Downtown Manhattan, five minutes after the collapse of the North Tower at the World Trade Center
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last night, I read Chapter 3 in Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing<\/em> (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books. 2010).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oh my.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
If this book is going to make a positive impression on me, it had better start soon.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chapter Three is entitled \u201cThe Death Pilots of September 11.\u201d \u00a0It promises its readers a specific examination of \u201cfour of the main hijackers\u201d involved in the 9-11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in New York City and in the failed 9-11 effort that ended up in a field in rural Pennsylvania. \u00a0These were Hani Hanjour, Mohammed Atta, Marwan Al-Sheyhi, and Ziad Samir Jarrah. \u00a0What about the other fifteen? \u00a0Without making any real attempt to justify her claim, Dr. Kobrin assures us that the four \u201cDeath Pilots,\u201d as she terms them, adequately represent all<\/em> of the nineteen terrorists involved in that day\u2019s attack on America.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I was still cautiously hopeful. \u00a0Finally, I thought, we\u2019re going to see some detailed evidence about actual terrorists instead of broad generalizations. \u00a0But I was wrong. \u00a0Her discussions of even these four men were extremely brief and vague. \u00a0Two or three paragraphs each, essentially. \u00a0With lots of irrelevancy and, yet again, sweeping but undocumented assertions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nineteen hijackers of September 11, 2001, sought a fusion in death with the Early Mother through conjoint suicide and murder\u201d (36).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Uh huh.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Death Pilots\u2019 inability to think metaphorically made them concretely experience the world and act out their rage. \u00a0The Death Pilots mistook their fantasy thoughts to be reality. . . . \u00a0Their fantasies of rage against their mothers because of their unhealthy \u2018mama\u2019s boy\u2019 dependency propelled them forward into fusing with their mothers in death, but the infidels were their maternal replacement\u201d (37)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe suicide murderer Death Pilot . . . was on a final mission for one last connection with his mother, albeit perversely. \u00a0His world was one of splitting the idealized good Early Mother from the bad Early Mother\u201d (38).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I think that some people claim that psychoanalysis is a science. \u00a0Dr. Kobrin cites no solid evidence at all to support her notions of an \u201cinability to think metaphorically\u201d (whatever that\u2019s supposed to mean), or of \u201cfantasies of rage against their mothers,\u201d or \u201cinfidels\u201d as \u201cmaternal replacements.\u201d \u00a0She just says<\/em> this stuff. \u00a0On page 39, she briefly admits that a \u201cclinical diagnosis\u201d is \u201cimpossible,\u201d but she effectively makes one anyway, on the basis of no personal interviews \u2014 the hijackers are dead, after all \u2014 citing only the briefest and sketchiest second-hand reminiscences of people who, in some cases, barely knew the persons in question.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a good one, about the weapons chosen for the 9-11 attacks:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]he airplane [is] an interesting schizoid object choice for the maternal fusion for it is hard on the outside and womblike on the inside. \u00a0Upon takeoff, the Death Pilot is fused with the good Early Mother. . . . \u00a0The mother ship morphs into a phallic missile of mass destruction, targeting its victims, plowing into and destroying Mother Earth or the Twin Towers, and ending in a death fusion\u201d (40).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Good grief.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve read some really insightful treatments of the historical, political, and ideological background to modern Islamist terrorism. \u00a0This book, though, has given me nothing helpful at all thus far. \u00a0Nothing. \u00a0And yet, according to the dust jacket, Dr. Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin has given seminars to officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to police and miitary intelligence leaders in Sri Lanka, Spain, Israel, and the United States. \u00a0I cannot imagine, to this point, that there was anything genuinely valuable in those seminars.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Last night, I read Chapter 3 in Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, The Banality of Suicide Terrorism: The Naked Truth About the Psychology of Islamic Suicide Bombing (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books. 2010). \u00a0 Oh my. \u00a0 If this book is going to make a positive impression on me, it had better start soon. \u00a0 Chapter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,1691,1769,3352,2956,2896,2893],"class_list":["post-70411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-islam","tag-islam-and-violence","tag-muslim","tag-psychoanalysis","tag-psychology-of-religion","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorist"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>