# 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:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**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, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/21 "2017-02-13T21:26:12Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > A certain amount of muslims as salafists, a certain amount of salafists are Islamists, and a certain amount of Islamists are Violent Jihadists. You make it sound like those are increasingly smaller concentric circles, when in fact they are partially overlapping Venn diagrams. > [@puddleglum](#): > > 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. France was bombing ISIS when ISIS attacked Paris. And France has the same colonial imperial sins as the rest of the west. That said, it’s obviously also somewhat about western culture. I’m not doubting that. But your claim that the political is pretextual doesn’t have much evidence to back it, and would be clearer if you limited yourself to discussing particular groups. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/22 "2017-02-13T21:27:26Z")
> [@XT](#): > > 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. This “hopelessness” argument has always struck me as silly. The San Bernardino shooter was a Cal State graduate with a cushy government job. The Ohio State University attacker had been accepted as a transfer student to Ohio State. The Fort Hood shooter was a major in the US Army. If privilege is a real thing, these guys had it coming out their asses. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/23 "2017-02-13T21:36:58Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > 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). “Americans actually killed in terror attacks” is a _TERRIBLE_ measure for “What really helps terrorist groups to recruit?” There are tons of factors that affect the casualties of a terrorist attack that tell us virtually nothing about terrorist organization’s recruitment. I actually think the given FBI arrests (or perhaps convictions) is a significantly better measure. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/24 "2017-02-13T21:44:13Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > 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. Re: ISIS specifically, recall that France began airstrikes on ISIS in September 2015. The coordinated Paris attacks came in November 2015. ISIS could hardly launch retaliatory airstrikes, so they did what they could. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2017, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/25 "2017-02-13T22:40:58Z")
I read an article several years ago that said prisons in middle eastern nations were a major source of recruitment. That is where opponents of the regimes of the middle east would be converted to radical islamic thinking for various reasons (rage over being tortured, because islamic extremism was the only source of political opposition to the regimes, etc). ---
**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, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/26 "2017-02-13T23:31:57Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > “Americans actually killed in terror attacks” is a _TERRIBLE_ measure for “What really helps terrorist groups to recruit?” There are tons of factors that affect the casualties of a terrorist attack that tell us virtually nothing about terrorist organization’s recruitment. I actually think the given FBI arrests (or perhaps convictions) is a significantly better measure. Nah. You should measure the variable you actually care about. If you measure arrests, you get lots of security theater. If you measure actual terrorism, you get actual security. Of course casualties are determined by much other than recruitment. But arrests are even worse. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/27 "2017-02-14T01:16:01Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > 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. Resistance movements are worldwide. Resistance movements with the level of depravity we’ve seen out of ISIS and Al Qaeda is rare. While I don’t doubt Westerners would take up arms at such provocations, I doubt many would have much taste for attacks on soft targets. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/28 "2017-02-14T01:44:38Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Nah. You should measure the variable you actually care about. > > If you measure arrests, you get lots of security theater. > > If you measure actual terrorism, you get actual security. > > Of course casualties are determined by much other than recruitment. But arrests are even worse. But I care about preventing the non-fatal terrorist attacks too. I don’t consider the Ohio State University attack, or the Underwear Bomber, to be brilliant successes of our security apparatus. They were failures (at least at the screening / prevention stage), but fortunately they were failures in which nobody died (except the terrorist). We shouldn’t rely on that good fortune in the future, but instead focus our efforts on ways of preventing even those non-fatal terrorist attacks. ---
**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 14, 2017, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/29 "2017-02-14T02:15:24Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > But I care about preventing the non-fatal terrorist attacks too. I don’t consider the Ohio State University attack, or the Underwear Bomber, to be brilliant successes of our security apparatus. They were failures (at least at the screening / prevention stage), but fortunately they were failures in which nobody died (except the terrorist). We shouldn’t rely on that good fortune in the future, but instead focus our efforts on ways of preventing even those non-fatal terrorist attacks. Totally fair. Then I think we have a suitable compromise. We should measure terrorist attacks carried out to (attempted) fruition, regardless of fatalities. What I think we ought not count is when the FBI finds a mentally deranged 20-something and goads him into some fantastical, impossible plot and then arrests him when he tries to buy laser beams to blow up the space station. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/30 "2017-02-14T02:29:00Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Totally fair. Then I think we have a suitable compromise. We should measure terrorist attacks carried out to (attempted) fruition, regardless of fatalities. > > What I think we ought not count is when the FBI finds a mentally deranged 20-something and goads him into some fantastical, impossible plot and then arrests him when he tries to buy laser beams to blow up the space station. Agreed. There are a fair number of FBI cases that consist of what-most-people-would-call-entrapment. That’s true of some of the other (non-terrorism) cases law enforcement makes too. Then there are some (relatively few, IMO) where they actually do seem to stumble on an honest-to-goodness terror plot still in the planning stage and bust it up beforehand. The latter should be celebrated as successes, the former not so much. There’s an old joke I’ve heard from conservative militia-types (that probably applies at least as much to Muslims these days): Q: How do you know who the Fed in your group is? A: He’s the guy that always wants to blow stuff up. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/31 "2017-02-14T02:53:19Z")
I think Americans tend to have a skewed view of just how pissed off people get when foreigners kill people on their native lands. Because we kill people globally on an industrial basis and have for decades we look on that as run of the mill if the US kills XY and Z “bad guys” in Stanstanistan because…reasons. When Americans are killed in the US, not by a foreign nation, but by a bunch of rogue terrorists we lose our fucking minds, throw out all human rights for people we ever professed to, invade countries at will, and get busy with torture and locking up 12 year olds for years and years. Outside of our own bubble of preening self regard we could easily be regarded as kinda-sorta violent assholes by peoples of other nations where we are stomping around . So is being nice to terrorists going to work? No it’s a “to the death” culture war but we should not be precious about why we are disliked. We do some obnoxious shit especially with respect to giving cover to Israel for some of it’s defacto apartheid policies. We need to kill terrorists but we also need to own the real politick nature of the conflict. Our hands are not clean. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/32 "2017-02-14T20:58:35Z")
I suspect that terrorists, like criminal gangs in general, mostly recruit young males who are bored and idle. Whenever you read up on a young Muslim terrorist in Europe, you tend to hear his neighbors say, “Ali? A terrorist? But… he wasn’t religious. He NEVER went to the mosque. He NEVER kept halal. He spent all his time playing video games, watching porn and smoking pot!” Young Arabs in the banlieues outside Paris generally AREN’T politically sophisticated. They generally AREN’T ideologically or religiously driven. They’re mostly losers (or guys who feel like losers) who have nothing going for them in life, and are just dying to do something cool, something that MATTERS. Unemployment and the dole feed the ISIS recruitment pipeline more than the Koran does, more than Guantanamo and Abu Ghiraib do. ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/33 "2017-02-14T21:17:46Z")
[hijack] > [@astro](#): > > in Stanstanistan I am so stealing this. Is it near Bumfuck Egypt? [/hijack] ---
**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 14, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/34 "2017-02-14T21:25:04Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Unemployment and the dole feed the ISIS recruitment pipeline more than the Koran does, more than Guantanamo and Abu Ghiraib do. I mean, it’s all of this, right? Just like any other area of human experience, different people do it for different reasons–and even specific individuals might have diverse motivations. It’s a mistake to try to find the one true reason and ignore the others. In my view, it’s a mistake to ignore the religious aspect. It really is the case that ultraconservative (and quite modern) interpretations of Islam have contributed to terrorism. It’s also the case that political grievances have contributed. It’s also the case that economic grievances have contributed. It’s also the case that the fracturing of Arab nationalisms and vacuum of identity for young men in some of these places contributed. Blah blah blah. What people get wrong is thinking that any of these is the only game around, or that any one of them doesn’t matter. They all matter. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/35 "2017-02-14T22:06:08Z")
ISTM that the primary cause of terrorism is wanting something that cannot be achieved through peaceful means, or would take far too long to achieve to be satisfactory. Hence why democracy doesn’t do much good for thwarting terrorism. What good does it do to live in a democratic country, if you want to bend a country to your will but your cause would never get more than 1% of the vote? I’d also guess that democratic means don’t give the visceral satisfaction of watching one’s enemies get blown to pieces either; out-voting one’s enemies is not at all like inflicting violent suffering on them. ---
**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 15, 2017, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/36 "2017-02-15T17:10:16Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I suspect that terrorists, like criminal gangs in general, mostly recruit young males who are bored and idle. > > Whenever you read up on a young Muslim terrorist in Europe, you tend to hear his neighbors say, “Ali? A terrorist? But… he wasn’t religious. He NEVER went to the mosque. He NEVER kept halal. He spent all his time playing video games, watching porn and smoking pot!” > > Young Arabs in the banlieues outside Paris generally AREN’T politically sophisticated. They generally AREN’T ideologically or religiously driven. They’re mostly losers (or guys who feel like losers) who have nothing going for them in life, and are just dying to do something cool, something that MATTERS. > > Unemployment and the dole feed the ISIS recruitment pipeline more than the Koran does, more than Guantanamo and Abu Ghiraib do. What Islam does is offer a shortcut to doing something that matters. They can either study the Koran and become personally pious or they can commit jihad and become a good muslim that way. These young men have an identity crisis and want to do something significant and terrorism appeals to them because it is exciting and violent and does not need the discipline of actual piety. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750/37 "2017-02-15T17:29:36Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > 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. The failure to close Guantanamo is squarely on republicans. Obama tried to close it. Indeed it was one of the first things he did in office but [republicans blocked it](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/16/guantanamo-republicans-prisons). So it remains as a sore spot in the Middle East and likely contributes to recruitment efforts. The withdrawal of troops from Iraq was [negotiated and agreed to under Bush](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/may/18/jeb-bush/obama-refused-sign-plan-place-leave-10000-troops-i/). Obama just abided by the agreement negotiated by a previous administration which is normal. All you have left is Obama would not say certain phrases. That’s pretty thin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-helps-terrorist-groups-to-recruit/779750.md?page=1)