‘Charlie Hebdo,’ the terrorists, and us

Similarly, after the Muslim jihadist brothers Said and Chérif Kouachi murdered 12 editors and cartoonists at the satirical Paris magazine Charlie Hebdo last week, an Al Qaeda ideologue from the group’s Yemen affiliate said the attack sought revenge against “some filthy French people” whose cartoons had insulted the prophet Muhammad. “Some sons of France misbehaved towards God’s prophets,” explained the Al Qaeda spokesman, Harith al-Nadhari, “so some of the believer soldiers of God rose up against them and taught them good behavior and the limits of freedom of expression.”

From John Wilkes Booth to the Kouachi brothers, terrorists and governments alike seem forever preoccupied with teaching somebody a lesson, sending a message, or shutting people up. But violence rarely seems to teach the intended lesson. Last week’s attack on Charlie Hebdo generated far greater sympathy for the martyred cartoonists than for the martyred terrorists. On Sunday more than 1.5 million people — Jews, Muslims, Christians, and atheists, including 40 heads of state — locked arms and marched through the streets of Paris in what the New York Times called “the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism" since the September 11 attacks of 2001. It’s no small feat to bring Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas together publicly in common cause about anything, but that’s what the Kouachi brothers accomplished.

From terrorist to prime minister

Terrorists generally resort to violence because they lack other means of influencing events, or because they lack the patience or imagination to devise other solutions (like, say, passive resistance or blogs or even cyberattacks). But terrorism does work occasionally.

For example, in September 1948, when Israel was just four months old and struggling for survival against four Arab countries, the United Nations mediator Folke Bernadotte proposed a compromise peace plan that allowed for only a tiny Jewish state and called for the internationalization of Jerusalem. Bernadotte was assassinated the next day by a self-proclaimed Jewish terror group popularly known as the Stern Gang, whose leaders were unaware that the provisional Israeli government had already rejected Bernadotte’s proposal. The Bernadotte Plan was subsequently defeated in the UN, and 35 years later one of the Stern Gang’s leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, became Israel’s prime minister.

In 1995, Israel’s president Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, an Israeli ultranationalist terrorist who objected to Rabin’s peace initiatives toward Palestinians and especially to Rabin’s signing of the Oslo accords, which provided a road map to Palestinian statehood. By removing a charismatic dove like Rabin, that murder facilitated the political ascent of Benjamin Netanyahu, who like the terrorist Amir objected to Rabin’s peace initiatives and who remains Israel’s prime minister as we speak. And the Oslo accords went nowhere.

I mention these examples not only as exceptions to the rule that terrorism doesn’t work but also to dismiss the conventional canard that all terrorists are Muslims.

Omnipresent imam

Yet assassination did not silence Gandhi, say, or Martin Luther King Jr. — quite the contrary. Martyrdom didn’t shut them up; it enhanced their messages, much the way crucifixion bolstered Jesus Christ’s credentials as the messiah. Had Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to a small fine and six months of community service, Saint Paul would have found another client for his promotional services.

Which brings me to America’s response to Anwar al-Awlaki, the silver-tongued, American-born imam who joined Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen in 2004 and subsequently became a leading brand name in the world of armed jihad.

Awlaki’s English-language magazine, Inspire, specifically called last year for the killing of Charlie Hebdo’s editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, as well as cartoonists who insulted the Prophet Muhammad. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit in 2009, told the FBI that his plot was approved and partly directed by Awlaki. Awlaki was also linked to Major Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. In April 2013, investigators found that the two Chechens accused in the Boston Marathon bombing had been deeply influenced by Awlaki and had taken their bomb-making directions from Awlaki’s Inspire magazine. Awlaki’s prolific sermons and videotapes continue to attract a huge following on YouTube, Facebook, and Islamic websites, with predictable results: In 2010, after listening to more than 100 hours of Awlaki’s lectures, one Roshonara Choudhry stabbed a member of the British Parliament who had voted in favor of the Iraq war.

Did I mention that Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a CIA drone strike more than three years ago?

Victor Hugo’s theory

Much of the discussion of Awlaki’s demise has focused on the legality of executing an American without a trial. (President Obama, concluding that Awlaki had become an “operational” terrorist, sought and received a Justice Department legal opinion that killing this particular U.S. citizen was both legal and constitutional.) Little discussion has been devoted to the stupidity of killing this preacher. Thanks to our government, not to mention the brave new world of Internet technology, the late Anwar al-Awlaki is today more influential as a martyr than he ever was as a live fallible human.

“Most of Awlaki’s work is carefully constructed to be evergreen,” J.M. Berger of the Brookings Institution told the New York Times. “It doesn’t become dated. It will continue to be important for years.”

“If a soul is left in darkness,” Victor Hugo famously observed, “sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.” Many of today’s radical Muslims turned to the mosque as their only source of hope and comfort in an otherwise politically stultifying Arab world; and/or they moved to Western Europe in hope of finding societies that tolerate political expression, only to be shunned as outsiders. So, yes, Victor Hugo’s logic may provide a plausible defense for these souls who, having been left in darkness, have concluded that violence is their only option. But what is Barack Obama‘s excuse?

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