’s war to a sense of religious obligation to join a new utopian Islamic caliphate. > > Another problem with this argument is that it fails to account for the significant rise in radical Islamic terror under President Barack Obama. He went out of his way to counter the jihadist worldview. He began his presidency by delivering a speech to the Islamic world from Cairo, in which he stressed his own administration’s respect for Islam. He promised, and ultimately failed to, close Guantanamo; he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, and he scrubbed terms like “radical Islam” and “war on terror” from the government’s lexicon. > > And yet despite his efforts, the FBI arrested more Americans for joining Islamic terrorist groups during his presidency than during that of George W. Bush. That last argument says it all, IMO. No one went out of his way more than Obama to avoid enabling recruitment, yet not surprisingly to anyone paying attention to the actual data, he didn’t really have any effect. If terrorism gets worse under Trump, I’d consider that very surprising. Not assuming it will get better, so much as the natural ebb and flow we’ve seen is more likely to ebb over the next few years. There is not some pool of Muslims just waiting to be radicalized by a government official saying or doing the wrong thing, or waiting for an errant drone strike to go and join a terrorist group. A BIG move, like invading Iraq in 2003, might have increased recruitment, in much the same way that wars increase our own military recruitment, but it’s hard to see individual policies like Gitmo, or pastors burning Korans, or drone strikes, or saying “Islamofascism” or whatever is going to make Muslims join up. Either a person is susceptible, by already subscribing to a harsh view of Islam and just needing something to fight for, or the person is already bona fide nuts and would join whichever group approached him first, and if no one approached him he’d probably go out on his own. Which we’ve seen. Few, if any, of these lone wolves were responding to specific events or government policies. It was all a combination of personal and spiritual. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/2 "2017-02-13T12:53:38Z")
“A government policy may play a role, but it’s one of many factors.” No ones is arguing that it’s the only factor, so this sentence acknowledges the point it argues against. “He promised, and ultimately failed to, close Guantanamo” Failing to close Guantanamo is supposed to counter the worldview? And withdrawing from Iraq may have removed the “we’re under occupation” message, but it also made insurgencies possible. The last argument is pretty much useless when it comes to argue this point. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/3 "2017-02-13T12:58:58Z")
He is correct that it’s complicated. The rest is uncharacteristically weak argument from Lake. You could start with the assumption that Obama somehow scrupulously avoided the things that liberals believe inspire terrorists. Obama’s drone strike program was far larger than Bush’s, and is consistently cited by terrorists as the reason they joined up. He also did not close Gitmo, the other item frequently cited. In truth, though, all of Obama’s policies on the subject are swamped by the way Syria went. The other side of the measure is also badly flawed. FBI arrests is a terrible measurement, given that they concoct a large proportion of the terror plots they “foil.” Americans actually killed in terror attacks would be better, though still flawed (and would obviously blow the whole argument out of the water). I give this argument a D+. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/4 "2017-02-13T13:08:05Z")
It’s difficult to keep bad people from doing the bad thing. It’s far easier to push the average good person into doing the bad thing, or to simply to stand by while others among them do so. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/5 "2017-02-13T14:19:36Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Few, if any, of these lone wolves were responding to specific events or government policies. It was all a combination of personal and spiritual. My suspicion is that government policies play a role in roughly the same way we choose to vote for someone. The odds that one particular policy proposal will swing anyone’s vote is pretty low. I think voters tend to look at a larger picture, not dissect each statement by a politician. I would also suspect that the willingness of people to carry out terrorist attacks is likely based on an overall feeling, not one policy change. However, what creates the overall feelings? A pattern of policies that fit into a narrative (intentional or not) that the person has an obligation to take outrageous acts to counter aggression (whether real, imagined, justified, or unjustified). ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/6 "2017-02-13T14:32:27Z")
But then why wouldn’t Obama(and European policies) dial that down a little? It would appear that government policy changes have such a small effect that they are overwhelmed by other factors. The lone exception would probably be overt warfare, such as the invasion of Iraq and ISIS’ offensive in Syria. Wars bring recruits. But assuming no more elective wars on our part, our ability to affect recruitment is pretty poor, aside from perhaps going after terrorist funding. It would see that when terrorist groups want recruits, they get them by making headlines. The ISIS offensive didn’t just take advantage of Iraqi weakness and Syrian civil war, it also gave potential recruits a place to go, whereas trying to track down Al Qaeda in Afghanistan caves to conduct a terrorist attack in who knows where isn’t as likely to be attractive to potential recruits. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/7 "2017-02-13T15:30:05Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > But then why wouldn’t Obama(and European policies) dial that down a little? It would appear that government policy changes have such a small effect that they are overwhelmed by other factors. Maybe you ought to look at more than one time period. Why do you suppose Al Qaeda became powerful in the first place, in the 1990s and early 2000s? UBL himself pointed to the continuing presence of the US military in Saudi Arabia as one of the key reasons that AQ existed at all. Surely there is a connection between AQ and US government policy (note that I am not saying that we are to blame, but when a terrorist leader cites a US policy as the reason for a terrorist organization existing, that’s worth taking note of). ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/8 "2017-02-13T15:33:56Z")
He also cited our immorality. Tolerance for gays, equality of the sexes, charging interest on loans, also incite fundies. That’s why while Bush’s “they hate us for our freedoms” was simplistic, it wasn’t much more simplistic than “this was blowback”. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/9 "2017-02-13T15:36:18Z")
Lake also correctly notes that their list of grievances is so long that there’s no way we could ever dampen their recruiting with conciliatory actions. bin Laden accused of his ‘stealing’ oil because it was cheap. We’d have to comply with sharia law, pay a lot more money for oil, don’t intervene, ever(even when Muslims are committing genocide against other peoples), and then they’d still hate us for being wealthier. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/10 "2017-02-13T16:29:16Z")
It’s marginal, not binary. Less terrorism is good even if it doesn’t lead to no terrorism. And the point is simply to consider terror recruitment when evaluating policy. If the question is whether we should support Israel, we’re gonna do that even if it makes jihadis mad. If the question is whether we should execute drone strikes to kill individual terrorists, then maybe that’s not such a hot idea if it in fact leads to better recruitment. It is naive to think that we should not evaluate those negative recruitment effects of our policies, from Abu Ghraib to xenophobic immigration bans. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/11 "2017-02-13T16:38:44Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > He also cited our immorality. Tolerance for gays, equality of the sexes, charging interest on loans, also incite fundies. That’s why while Bush’s “they hate us for our freedoms” was simplistic, it wasn’t much more simplistic than “this was blowback”. I guess I’ve lost your larger point: are you contending that UBL was lying about saying that certain policies of the West helped him build AQ? Or maybe that we carried out these policies while accepting the risk that they might be used against us? Or something else entirely? ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/12 "2017-02-13T16:53:32Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > It’s marginal, not binary. Less terrorism is good even if it doesn’t lead to no terrorism. > > And the point is simply to consider terror recruitment when evaluating policy. If the question is whether we should support Israel, we’re gonna do that even if it makes jihadis mad. If the question is whether we should execute drone strikes to kill individual terrorists, then maybe that’s not such a hot idea if it in fact leads to better recruitment. > > It is naive to think that we should not evaluate those negative recruitment effects of our policies, from Abu Ghraib to xenophobic immigration bans. I think that’s a great point. It should be considered as part of the overall cost/benefit analysis of any policy. And there are many times where we provoke them needlessly, such as the Abu Ghraib scandal, although why jihadists would be incited by harsh treatment of prisoners given their love of raping, blowtorching, and hammering nails into their own prisoners I’m not sure. Now the immigration ban, I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to increase recruitment given that the radicals don’t want people immigrating to the West either. Seems that this is one of those policies that would make them happy and want them to focus their efforts more on the countries that are undermining them by letting refugees in, such as Germany. I actually wonder if Germany is taking a page from the book of their own history. Free movement of peoples, letting people escape tyranny, is a sure way to destroy tyranny. Whereas other countries and now the US are helping ISIS hold onto their subjects. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/13 "2017-02-13T16:55:20Z")
> [@](#): > > What really helps terrorist groups to recruit? A sense of hopelessness in the recruits. Lack of jobs and opportunity for the young. People who feel they have nothing given a chance to feel empowered and who can strike back against those they perceive as being responsible for keeping them down and oppressed. As for the rest of the OP, I sort of agree…no one policy is going to have a major effect that rivals the above reasons (i.e. hopelessness, etc etc). They may anger some or be a tipping point, or become the sole reason for some individuals, but it’s the situation that causes the majority IMHO, not single policies or abstract issues like the Muslim ban. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/14 "2017-02-13T17:05:02Z")
Hopelessness? One would think, but most of these guys seem to be middle class. I think it’s more the disaffection that often comes with middle class life. A lot of them probably join for the same reason a lot of people join political organizations in the US. Makes them think they are fighting for something important. Me, I like the utter pointlessness of my life. I watch TV and movies, I play video games, I read about and have a great interest in politics, history, and science, and I have a great wife. I get up, I enjoy great food, shop at grocery stores where food is abundant and affordable, I go to work, it’s all nice and safe and privileged. But I can see how that might mess with someone’s head. Sometimes I do wonder if I should be doing something that actually matters beyond my little circle of family and friends. But being an atheist/non-practicing Jew there aren’t really any outlets beyond attending Tea Party protests, or if I was a liberal, those kinds of protests. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/15 "2017-02-13T17:11:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Hopelessness? One would think, but most of these guys seem to be middle class. I think it’s more the disaffection that often comes with middle class life. A lot of them probably join for the same reason a lot of people join political organizations in the US. Makes them think they are fighting for something important. Do you have a cite that most are middle class? I tend to doubt that. Myself, I’d say the most PUBLICIZED are middle class kids who have been disaffected or radicalized, but the majority of actual recruits are poor folks without much opportunity. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/16 "2017-02-13T19:13:12Z")
This could apply to how most people radically shift their opinions on most issues. It takes time. They may see some news article, watch a documentary, see a unique argument, or meet someone and then slowly get drawn into different social circles and let the ideas simmer in their head. Each step may seem marginal at the time, but when combined represents a serious evolution. Just as every drop in a flood considers itself blameless, compared to the whole wall of water. For the opposite case, look at stories of how people lose their religion. They don’t usually wake up one day as godless atheists. It tends to be a slow decay over months and years. The ember of doubt has to be fed. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/17 "2017-02-13T19:18:06Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Do you have a cite that most are middle class? I tend to doubt that. Myself, I’d say the most PUBLICIZED are middle class kids who have been disaffected or radicalized, but the majority of actual recruits are poor folks without much opportunity. [Here](http://www.economist.com/node/17730424)is an article about that. From the article “Social scientists have collected a large amount of data on the socioeconomic background of terrorists. According to a 2008 survey of such studies by Alan Krueger of Princeton University, they have found little evidence that the typical terrorist is unusually poor or badly schooled. Claude Berrebi of the RAND Corporation compared the characteristics of suicide-bombers recruited by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the West Bank and Gaza with those of the general adult male Palestinian population. Nearly 60% of suicide-bombers had more than a high-school education, compared with less than 15% of the general population. They were less than half as likely to come from an impoverished family as an average adult man from the general population. Mr Krueger carried out a similar exercise in Lebanon by collecting biographical information for Hizbullah militants. They too proved to be better educated and less likely to be from poor families than the general population of the Shia-dominated southern areas of Lebanon from which most came.” Poor people are usually just trying to scrape by and don’t have time or energy for politics. The educated and the middle and upper classes are usually the ones who can indulge themselves in idealism. What really recruits terrorists is not western politics but western culture. The most famous westerner in Muslim countries used to be Madonna. Imams were always warning that the west was trying to turn islamic girls into whores like Madonna. When the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood toured the US in the 1950s he was horrified at the coed dances he found. Muslim extremists are horrified at what they see as an imperial western culture that wants to come in and destroy traditional culture. If you look at places like Iran and Afghanistan and other places that became hotbeds of Islamic radicalism they had a flirtation with western culture in the 1970s under secular governments which caused a huge backlash and installed revolutionary governments enforcing radical Islam. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/18 "2017-02-13T19:51:25Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > What really recruits terrorists is not western politics but western culture. The most famous westerner in Muslim countries used to be Madonna. Imams were always warning that the west was trying to turn islamic girls into whores like Madonna. When the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood toured the US in the 1950s he was horrified at the coed dances he found. Muslim extremists are horrified at what they see as an imperial western culture that wants to come in and destroy traditional culture. If you look at places like Iran and Afghanistan and other places that became hotbeds of Islamic radicalism they had a flirtation with western culture in the 1970s under secular governments which caused a huge backlash and installed revolutionary governments enforcing radical Islam. I think it’s a mistake to conflate the things you conflate in this paragraph. It would make more sense to separate the following very different groups and ideas: [ul] [li]Islamists (i.e., Muslims committed to governance under Sharia law)[/li][li]Violent Jihadists (i.e., Muslims committed to violence for political reasons)[/li][li]Salafists (i.e., ultra-conservative Muslims)[/li][/ul] A given person or group might belong to one or more of these categories, but they don’t automatically imply the others. Many violent jihadists are also Islamists. But not all Islamists are violent jihadists. Many Islamists are Salafist. Others aren’t. I don’t think it’s clear at all that westernization causes people to join up in transnational terror groups like ISIS-inspired attackers or Al Qaeda. Most of the Al Qaeda guys were more about political grievances with the West than cultural ones. Conversely, the Wahhabi types don’t mind military occupation of Saudi Arabia (obviously), but aren’t too keen on letting the ladies drive. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/19 "2017-02-13T20:29:51Z")
It doesn’t seem that complicated to me. People are much the same the world over. What would it take to make you join a violent resistance movement? Take last month’s raid in Yemen where about 14 Qaeda fighters were killed during an hour long battle. There were also 10 women and three children killed, plus a US Navy Seal. Do you think that there are fewer Al Qaeda fighters after that raid than there were before it? My guess is that dead 8 year old girl’s picture recruited dozens, maybe hundreds of replacements. It’s not like there’s a long training process. You can just explain that this is the part of the gun that the bullets come out of so point it towards the enemy and you’ll get some use out of them for as long as they last, and there’s plenty more where they came from. Imagine you’re a jobless 18 year old and Al Qaeda troops from Yemen drop into your home town and kill an eight year old girl. What do you do? Hell, I’m an old fart and it would make me want to take a shot at some Yemenis if I had the chance, and as long as we have thousands of troops in the Middle East people will have that chance. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/20 "2017-02-13T21:16:55Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I think it’s a mistake to conflate the things you conflate in this paragraph. It would make more sense to separate the following very different groups and ideas: > [ul] > [li]Islamists (i.e., Muslims committed to governance under Sharia law)[/li][li]Violent Jihadists (i.e., Muslims committed to violence for political reasons)[/li][li]Salafists (i.e., ultra-conservative Muslims)[/li][/ul] > > A given person or group might belong to one or more of these categories, but they don’t automatically imply the others. Many violent jihadists are also Islamists. But not all Islamists are violent jihadists. Many Islamists are Salafist. Others aren’t. > > I don’t think it’s clear at all that westernization causes people to join up in transnational terror groups like ISIS-inspired attackers or Al Qaeda. Most of the Al Qaeda guys were more about political grievances with the West than cultural ones. Conversely, the Wahhabi types don’t mind military occupation of Saudi Arabia (obviously), but aren’t too keen on letting the ladies drive. A certain amount of muslims as salafists, a certain amount of salafists are Islamists, and a certain amount of Islamists are Violent Jihadists. Most of the political issues are clearly pretextual. France doesn’t military occupy any muslim countries yet they have been attacked by ISIS. The reason is they are part of the west and western culture. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750.md?page=2)