Underlying Causes

Lest your Iconoclast smash too many images here and get too political, let's get back on track and see what can be done about the current mess. Terrorism can be domestic, or it can be foreign. Right now the problem seems to be al Qaeda. Who are these guys, and what do they want? When I was a kid, like many in the early 1940s, we were taught that to love our enemies was very nice, but we were also taught to hate; it was the time of World War II, and hatred and prejudice were quite acceptable attitudes. We would tolerate a bully only briefly, then beat the baloney out of the brat.

As a military social worker in the First Infantry Division in the mid-1960s, I often had to deal with characters who, perhaps, had been childhood bullies and had grown up with psychological problems. The polite words are personality disorders; the clinical ones are passive-aggressive immaturity reaction. The key to understanding bullies requires research.

To understand al Qaeda and lead-bully Osama bin Laden, we must understand their backgrounds. Why do they hate us? What is it in Osama's background that is different from that of his parents, brothers, and cousins in Saudi Arabia, who currently are our allies? How has this weird Islamic cult called Wahhabism managed to metamorphose into what Richard Clarke calls a many-headed hydra, with terrorist cells all over the world? We need to turn to professors of history and religion at universities for answers. (Isn't it interesting that less than 30 years ago one of our prominent conservative senators, Proxmire, was awarding his Golden Fleece Award to the government agency that sponsored a study of Islam. What a waste of good tax dollars, he thought. Hmmm.)

What little the general public does know about al Qaeda is that it is some radical form of Islamic fundamentalism -- Wahhabism -- that encompasses not only religious but also political and cultural beliefs. It is not so much that al Qaeda wants to take over the world; rather, it wants to purify it. Either adopt al Qaeda's code of behavior (which would make Oliver Cromwell and his Calvinist Puritans seem like drunken, rollicking merry-makers), or die. Black and white. No compromise. Take it or leave it. Nothing is optional.

What they apparently fear from Western society (that's us and Europe) is cultural contamination. Thousands of young Arabic and Pakistani and Palestinian boys, whose only prospect for the future is unemployment and poverty, sit in Wahhab schools studying a fundamentalist version of the Koran. They are not studying democracy or human rights or feminism in there. They will readily adopt Western technology, but they see our way of living as evil. Considering things such as MTV, the wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl, some of the network and cable television shows, our conspicuous greed and wealth, and our trends in popular music, I can partly understand their disgust with our culture. It is their method of disagreeing that is problematic.

There also is the suspicion that fundamentalist Muslim terrorism has much to do with failure to resolve the Israeli/ Palestinian issue. It probably does, and our current administration seems to keep Sharon and Hamas on a back burner. That pot is about to boil dry, and the smoke will soon be setting off alarms. Or maybe an underlying culprit really is -- dare we say it? -- oil. Nah, couldn't be.

Oil and the Infrastructure

Oil has been a major source of world dispute for centuries. Eighteenth century whalers sailed the globe seeking the marine animals for their oil. Every nation had its remote whaling stations scattered around the world in places many of us have never heard of, such as the South Georgian Islands (British) or the Kergulins (French), and used their navies to protect them. John D. Rockefeller was in the vegetable oil business in Cleveland when Drake's well produced petroleum a hundred miles or so to the east. You probably know the rest of that story. Why did Nazi Germany take on Mother Russia? They wanted the Caspian Sea oil fields. What do we think the Japanese wanted in Indonesia? Coconuts? Why has the West taken such a keen interest in the Mideast? You guessed it. Oil.

We are told that no nation, including Western Europe's, consumes as much oil as does the United States. That makes us very vulnerable. There are other sources of power, such as atomic energy, but they have some difficult side effects and the environmentalists protest. Once science overcomes the nuclear waste disposal problem, which admittedly is serious, we will have accomplished quite a bit toward energy sufficiency.

Hydroelectric power is another good source but, because we use so much hydrocarbon fuel, we have created global weather changes, hence rainfall to engorge the rivers that feed the reservoirs and power the dams seems to be drying up. (We have not had a good rainfall in Atlanta for months.) So, oil is a problem. It fuels our big SUVs and giant trucks that tear up our Interstate highways and other roads. I have never seen a highway maintenance crew provided by a truck line, yet railroads are required to fix their own tracks. I have yet to see a barge line build a canal, but one of their barges can knock out a bridge on I-40 in Oklahoma and tie up commerce for months.

Step One: Decreasing Oil Dependency The threat of terrorism will not end with the 2004 election, regardless of who is elected. The al Qaeda threat will remain, along with any number of domestic varieties. However, reducing our oil dependency on the Mideast might help reduce the intercontinental hatred that it now seems to generate. How can we do that?

Undoubtedly there are some folks living in mountainous areas of the nation who really do need large, heavy, four-wheel-drive vehicles. That does not include suburban soccer moms. Hybrid cars are available, but the problem is fueling them.

This is where government comes into play. All we need is legislation that requires that, over the next 10 years, auto makers must produce a growing ratio of alternative fuel, non-polluting cars (hydrogen, for example). Ten percent the first year, 20 the next, etc., so that, by the end of the 10 years, 100 percent of the vehicles built no longer are diesel- or gasoline-powered. Meanwhile, the same legislation must require that oil companies produce the same ratio of the alternative fuels, 10 percent the first year and 99 percent by the 10th year, the remaining 1 percent being for the few gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles that have not yet reached a junk yard.

There is a bit of a problem here, for it takes energy to create these new alternate fuels, be they natural gas or hydrogen or electric batteries, or even to transmit solar- or wind-powered electricity. That is a minuscule amount compared to what we burn in our big SUVs and trucks and gas-guzzling automobiles, however. Additionally, it is not yet clear whether large aircraft can be designed for alternative fuels.

Step Two: Alternative Travel Every developed nation in the world has major high-speed rail passenger service except the United States and Canada. We have Acela, but it is only a few hundred miles long, only serves the Northeast, and does not really go all that fast. This is a big nation. We need to get cars off the Interstates and start using both long-distance and local rail service. Each year, new light rail systems are opening in cities across the nation, often running exactly where old streetcar lines used to run. Minneapolis' planned opening this year was delayed by a strike. St. Louis, Houston, and a multitude of other cities have joined the ranks of those with transit systems that will get business and tourist travelers from airports to wherever they reasonably want to go. We do not all need to rent cars.

Last month, we noted that the railroads are private. They do not need or want passenger trains tying up their freight lines; they are too busy for that. So, where do we build these new high-speed passenger lines, and how do we operate them? My suggestion is mag-lev, a system designed decades ago that uses electromagnetic power to move the train on a levitated cushion quickly over a concrete and metal pad. This track could be elevated on a tripod-type rack running above existing CSX, NS, KCS/CN, BNSF, or UP tracks, with no grade crossings. At speeds up to 350 miles per hour, one could go from New York to Chicago almost as fast as by airline, departing and arriving downtown, not 25 miles outside the city.

But, how could we get Americans, who are the most individualistic-minded people on earth, to surrender their SUVs? One suggestion is to raise gas prices through taxes to levels comparable to those in Europe, where the tax money goes to build those high-speed rail lines. Ouch! Another is to add a surcharge to the auto insurance on the gas-guzzling vehicles, but provide a large discount for those who use public transportation for commuting or long-distance trips, and for truck lines that use rail lines for their long distance routes. Some truck lines already do that. Next time you are stopped for a train, look at the names on the trailers or containers mounted on those rail cars.

Step Three: Alternative Power Fossil fuels, oil, coal, and natural gas supply most of our electric power today. They are transported by rail, pipeline, barge, and truck. That is a big part of the transportation business and commerce. It will be quite a while before we could become less reliant on these fuels but, nevertheless, that needs to be an objective. There are many other sources of power: atomic, wind, solar, hydroelectric, and probably some we have not invented yet. It was only a hundred years ago that we invented the airplane; a hundred and fifty, the telegraph; and 200 years ago only Ben Franklin and a handful of others even knew about electricity. Our universities and research institutions need to keep busy.

The power systems of the future may not be at all like those we have today. Perhaps every building will have a solar generator on the roof, or a windmill up there to crank out power to operate the home or building. That would eliminate things such as the power grid, which is vulnerable to terrorist attack. Life will be very different by the end of the current century, and some of us (not me, I'm sure, but maybe some children I know) will be there to make it happen and see it work.

Step Four: People As we noted last month, one problem in our security has been that most of our effort has been placed at airports. That makes other targets more vulnerable. As in Europe, the public must be security-conscious. We cannot walk around in dazes. Go to any American city and ask a stranger what some unusual thing might be, and the response will probably be, "Huh? What! You talkin' ta me?" We must be alert for the satchel or suitcase that might just be a bomb, and know how to warn the authorities. Even this old Iconoclast can see a purpose in cellular phones for that.

Alertness will not be enough. We need a whole army of people to better guard our borders, patrol our transit lines, keep watch over our water resources and power grid, and staff the hospitals and health facilities that will be jammed with victims when (not if) the attacks come. For example, the War on Terrorism is producing many casualties, yet under-trained personnel under-staff some of our military and VA hospitals. The current military is insufficiently small. Besides, it is busy elsewhere.

It is a horrible thought, but whoever is elected this November had better plan to reinstate the draft, and not just for healthy men. Universal. Men and women and gays and puny guys with buck teeth and bad feet. They will not all be soldiers but, for two years, every young American would serve as a security guard or a nurse or a teacher or an infrastructure repairman -- or a soldier -- at minimum wage. There is no reason that our graduating college seniors need to immediately go into the business world and make another million bucks for some Donald Trump. Why raise our taxes to pay high prices for outside contractors to do the work that draftees could do for a lot less money?

A draft would take up the unemployment slack, and corporations would be scrambling for the experienced workers coming off their mandatory two-year duties. Some might enjoy it enough to make government service a career. With our current lack of good teachers, nurses, and other social servants, as well as border guards and security agents, this is a long overdue idea. As noted last month, how smart was it to call up reservists who were firemen and policemen and haz-mat specialists, nurses, teachers, and construction workers to fight and die in the Middle East when we need them here?

Next month, we will continue our exploration of options in the War on Terrorism.

Do you have a comment on this month's topic? The Iconoclast would like to hear from you. Contact us at Claims, 5081 Olympic Blvd., Erlanger, KY 41018 e-mail: editor@ claimsmag.com

Ken Brownlee, CPCU, is a former adjuster and risk manager, based in Atlanta. He now authors and edits claim adjusting textbooks.