(In)Securing Canada

General Rick Hillier is Canada's Chief of Defence Staff. This is not a household name or a familiar title to most Canadians. Years of watching American news coverage and "The West Wing" have made us more familiar with American counterparts, and certainly American language since 9/11 has served to mark a difference between our two nations. General Hillier's recent remarks about JTF2 forces being deployed to Afghanistan have changed that.

With heavy reference to terrorists detesting us, detesting our freedom, and to hunting down "detestable murderers and scumbags" with Canadian forces whose job is "to be able to kill", General Hillier has ensured that Canada joins the States in its misguided and dangerous characterization of the enemy. In his choice of rhetoric, he has increased the risk of terror attacks on Canada. There is a bull out there and General Hillier has waved a red flag in front of it. His timing is additionally curious, given the ground swell of opinion that the war on Iraq, in particular, has increased rather than decreased risk.

The lessons of millennia of man-kind waging war are so starkly obvious that it boggles the mind that powerful leaders such as George W. Bush and Tony Blair still operate under the assumption that bigger and better weaponry can defeat the "bad guy". Now General Hillier has demonstrated that he, too, operates under this illusion.

This is where emotional intelligence and military intelligence bump up against each other with a resounding crack. The wisdom of the former and the lessons of the latter have not been synthesized for a smart response to the trauma of being attacked.

In adhering to the view that enough aggression can overcome the other, a fundamental principle of how people operate is missed. This principle is evident in the earliest stages of development when a youngster "disciplined" with violence becomes the bully in the schoolyard. It is evident in road rage incidents where one act of harassment incites the other side to retaliate. It is evident in relationships where verbal assaults elicit an equal attack in response - out of defence. The key word is defence: a word one could wish General Hillier, as Chief of Defence, would have a deeper psychological understanding of.

Under threat, it is human nature to marshal every resource to defend. This instinct is hardwired into our reptilian brain. What we need to understand is that terrorists are also attacking out of defence just as the West is responding out of defence. The really wise and really brave thing to do is to recognize that response in ourselves and understand how it perpetuates violence. Just because it arises doesn't mean we have to act on it.

Bush, Blair, Hillier et al would have us believe that there is a clear and definable line between good and bad, right and wrong. It is a comforting thought and one out of which it follows that good can overcome bad - with military might. It is actually far scarier to think that there could be good in bad people and bad in good people, or more broadly, to consider an individual human instinct such as that of defence, as applicable to those who perpetrate acts of inhumanity. It is especially challenging when the "bad" appear to be so irredeemable as terrorists. Out of defence? The terrorists? Didn't they start it?

The prevailing picture painted is one of Muslim men sitting around saying: "Don't you just detest Western freedom? Let's really show them by bombing them - and while we're at it, ourselves. We'll make it a suicide mission". That begs a few questions about what is going on in people - for people - when they are prepared to kill themselves for a cause. Doesn't it suggest a level of desperation beyond what is captured by the oft-repeated phrase "they hate freedom"? If we apply what we know about human nature and our psychological make-up, we can hypothesize about the nature of this desperation.

Psychology works in a manner similar to forensics: there are clues and symptoms which set us on a path; followed backwards, the path sheds light on the scene - the scene of the crime or the formation of the event. These clues don't always show the specifics, as in: this particular hammer with the red handle. But they will suggest broadly: blunt trauma with a weapon such as a hammer. Unlike the rather simplistic notion that terrorists are motivated by a hatred of freedom, the path here suggests something much more complicated: the existential blight of meaninglessness. This is much more likely to be the foment for terror. Meaninglessness knows no international boundaries. In the West, however, it is buried for a lot of us under a level of affluence that can fund escape. We can keep busy working, working, working, or going to the clubs and renovating our homes and cottages and buying new cars and all the latest technological toys. Meaninglessness is still there; it's just conveniently out of our awareness and not driving our lives. If it pops up, it can be soothed.

The men who become terrorists have none of those outlets to either provide meaning, or to escape its absence. They have poverty, a social history that inures them to violence and a deep sense of being outside the fabric of life. Whether natured or nurtured, they are psychologically vulnerable. The result is both profound despair plus outrage at what is possible for others and yet denied them. Outrage at the West is quite different from a hatred of freedom. The former grows out of personal pain. When at the same time the West abuses its power in acts of aggression both military and economic, the equation grows: poverty + meaninglessness + domination = powerlessness + outrage + defence = aggression, backed by political and religious rationale. Note that the rationale follows the process, it does not initiate it.

The human spirit will rally to a cause in the service of belonging and making meaning. This is the fuel for terrorism. And as long as the combustible components are at play, there will be disenfranchised and deeply disturbed human beings who see solution in the killing of others. This is no t acceptable. No part of it is. This picture - allowing for a view of terrorists as part of the fabric of humanity - is not intended to be unduly sympathetic to the heartless and appalling acts of violence perpetrated by them. It is meant to shed light on the inter-personal and intra-psychic dynamics that underlie those acts in order that we may address them with intelligence, and in so doing, truly protect ourselves.

The lessons of war actually bear out our understanding of human development: violence begets violence. We know that. We also know the maxim that failure to understand history condemns us to repeat it. Why are we not acting on and with this knowledge? Has General Hillier not been exposed to the tenets of peace and conflict studies? Institutes focusing on the science and art of conflict resolution now abound in the world - including Canada. Any introductory level course will make clear that one does not start with the fighting words he chose. His words show that he has made a choice to fight. The Canadian Government has apparently made that choice - despite clear indications from Canadians that we do not want to go to war with Afghanistan or Iraq or any other country. They are sending troops with intent to kill, not intent at peace building, or to assist with democratic elections or to help with the repair of infrastructure required after the USA has ravaged them with war. Hillier has said, in effect: we're coming to get you. He might as well have placed a map of Canada in the bull's eye of their target.

General Hillier's - and the Canadian Government's - objective is certainly to keep Canada secure from terrorist attacks. Much of what General Hillier and his troops are trained in, contributes to Canada's well being. But words of aggression, and acts of aggression - this is a strategy based on an ignorance of great proportion because we actually know better. We may act like barbarians, but we have advanced as a species, have had this opportunity for learning many times before. The wisdom is there. Our security - and that of the world - depends on using it.