The Missing Link

March 23, 2006

Killing Them with Laughter

A USA Today op-ed has a wonderful suggestion: we should start ridiculing terrorists.

History teaches that ridicule weakens the moral and political capital of our enemies. Ronald Reagan employed it with great effect during the Cold War. We all remember the "evil empire" speech, but what about the jokes? Two guys were standing in line at the vodka store. They were there for half an hour, then an hour, then an hour and a half. "I'm sick of this," one finally said. "I'm going over to the Kremlin to shoot (Mikhail) Gorbachev." The man left and returned about an hour later. "Well, did you shoot him?" "Heck no," he responded. "The line up there is a lot longer than this one."

The author argues that demonizing our enemies raises their stature, while ridiculing them weakens their ability to instill fear.

Many of Reagan's comments reached the underground press in the Soviet Union, no doubt encouraging dissenters against communism. Reagan understood that sowing fear in the West was a potent weapon for Moscow. By laughing at communism, the spell of fear was broken. It was the same during World War II. A cartoon of Donald Duck mocking Hitler and Mein Kampf no doubt was demeaning to the Führer.

We haven't employed ridicule in the War on Terrorism:

Thus far, the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorists has been to demonize them. "Their vision of the world is dark and dim," President Bush said in January at Kansas State University. "They have got desires to spread a totalitarian empire." During his March 11 radio address, he said: "The enemy we face has proved to be brutal and relentless."

Certainly, their actions and goals warrant such treatment. But that alone is a tough strategy to maintain psychologically because it can be exhausting.

So how do you ridicule the enemy?

I'm not suggesting that Bush start cracking Osama bin Laden jokes. And we should not mock Islam. Reagan joked about communist leaders but never about the Russian people. What the Bush administration can do is mock the terrorists.

For example, we should note that these self-professed warriors hide while they pay impoverished young men and women to become human bombs. We should play up Osama's privileged background. We should highlight the terrorists' ridiculous failures. The reality is that much like Soviet officials, terrorists are full of grand illusions about themselves and their mission.

The war on terror has military, political and economic dimensions. But it also has a critical psychological component. The terrorists are not 10 feet tall. We should engage in a psychological war that brings these thugs down to size.

The Missing Link finds this an excellent idea--expect a few examples in future posts.

One concern, though: has America become so humorless and hypersensitive that we're unable to employ humor as well as past generations? We'll see.

Posted by Conor at March 23, 2006 02:42 PM