The Banality of Evil

[SteveMetz]

Hannah Arendt was right.

http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/my/yplus/csp_pcm_us_my_dial/cms1.my.sp1.yahoo.com/uploads/jul2007/asha0706.jpg

We're facing the Attack of the Killer Dorks.

[goesh]

It must be tough wondering if God is with you as the first step into infinity is taken triggering the detonator. Why else do they bungle so? Surely not the fear of the Bailey. Our dialectic gives us few aces to hold in these matters of jihad, leaving us to whisper our secret dialogue, never shouting it. I fear we are scriveners of the absurd ourselves, make code and symbols for the unfolding clash of cultures that can leave but one standing.

[Nat Wilcox]

Sometimes I think educated folks are more susceptible to ideology than other folks. But maybe I've been hanging around universities too long. Frederick Crews once described the academy as "a kind of heaven for ideas that have slipped their earthly moorings."

I do confess to involuntary shock when I learn how educated some of these people are, but then I usually think "of course they are."

Killer dorks...very much so.

[goesh]

If learned men of science are susceptible to the murderous jihadist ideology, how susceptible then are the uneducated Islamic masses to the Western counter-message? This is a caveat to the COIN philosophy IMO. We know how to grapple with this dilemma but that assures not an adequate understanding of it nor ready means of abatement.

[RJO]

Setting aside the overall ideological leadership of an insurgent movement, is it possible to conceive the individual actors (like these doctors) more more along the lines of how we think of individual mass murderers, rather than as political ideologues themselves? In other words, if social conditions are so disrupted that berserkers are being generated within a society in large numbers, all it takes is an ideologue to point them all in the same direction.

For example, here is an interpretation of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass murderer, that sees him as a PTSD-generated berserker:

http://collegiateway.org/news/2007-virginia-tech

Supposed you had 50 of these, and could point them all in the same direction. It would make quite a suicide army.

Bob

[SteveMetz]

Setting aside the overall ideological leadership of an insurgent movement, is it possible to conceive the individual actors (like these doctors) more more along the lines of how we think of individual mass murderers, rather than as political ideologues themselves? In other words, if social conditions are so disrupted that berserkers are being generated within a society in large numbers, all it takes is an ideologue to point them all in the same direction.

For example, here is an interpretation of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass murderer, that sees him as a PTSD-generated berserker:

http://collegiateway.org/news/2007-virginia-tech

Supposed you had 50 of these, and could point them all in the same direction. It would make quite a suicide army.

Bob


What you suggest, I think, totally undercuts President Bush's strategy against terrorism. The central assumption of that strategy is that frustration born of the the lack of political and economic opportunity generates terrorists. So if you take that away through democratization, to stop or staunch the flow of terrorists.

But if the flow of terrorists is simply a reflection of a pathology that we can do nothing about, then democratization is irrelevant (thus taking away the very last shred of justification for the Iraq intervention). The only effective strategy would be aggressive defense (which might include very strict controls on people from Islamic countries who want to come to the West, and some sort of punishment for those who glorify terrorists, perhaps economic and political sanctions against government officials, media, family members, etc).

Personally, this idea appeals to me because I think the roots of the terrorist offensive is not a lack of democracy or, as some contend, misguided Americans policies, but rather a pathological, subrational combination of perceived victimization, a warped hypersensitive sense of justice and honor, and a desire for death on the part of some segment of Islamic societies. Even though it is a minority position, we cannot alter it. As with the Cold War, all we can do is contain it until it burns out.

[120mm]

And, we regain the "moral high ground" by non-interventionist policies.

Sure, it makes the US government look weak, and results in the inevitable absorption of terrorist attacks, but in the long run, we win by turning them into the aggressor.

[Nat Wilcox]

with a professed desire (and fatwa allowing them) to obtain and use WMD on US soil? In the case of the Soviet Union, MAD worked to cancel out the WMD factor, and containment was practiced in conventional ways (in small wars, espionage, etc.). But what do we credibly threaten to annihilate if AQ annihilates Cleveland?

Mind you, I am not meaning to defend current practices. But it seems to me that the containment metaphor doesn't clearly apply in the case of the current adversary.

Probably, y'all have discussed what a plausible containment strategy against AQ would look like elsewhere, and if so please just direct me there rather than wasting breath recapitulating it here.

[SteveMetz]

with a professed desire (and fatwa allowing them) to obtain and use WMD on US soil? In the case of the Soviet Union, MAD worked to cancel out the WMD factor, and containment was practiced in conventional ways (in small wars, espionage, etc.). But what do we credibly threaten to annihilate if AQ annihilates Cleveland?

Mind you, I am not meaning to defend current practices. But it seems to me that the containment metaphor doesn't clearly apply in the case of the current adversary.

Probably, y'all have discussed what a plausible containment strategy against AQ would look like elsewhere, and if so please just direct me there rather than wasting breath recapitulating it here.

So I think we agree on what the strategic objective is. The question is how best to attain it. But does the promotion of Western style democracy in the Islamic world help prevent an AQ WMD attack on Cleveland? (Of course, we might discuss whether the United States has any vital interests in Cleveland, but that's another issue).

Containment of the Soviet Union wasn't just nuclear deterrence--it was control of travel by Soviet bloc people to the West, economic and political support to fragile nations susceptible to Soviet influence or aggression, the creation of security pacts, etc.

Containment of Islamic extremism might include a similar control on people from Islamic nations who want to travel to the West, more aggressive action to deny the extremists a free rein in cyberspace (difficult, admittedly, but still possible), weaning ourselves off of imported petroleum, as well as more traditional intelligence and and defense activities.

[Nat Wilcox]

But does the promotion of Western style democracy in the Islamic world help prevent an AQ WMD attack on Cleveland?

No. We can safely lay aside this question; as I meant to imply, the question of what containment would look like is entirely separate from the critique of current policies.

It seems to me that our chief priority should be to protect ourselves from catastrophic outcomes that don't have vanishingly small probabilities of happening.

I agree with you that containment of the Soviets was not only a matter of nuclear (and other WMD) deterrence. But it certainly was a priority, and MAD (and measures, such as those taken after the Cuban missile crisis, to decrease probabilities of misunderstandings) was a simple (if extremely costly) way of meeting that priority. This allowed us and the Soviets to get on with the relatively trivial business of teasing, annoying and horsing around with each other by other means, such as those you mentioned and others I meant to include in "etc."

There is no MAD in the case AQ. Therefore, it seems to me that the "other means" become terribly important in this case--much, much more important than they were in our conflict with the Soviets. Therefore, they need correspondingly deep thought...does that make sense?

Given the experience of the ongoing War on Drugs and the attempt to stem the tide of illegal immigration, I have almost zero confidence in our ability to prevent the entry of materials and people into the US by the current means we deploy against this. So it seems to me that deep thinking about those two problems is necessary...and that they are extremely difficult subgoals to satisfy, in an effective strategy against WMD on US soil. This needs to be thought out very carefully, I think, in order to spell out a credible containment strategy. I claim no originality here--several people have been pointing out how vulnerable our ports are for many years (and I live in one of the biggest, with lots of rich targets as well)--but a really convincing containment strategy will need to pay lots of attention to that. I think this part of a containment strategy will have to constantly adapt and will be extremely expensive, but I don't see any way around that.

I also suspect we'll have to vastly expand our capabilities for intelligence and covert operations--and be willing to use the latter in ways that won't make us a lot of friends, at least some of the time. In this sense, I rather doubt that maintaining the moral high ground will be consistent with what needs to be done to prevent catastrophic outcomes.

[Tacitus]

Personally, this idea appeals to me because I think the roots of the terrorist offensive is not a lack of democracy or, as some contend, misguided Americans policies, but rather a pathological, subrational combination of perceived victimization, a warped hypersensitive sense of justice and honor, and a desire for death on the part of some segment of Islamic societies. Even though it is a minority position, we cannot alter it. As with the Cold War, all we can do is contain it until it burns out.

I'd add another motive. There is a self-confessed theological motive here among the bombers, or at least some of them. Isn't there the duty of jihad to convert or kill the infidel? It beats me how democracy in Mesopotamia is going to deter or contain that kind of thinking.

This notion of keeping 100,000+ soldiers in Iraq just seems ill-suited to me to combat this kind of enemy. It is often stated that if we don't "fight them there, they will come over here." If they have a theological motive, they intend to come over here (or various European cities), no matter if we have troops in Iraq, or not. They might even wise up to the notion that knocking off other Muslims in Iraq isn't really furthering their stated pan-Islamic cause, and decide to refocus attacks over here, anyway.

It seems to me that you have to infiltrate these groups, or at least get good enough intelligence to identify who they are and then raid them. Obviously, that is going to be difficult. The best defense for the good folks of Cleveland against a terrorist WMD attack might end up being the cops on the beat and locals there identifying suspicious activity before they can set off a car bomb or whatever, rather than some platoon walking the streets of Ramadi.

We shall see...

[Nat Wilcox]

If not, and this is so important (and I think it is), maybe a thread devoted to it would be a good idea. It's evident that people are dissatisfied with the current policies. In the sciences you sometimes hear that "You don't kill a theory with mere facts--you also need an alternative theory." Why don't all you very smart folks develop this alternative in detail?...Make for good reading.

[slapout9]

A lot of my earlier posts have been on this subject and one of the most important is switching our analysis frameworks. Ends,Ways and Means needs to change to the LE framework of Motive,Methods and Opportunity. Especially the motive. I wrote some time back that when you understand the motive you may have to face the fact that you cannot change it. Which is why trying force western style democracy on a Muslim country is the worst thing you could do. The dedicated hard core are like serial killers and there are basically two options for them, death or life imprisonment, you are not going to change these people.

The larger population is an opportunity that we have never exploited by finding common ground in both our legal systems. The payment of Blood money is close in concept to what we call wrongfull death, which is settled by money not blood shed.

Containment is close to what was used in LE some years ago. It was related to the concept of zoning laws that we have today. It can be very effect but it is manpower intensive, not technology oriented.

[Nat Wilcox]

help out this doddering old bystander and tell me what "LE" stands for in this context (I am pretty sure it doesn't mean "less than or equal to"...)

[slapout9]

Law Enforcement.

[SteveMetz]

Isn't there the duty of jihad to convert or kill the infidel?

Bin Laden and other extremists contend so, but the vast majority of Muslims (including clerics) do not feel so. The extremists pull passages out of the Koran that most Muslims believe were implorations for Mohammed's campaigns against Mecca, not general rules. After all, it is possible to pull things out of the Old Testament about killing heretics and stoning adulterers, and few Christians see those as general rules.

My concern is that when we treat extreme positions in Islam as main stream, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If mainstream Muslims feels that the West believes that they seek to convert or kill all non-Muslims, there is no ground for cooperation. Then the manichean view of Muslim and Christian extremists becomes reality.

[Tom Odom]

Bin Laden and other extremists contend so, but the vast majority of Muslims (including clerics) do not feel so. The extremists pull passages out of the Koran that most Muslims believe were implorations for Mohammed's campaigns against Mecca, not general rules. After all, it is possible to pull things out of the Old Testament about killing heretics and stoning adulterers, and few Christians see those as general rules.

My concern is that when we treat extreme positions in Islam as main stream, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If mainstream Muslims feels that the West believes that they seek to convert or kill all non-Muslims, there is no ground for cooperation. Then the manichean view of Muslim and Christian extremists becomes reality.

Being a southern boy near Cajun and near purebred Redneck (some Okie Cheorkee got in there) I would have to say I agree 200 %

Tom

[Nat Wilcox]

A lot of my earlier posts have been on this subject and one of the most important is switching our analysis frameworks. Ends,Ways and Means needs to change to the LE framework of Motive,Methods and Opportunity. Especially the motive. I wrote some time back that when you understand the motive you may have to face the fact that you cannot change it. Which is why trying force western style democracy on a Muslim country is the worst thing you could do. The dedicated hard core are like serial killers and there are basically two options for them, death or life imprisonment, you are not going to change these people.

The larger population is an opportunity that we have never exploited by finding common ground in both our legal systems. The payment of Blood money is close in concept to what we call wrongfull death, which is settled by money not blood shed.

Containment is close to what was used in LE some years ago. It was related to the concept of zoning laws that we have today. It can be very effect but it is manpower intensive, not technology oriented.

I'm with you here, in part. I would phrase our chief problem as more crime prevention, however, than law enforcement per se (though perhaps you include prevention under enforcement). It's clear to me that neither the deterrence nor retribution goals of much law enforcement are interesting here...as you say yourself, the hardcore guys aren't going to be deterred by anything, being willing to immolate themselves to kill my cats. And I'm not interested in vaporizing Medina in retribution for Cleveland. I'm sure you agree.

So, do you mean using the techniques or means of law enforcement in the service of prevention? Like infiltrating gangs, mafias and drug cartels for the purpose of prevention? I guess this is what you must mean, at least in part. Care to elaborate?

And the comment about "zoning laws" just blew right by me. What did you have in mind there?

[RJO]

Originally Posted by RJO:
Setting aside the overall ideological leadership of an insurgent movement, is it possible to conceive the individual actors (like these doctors) more more along the lines of how we think of individual mass murderers, rather than as political ideologues themselves? In other words, if social conditions are so disrupted that berserkers are being generated within a society in large numbers, all it takes is an ideologue to point them all in the same direction.

For example, here is an interpretation of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech mass murderer, that sees him as a PTSD-generated berserker:

http://collegiateway.org/news/2007-virginia-tech

Supposed you had 50 of these, and could point them all in the same direction. It would make quite a suicide army.


What you suggest, I think, totally undercuts President Bush's strategy against terrorism. The central assumption of that strategy is that frustration born of the the lack of political and economic opportunity generates terrorists. So if you take that away through democratization, to stop or staunch the flow of terrorists.

But if the flow of terrorists is simply a reflection of a pathology that we can do nothing about, then democratization is irrelevant (thus taking away the very last shred of justification for the Iraq intervention). The only effective strategy would be aggressive defense (which might include very strict controls on people from Islamic countries who want to come to the West, and some sort of punishment for those who glorify terrorists, perhaps economic and political sanctions against government officials, media, family members, etc).

Personally, this idea appeals to me because I think the roots of the terrorist offensive is not a lack of democracy or, as some contend, misguided Americans policies, but rather a pathological, subrational combination of perceived victimization, a warped hypersensitive sense of justice and honor, and a desire for death on the part of some segment of Islamic societies. Even though it is a minority position, we cannot alter it. As with the Cold War, all we can do is contain it until it burns out.

I don't think my argument necessarily undercuts the democratization strategy. I should also acknowledge that my thinking on this is strongly influenced by Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684813211/ref=nosim/collegiateway).

It's possible to accept the notion that an important root cause of terrorism is a sense of victimization and a sense of the abuse of justice and honor (which is a central theme of Shay's work, since the Iliad opens with an aborted fragging of a commanding officer who violated a subordinate's sense of justice), while at the same time seeing democratization and its consequences as a tool to get at those root causes. Following the metaphor of "letting it burn out" -- for that approach to work, you have to make sure there aren't additional sources of ignition that will restart the fire at another spot. It may be that the individual cases have to burn themselves out, but democratization (or more generally, increasing the levels of justice within a society) dampen things down overall and prevent reignition in the minds of other individuals. That permits a shift from a large-scale military strategy to an individually-focused law enforcement strategy. (Occasional mass murderers will always be with us, but organized groups of them need not be.)

[SteveMetz]

Being a southern boy near Cajun and near purebred Redneck (some Okie Cheorkee got in there) I would have to say I agree 200 %

Tom

What has been a real eye opener for me is that I've spent quite a bit of time over the past few years in the "Small Talk" discussion board of http://southcarolina.rivals.com/forum.asp. It was a huge education. I came to realize that I've spent almost all my entire life around military officers, academics, and various and sundry DC wonks. Even though I grew up in a blue collar family in small towns in West Virginia and South Carolina, I'd lost touch with the man-in-the-street perspective. Small Talk has helped educate me.

Two things in particular have struck me. One is the pervasiveness of what I call "talk radio" syndrome. I'd greatly underestimated how many people form their political opinions almost entirely from political talk radio. As a result, they can only think in insults and caricatures. Logic and evidence are irrelevant; only congruence with the appropriate ideology matters. There is no "agreeing to disagree"--you are either right-thinking or evil. One cannot be a moderate; their political universe consist entirely of "conservatives" and "liberals." Yet these people vote.

I used to amuse myself by doing things to intentionally make their heads explode. The right wing ones, for instance, were always railing against the "liberal bias" of "the media." I'd ask, "What should be done about it?" Their answer was that "someone" should make them be "more balanced" [Fox News was their model!] I'd then point out that the media consists of businesses. They were advocated manipulating the market for political reasons which was a very "liberal" and "anti-conservative" position. The discussion usually died off at that point.

Second is the influence--at least in the South--of what I called evangelical extremism. These are the people who feel we have entered an end-of-time conflagration between Christians and non-Christians (which, depending on the time of day, seems to be either Muslims or secular liberals). At first I just scoffed at them until I began to realize how many there are and how much political influence they have.

[SteveMetz]

I don't think my argument necessarily undercuts the democratization strategy. I should also acknowledge that my thinking on this is strongly influenced by Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684813211/ref=nosim/collegiateway).

It's possible to accept the notion that an important root cause of terrorism is a sense of victimization and a sense of the abuse of justice and honor (which is a central theme of Shay's work, since the Iliad opens with an aborted fragging of a commanding officer who violated a subordinate's sense of justice), while at the same time seeing democratization and its consequences as a tool to get at those root causes. Following the metaphor of "letting it burn out" -- for that approach to work, you have to make sure there aren't additional sources of ignition that will restart the fire at another spot. It may be that the individual cases have to burn themselves out, but democratization (or more generally, increasing the levels of justice within a society) dampen things down overall and prevent reignition in the minds of other individuals. That permits a shift from a large-scale military strategy to an individually-focused law enforcement strategy. (Occasional mass murderers will always be with us, but organized groups of them need not be.)

But the thing is that democracy in the Islamic world seems to invariably take a populist form that doesn't vent off the perception of victimization and scape goating, it just makes it even more legitimate. Heck, democracy in the UK and Spain doesn't seem to stop the rise of Islamic terrorism.

I believe the root cause of Islamic extremism is that Islamic culture (which includes but is not the same as Islam as a religion) cannot create stable states which can be economically, technologically, and socially competitive in the 21st century. But, to the extremists and those sympathetic to them, admitting this would be admitting that their religion is flawed. So, instead of blaming the real causes of their poverty, weakness, and instability, they seek scapegoats. And the West is it.

To me this means that Islamic democracies, assuming they retain the dysfunctional elements of Islamic culture, are still going to be uncompetitive, weak, and unstable. So they're still going to seek scapegoats. If anything, a democracy will be less effective than dictators like Musharaff, Mubarak, and the Sauds at clamping down on this.

I believe promoting democracy is a good thing in itself. I think it will have no effect on Islamic extremism.

[Tacitus]

Second is the influence--at least in the South--of what I called evangelical extremism. These are the people who feel we have entered an end-of-time conflagration between Christians and non-Christians (which, depending on the time of day, seems to be either Muslims or secular liberals). At first I just scoffed at them until I began to realize how many there are and how much political influence they have.

This is not a new phenomenon, by any means. I remember when I was a kid back in the 70s hearing various relatives of mine discussing Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth". They were convinced, along with Hal, that the Book of Revelation said that the world would end in a military confrontation with the atheistic and communistic USSR. This sort of thinking has merely been updated with the times, replacing the USSR with some Islamic or United Nations bogeyman. (See the phenomenal publishing figures for the "Left Behind" series, if anyone doubts how widespread it is.)

I had a co-worker tell me a couple of years ago that Saddam Hussein, himself, could be the antichrist. After he was hanged, he decided the Antichrist must be the head of the EU, the UN or even the Pope, himself. He also doesn't believe that members of the Roman Catholic church are actually Christians, at all.

This may be shocking stuff to any of you small war thinkers outside of Dixie, but I can assure you that it is pretty typical stuff in your typical evangelical Southern protestant church. Around here, that pretty much means ANY church that is not Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, or Unitarian.

I think alot of people are vaguely aware that there is this group of people who have these beliefs. But they mistakenly feel it is just a handful of folks, perhaps because they don't personally know them. I got news for them, this is mainstream, man-on-the-street stuff down here. It will be interesting to see who can attract this vote in the coming GOP primaries down South, since they have basically taken over the GOP at the local level. At least around here they have, maybe not where you are.

[SteveMetz]

I had a co-worker tell me a couple of years ago that Saddam Hussein, himself, could be the antichrist. After he was hanged, he decided the Antichrist must be the head of the EU, the UN or even the Pope, himself. He also doesn't believe that members of the Roman Catholic church are actually Christians, at all.


Now that's just silly talk. Everyone knows that Larry King is the antichrist.

[Dr Jack]

I agree with Tacitus; I think many would be surprised with underlying emphasis on end times (eschatology) in much of America and how this impacts our national policies. Our support for Israel and the commitment to their national survival has a lot to do with how many Americans think about Armageddon and the conditions that have to be set in order for this to happen.

[slapout9]

Nat,
Yes I include prevention under Law Enforcement. As an example in most states you can be arrested for making the statements that many terrorist make. It usually falls under the category of Harassing or Threatening Communications. If it continues you will usually end in the Stalking category which is most definitely terrorist behavior and is usually a felony which means you will do some serious prison time for that.

You were correct in your assumption that we should target terrorist leadership and extremest as opposed to classifying a whole religion as extreme.

Zoning laws are one of the LE successes that you don't here about much. For example in Alabama if you are arrested near a school,church for selling drugs you automatically incur what they call an enhanced penalty. You have mandatory jail time for a longer period. Zoning laws can also be used to prevent crimes because of the usage restrictions placed on certain areas and structures. police officers can get pretty creative when it comes to their enforcement. I have had first hand experience with this and have talked to other officers at conventions about these types of activities. Because they are usually civil matters with heavy fines you don't here much about it, but are very effective. Similar to the idea of how they got Capone for Income tax evasion.

"Knock and talk" operations were so unbelievablely effective that our local DA made them so restrictive that they were finally stopped for most situations. Knock and Talk in the LE world is a lot different that how you may have heard of it being used in Iraq. Hope this has cleared some things up.

[Tom Odom]

I agree with Tacitus; I think many would be surprised with underlying emphasis on end times (eschatology) in much of American and how this impacts our national policies. Our support for Israel and the commitment to their national survival has a lot to do with how many Americans think about Armageddon and the conditions that have to be set in order for this to happen.

One of the more bizarre aspects of life as UN Military Observer in southern Lebanon was getting Middle East Television beamed in from Jerusalem and funded by the 700 Club with programming that included, of course, the 700 Club, Monday Night Football with over dubbed commentary (not translation) in Arabic by folks who had no clue what they were watching, and professional wrestling. And good ole Pat Robertson claimed all of this was good therapy for a country torn by religious schisms.

Tom

[Bill Moore]

Democracy works in the U.S. to some degree because our education system worked (past tense). Still the majority of people are motivated by emotions not rational thinking (look at the stock market for an example). The uneducated masses are easily manipulated by the snake oil salesmen in religious garb, and we want to spread democracy to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc.? If our extreme Christian right took over the government they would look for targets to nuke for Jesus, and these luny tunes are our neighbors who are exposed to logical arguments to damper their enthusiasm and belief that they personally know what God wants, yet they're still insane. Do we really want democracy in Pakistan? I know the policy makers get out of the beltway, but I think their travels are deceptively safe, so they fall into that category, "there are none so blind as those who refuse to see".

[RJO]

One of the more bizarre aspects of life as UN Military Observer in southern Lebanon was getting Middle East Television beamed in from Jerusalem and funded by the 700 Club with programming that included, of course, the 700 Club....

Tom

It should hardly come as a surprise, then, if many people in the Arab world think America is engaging in a New Christian Crusade to wipe out Islam.

Have any prominent public figures suggested that people like Pat Robertson, through these broadcasts, are doing as much to fuel radical Islam as bin Laden is with his cassette tapes smuggled out of Waziristan?

Bob

[SteveMetz]

It should hardly come as a surprise, then, if many people in the Arab world think America is engaging in a New Christian Crusade to wipe out Islam.

Have any prominent public figures suggested that people like Pat Robertson, through these broadcasts, are doing as much to fuel radical Islam as bin Laden is with his cassette tapes smuggled out of Waziristan?

Bob

Personally I think that anything we do or say only accounts for a minuscule portion of the belief that the West, particularly the United States, seeks to wipe out Islam. I believe the true reasons for the popularity of this idea lie within Islam, not outside it, so there's very little we can do to change it. This ethos of victimization is a convenient way to avoid dealing with a flawed culture.

[slapout9]

Steve Metz, I think that you are 100% correct on that. which is exactly why I think the LE framework of Motives, Methods, and Opportunity makes a lot more Strategic sense. Instead of starting with what we want(our Ends) it starts out by understanding your opponent his Motive. That will guide in understanding his Methods and the Opportunities he seeks (mostly time and location). And when you understand that you can figure out a counter for it.

[Dr Jack]

...I think the LE framework of Motives, Methods, and Opportunity makes a lot more Strategic sense. Instead of starting with what we want(our Ends) it starts out by understanding your opponent his Motive. That will guide in understanding his Methods and the Opportunities he seeks (mostly time and location). And when you understand that you can figure out a counter for it.

When I first read this last night, I was intrigued by this approach -- and after reflection, this appears to be close to how NSC-68 was developed as the Cold War approach to countering Soviet aggression. George Kennan's "long telegram" follows a similar approach by first describing in detail the motives of the Soviet Union after World War II, as well as some of the methods:


(1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.
(2) Background of this outlook
(3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.
(4) Its projection on unofficial level.
(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

Interestingly, this morning's Washington Post has an article about NSC-68 as a potential template for today (article requires subscription):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070800921.html?sub=AR


Sixty years ago, America faced a new and dangerous global challenge, the expansionist aims of Soviet communism. This threat arose rather suddenly, and it was clear that it could portend a long struggle.

[SteveMetz]

When I first read this last night, I was intrigued by this approach -- and after reflection, this appears to be close to how NSC-68 was developed as the Cold War approach to countering Soviet aggression. George Kennan's "long telegram" follows a similar approach by first describing in detail the motives of the Soviet Union after World War II, as well as some of the methods:



http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

Interestingly, this morning's Washington Post has an article about NSC-68 as a potential template for today (article requires subscription):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/08/AR2007070800921.html?sub=AR

On the NSC 68 comparison, here's the introduction to an unpublished article I wrote last winter:

When George Kennan published “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1947 the Cold War was already two years old, but Americans still struggled to understand it. Kennan provided an epiphany, both explaining the enemy and suggesting a logical response. This conceptual foundation was adjusted several years later in the report known as NSC-68, drafted by a team from the departments of State and Defense led by Paul Nitze. Containment retained its central place but it was as much a military as a political effort reflecting ongoing changes in the global security environment. Thus the pattern was set: throughout the course of the Cold War, debate allowed periodic refinement of American strategy.

Today the United States has been locked in another global conflict for more than five years. This time there was little discussion before arriving at a strategy. President Bush literally and figuratively came down from the mountain in the weeks after September 11 with an explanation and a plan of action. As time passed the shortcomings of the initial conceptualization—the “global war on terror”—became clear. While useful for mobilizing public support, the notion of making war on a tactic or phenomenon did not provide the coherence that the U.S. military and other elements of the government needed. Now the conflict has been recast as “the long war,” a phrase attributed to planners from the U.S. military's Central Command. The new phrasing, though, is useful but not sufficient. We know that the conflict is linked to terrorism. We know that it is long. But coherent strategy requires more than that. It is time to reinvigorate debate over the most basic elements of the conflict and of the appropriate American response to it. Put simply, the United States again must refine the conceptual framework of its grand strategy.

[goesh]

"the United States again must refine the conceptual framework of its grand strategy." (S.Metz)

I don't think this can be accomplished as long as the common person does not feel directly threatened by radical Islam. Granted, there is considerable suspicion, distrust, smoldering resentment and some fear amongst the people but IMO, the average person does not feel directly threatened. The threat factor after 9/11 quickly subsided. I think the 'slow bleed' strategic interests of radical Islam are best served by not again directly attacking America via ramming cars into airports and suiciders detonating in some crowded area. If religion is but the trappings of facists interested in power and control only, which many assert the Bin Ladens and Zawahiris really are, then their critical interests lie in the US not redefining its conceptual framework. I think they are quite comfortable in believing the common Muslim is not very susceptible to the counter-message(s) of the West. Their attrition factor is in full force in Afghan and Iraq and nothing really threatens them except the possibility of a real clash of cultures. I for one certainly don't want that but this fear of real cultural clash seems to somehow be playing into their hands.

[Armchairguy]

"My concern is that when we treat extreme positions in Islam as main stream, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If mainstream Muslims feels that the West believes that they seek to convert or kill all non-Muslims, there is no ground for cooperation. Then the manichean view of Muslim and Christian extremists becomes reality."

I'm going a bit off topic, but I think that a large part of AQs strategy over and over has been divide and conquer. Putting moderate Muslims and Christians into extremist camps is definitely part of it. AQ has shown a real knack for seeing which countries are most loss averse and/or readying for an election and then targeting the nation or its soldiers to leverage the greatest effect for a minimal effort.

Another way they operate is to try to use distraction. Whenever AQ is really under pressure somewhere they launch an attack (usually through proxies) to take off the pressure. An early example of this would be in 2001 as Afghanistan was getting tight for them, there was a flurry of Kashmir incidents and terrorist attacks in India pushing India and Pakistan to the brink.
I think if we look a bit closer at the timing of attacks around the world in conjunction with our own operations we might have a good yardstick for when we are actually doing some real damage.

[goesh]

Time is on AQ's side, always has been, and I think their strategic interest will soon focus primarily on Israel and remain concentrated there for several years. They've gained enough traction via our attrition from a 2 front war to zero in on Israel full force.

[Armchairguy]

Just noticed the recent bombings in Hyderabad seem to be another AQ attempt to distract us. I'm guessing we must be doing some things right in Afghanistan and they feel like their b**ls are in a vise.