September 5, 2014
Newt Gingrich : ISIS, Ebola, and the Epidemiology of Islamic Radicalism
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All the current talk about strategies for dealing with the group calling itself the Islamic State are profoundly wrong.
Any analysis which starts out with a geographic focus on radical Islamists in Syria and Iraq is by definition wrong.
Radical Islamism is not a geographic problem and it does not have a geographic solution.
Radical Islamism is a viral problem more like Ebola than like Western nation state diplomatic and military problems. As John Feffer pointed out at The Nation recently, the two diseases have a lot in common.
Every time you hear someone discussing "strategy" for dealing with the Islamic State, close your eyes and imagine them using the same language to describe Ebola, HIV/AIDS, or some other virus.
When we learn that there are more than 10,000 potential terrorists from more than 50 countries in the territory which calls itself the Islamic State it should convince us that this is a viral problem requiring epidemiology rather than traditional military-diplomatic analysis.
Of course, this is not the only useful conceptual framework for thinking about radical Islamism, but it will allow you to see almost immediately how inadequate the military-diplomatic model is for dealing with this kind of problem.
There are more than 100 Americans now serving in the Islamic State. At least two of them from Minnesota have been killed in the fighting. More are leaving the United States to join the fight.
There are more than 500 Britons waging war against the West in the Islamic State. The vicious killer who beheaded the American journalists is alleged to be a British rapper.
On the American strain of the virus, just this week we learned from the Minneapolis Star Tribune that:
The woman used a borrowed passport that her family believes was provided by a recruiter, according to a relative who spoke Wednesday to the Star Tribune on condition that his identity — and hers — be withheld. He said that the family found a copy of the passport used by the woman to leave the country, reportedly on Aug. 23. The next night, the family contacted the FBI and police to report her missing, and told authorities the identities of those they believe recruited her locally.
He said the FBI told the family that two other local women had also gone to Syria.
U.S. Sen. Al Franken said over the weekend that the FBI has told his office “in the nature of about a dozen” people from Minnesota have left the country to join the terror group operating in Syria.
Douglas McAuthur McCain, who attended Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope, was the first American to die while fighting for the terror group, called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Unconfirmed reports say another man who left Minneapolis two years ago died in the same battle.
Now, local Somali leaders say, women are also being targeted by recruiters.
To make the viral spread of Islamist Radicalism even more sobering, Fox News 9 in the Twin Cities reported that one of the Minnesotans killed in Syria previously worked at the Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, where he had a security clearance to work for nine years.
Imagine that instead of leaving to fight in the Middle East he had decided to use his airport clearance to engage in terrorism in the Twin Cities.
Minnesotans going to the Middle East to fight for radical Islamist beliefs are not a Syrian or an Iraqi problem.
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point describes a concept of social epidemiology. "Ideas and behaviors and messages and products,” he writes, “sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics.”
This concept of a social epidemic is central to understanding the spread of radical Islamism.
Gladwell argues that "epidemics behave in a very unusual and counterintuitive way." He says that "even the smallest change — like one child with a virus — can get them started. My argument is that it is also the way that change often happens in the rest of the world. Things can happen all at once, and little changes can make a huge difference. That’s a little bit counterintuitive. As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect."
“Don’t be surprised,” he concludes. “This is the way social epidemics work."
The difference between traditional military-diplomatic analysis and epidemiology analysis is enormous. Consider Gladwell again:
Gladwell draws a very direct parallel between medical epidemics and social epidemics:
How much like a virus is the radical Islamist movement? One indication is the NBC News report that 28,000 pro--Islamic-State Twitter accounts have been created since the group beheaded journalist James Foley. The tactic did indeed cause the ideology to spread. It inspired imitation and recruitment from a certain population, rather than revulsion.
An epidemiology-oriented intelligence system would be trying to find where the 28,000 pro-ISIS Twitter accounts are and would begin monitoring every one of the potential terrorists.
Scientists might view Gladwell’s model of epidemics as oversimplified, ignoring concepts like host resistance, host evolution, pathogen evolution, competition, and tolerance. But these forces also have social analogues that are interesting to contemplate in a disease model of terrorism.
An epidemiology-based strategy would start with three key steps followed in dealing with any viral disease:
- An honest, accurate description of what the disease is and where it is occurring. What is the rate of new cases (disease incidence)? Where are they? What is the prevalence (the total number of cases)? What is the burden of the disease (what is it costing for each patient, how likely are they to remain afflicted once they get it)? And how is it spreading (through which recruiters, propagandists and active terrorists)?
- As the data gathering builds a clearer case, epidemiologists move to an analytical phase. What is causing the epidemic? What risks are there for individuals and for entire populations? What are the patterns of its spreading and its resilience once established? What are the modes by which it is spreading? What are the vectors at which it spreads most rapidly? What populations seem most exposed to the infection? How fast is it spreading and why?
- Once the analysis becomes clear enough, epidemiologists turn to developing intervention strategies based on their knowledge of and understanding of the disease. Note that virtually none of this kind of analysis about radical Islamism has been done honestly nor reported and debated publicly.
Intervention strategies include:
- Experiments to focus on one area of the disease and seek to eradicate it.
- Programs to confront, isolate, and destroy the disease wherever it is occurring.
- Policies to stop the spread and minimize the impact of the disease.
Ultimately the epidemiologist wants to control, then eliminate and eradicate the disease. No one talks about a manageable level of Ebola, for example, because any remaining Ebola virus can spread and evolve. The goal is eradication whenever possible.
FIRST STEPS IN APPLYING EPIDEMIOLOGY TO RADICAL ISLAMISM
The intelligence community, the news media and the national security establishment should launch an analysis of radical Islamism (not merely the Islamic State group). New tools and techniques, new language and new data are needed.
Epidemiologists should be engaged to apply their discipline to analyzing the spreading disease of radical Islamism as though it were a virus.
The Congress should hold hearings on the viral nature of the radical Islamist threat, its worldwide reach, and its epidemic qualities.
From these first steps a serious global strategy can begin to emerge.
Your Friend, ~Newt Gingrich, 2012
Newt
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Newt Gingrich 2012 Speech – Constitutional Removal of Radical-Liberal Federal Judges
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"We have to frankly break the back of the secular-socialist machine, elect people committed to representing the American people, and then methodically rip the system apart."
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