Democracy in America | Ferguson and Iraq

Please shoot me

Why would anyone provoke an attack from a more powerful actor?

By M.S.

IN THE first part of VICE News's extraordinary five-part documentary on ISIS, released earlier this month, a bearded and strangely innocent-looking young press officer who goes by the name Abu Mosa invites America to attack his movement. "I say to America that the Islamic Caliphate has been established, and we will not stop," Abu Mosa says with a shy smile, a Kalashnikov leaning easily in his right hand. "Don't be cowards and attack us with drones. Instead send your soldiers, the ones we humiliated in Iraq. We will humiliate them everywhere, God willing, and we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House."

America has since begun attacking ISIS with air and drone strikes, and on Wednesday, in response to the beheading of James Foley, a photojournalist, Barack Obama reiterated his commitment to the fight. But the president has not obliged Abu Mosa's wish for America to send in ground forces. For one thing, the airstrikes seem to have been reasonably successful in attaining the limited American goal of aiding Kurdish forces to recapture territory from ISIS. Inserting ground troops risks subjecting American forces to casualties and mission creep. In the video of Mr Foley's death, his ISIS executioner threatens to kill another hostage unless America ceases its airstrikes. Mr Obama shows no signs of letting any of this affect his decisions. As a rule, it is a bad idea to let your actions in a confrontation be guided by the other guy's provocations.

Not everyone understands this rule, though. In St Louis on Monday, two police officers responded to a report that a distraught man had stolen two cans of soda from a convenience store, and was carrying a steak knife. The officers stepped out of the car and immediately drew their guns on the man, 25-year-old Kajieme Powell, ordering him to drop the knife. Mr Powell refused, and instead began vaguely walking towards them, saying "Shoot me!" The officers opened fire, killing Mr Powell just seconds after they had arrived—nine shots in all, pop-pop-pop, some fired after Mr Powell had fallen to the ground. All of this can be clearly seen on the video of the confrontation that a bystander recorded on his smartphone, released Wednesday by the St Louis police department in the apparent belief that it exonerates the officers involved.

To my eye, the notion that this video is exculpatory evidence seems absurd. A report of a disturbed man waving around a steak knife and making angry pronouncements is supposed to end with a team of police officers surrounding the offender, trying to talk him down, and, if persuasion fails, eventually subduing him and sending him in for psychiatric evaluation. Nothing suggests police officers faced an emergency requiring them to use their guns. The video convinced me only that the officers should be prosecuted, and that the St Louis police department needs to be completely overhauled, starting with its rules on the use of deadly force. Missouri should also revise its justifiable-homicide laws, which, as Yishai Schwartz explains in the New Republic, make it "almost impossible" to convict police officers who claim they acted in self-defence.

But there's an interesting similarity here. In both of these cases, someone is provoking an attack from a more powerful actor. Why would anyone do that?

When force is used, it is often to influence or change the behaviour of a foe. The logic is that of deterrence: stop misbehaving, or we will attack you. Yet adversaries often understand that the deployment of force is not cost-free. The risk of escalation may ultimately make a conflict more costly than the initial deterrence was worth. This trade-off is a characteristic of many classic confrontations: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and so on.

In the case of ISIS, at least some elements apparently believe that luring America into a ground conflict will help them achieve their aims. For Islamic radical groups, fighting America is also great for recruitment, particularly if there is an opportunity to kill American soldiers. And if ISIS can escalate the conflict to the point where America no longer wants to bear the costs and pulls out, it will have scored a tremendous victory.

It is a bit hard to figure out what Mr Powell was trying to accomplish in St Louis, as he appears to have been mentally off-kilter, at least on that afternoon. (In a tragic moment in the video, before police arrive, a passerby advises him to back down: "That's not the way you do it, man.") But he was clearly trying to provoke police to shoot him, perhaps in the belief that this would illustrate the inequities of police brutality. More importantly, the police who confronted him, like police throughout the confrontations in Missouri, seem to be entirely committed to the logic of deterrence, while ignoring the costs of escalation. This is a problem of culture, of attitude, of legal impunity, and above all else of the pervasive use of firearms, which rapidly escalate minor disputes into potentially deadly confrontations. The police's deployment of force have left two dead and a town overwhelmed by protests and riots.

In Iraq, America seems to be weighing the risks of escalation very carefully before deploying force. In Missouri, however, the police seem to be deploying force without thinking about the consequences at all. And the cost of attacking the city's poorest and most beleaguered people is proving very high indeed.

(Photo credit: JOSHUA LOTT / AFP)

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