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<DIV>I'm not a good tactician, so can't comment on whether decapitating militant Islam over and over again is good strategy. </DIV>
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<DIV>But the research I reviewed for The Lucifer Principle, my first book, hints that there may be a flipside to the idea that, "No group produces more than 5% or so of alpha animals."</DIV>
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<DIV>That second side may be this: Every group produces 5% or so of alpha animals. Or, to put it differently, leaders create groups, but groups also create leaders.</DIV>
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<DIV>Remove the leaders from a group and, if the group retains its cohesion, the group will generate new commanders, generals, and generalissimos. In experiments on human groups, if I remember them correctly, if you gathered a bunch of beta males and put them together, a leader would emerge. So would two sidekicks to the leader--a lieutenenant/enforcer and a comedic buddy.</DIV>
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<DIV>If you put a bunch of ants together without a leader or a hierarchical structure, a hierarchical structure would eventually emerge. If you removed the queen from an ant colony, the workers would sense the absence of thesuppressor hormones her majesty sent out to keep the workers in their place.</DIV>
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<DIV>Several workers would undergo a metamorphosis. Their sexual hormones would rev up and turn them into potential egg-bearing queen candidates. Then the candidates would fight it out to see which one would take over the regal chamber--the huge room in the colony where a small squadron of handmaidens tended the swelling queen so she could turn herself into a monstrous giant--an egg-factory.</DIV>
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<DIV>If this principle holds true for al Qaeda, removing leaders will help but won't necessarily wipe al Qaeda away. Al Qaeda is now a group whose legend is competing on the battlefield of history. It's competing for an endurance that goes beyond one generation or two.</DIV>
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<DIV>The way to make al Qaeda go away is to defeat it so dramatically and so persistently that it comes to be associated with failure. The taint of persistent failure is a repulsion cue. It drives followers and new recruits away.</DIV>
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<DIV>The trick is this. Al Qaeda has a perceptual antidote to defeat. Every time its members are killed, their death is defined as a triumph. Each death is turned into martyrdom. Martyrs are bonding devices. They are attraction cues. They're sources of publicity that bring a group sympathy...and notoriety.</DIV>
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<DIV>Christianity used the same device to spread its fame and to gain converts in the first and second centuries ad. Christian enthusiasts literally begged Roman judges to send them into the stadiums with starving animals and to rocket them directly to Christ's side in heaven via the liftoff pad of martyrdom. Sorry, the animals and the martyrdom were what they begged for. The image of the liftoff pad with liquid engines fueled by blood is mine. Howard</DIV>
<DIV>What does one do when an enemy upends the rules and turns humiliation into a recruitment tool? Howard</DIV>
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<DIV>In a message dated 7/18/2004 6:43:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, shovland@mindspring.com writes:</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>If our leaders had kept their eye on the ball and had hunted Osama</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>down, we would have fewer problems. Perhaps a regime change will</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>return us to the correct path.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>No group produces more than 5% or so of alpha animals, so if you</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>iterate decapitation enough times, the other side will run out of leaders.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>