Uncle Sam Wants U.S. Muslims to Serve

[SWJED]

27 December Christian Science Monitor - Uncle Sam Wants U.S. Muslims to Serve by Richard Whittle.

As US troops battle Islamic extremists abroad, the Pentagon and the armed forces are reaching out to Muslims at home.

An underlying goal is to interest more Muslims in the military, which needs officers and troops who can speak Arabic and other relevant languages and understand the culture of places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The effort is also part of a larger outreach. Pentagon officials say they are striving for mutual understanding with Muslims at home and abroad and to win their support for US war aims. Among the efforts to attract and retain Muslim cadets...

[SSG Rock]

I'm not sold on this idea. It sounds like another knee jerk reaction, akin to opening military recruiting stations in overseas countries. It is rife with potential, serious issues, all of them obvious.

I agree that putting a muslim face on our efforts in both theaters should be a top priority, but to me it isn't worth taking this risk.

I dislike stereotyping as much as anyone else. But untill we have a deeper understanding of Islam I think it is a brutal fact of reality that all muslims are suspect. It seems to me that we should stick to hiring muslims as Department of Defense Civilians, contractors and the like. I'm reminded of the fragging that the 101st experienced and I wonder, how can a devout muslim justify serving in a western military in operations against fellow muslims? For now, I think that we should keep muslims at arms length.

Once the enemy is inside the wire, the damage they can do is disasterous, and it's hard to root them out.

[tequila]

I'm a bit confused by your "arm's length" comment. Are you suggesting that we should not recruit Muslims for the armed forces? Should we stop those who want to join from joining?

Similar arguments were made in WWII with regards to Japanese-Americans.

[selil]

I'm a bit confused by your "arm's length" comment. Are you suggesting that we should not recruit Muslims for the armed forces? Should we stop those who want to join from joining?

Similar arguments were made in WWII with regards to Japanese-Americans.

You make a basic error in equating Islam religion in any form to Japanese-American internment camps. The internment of Japanese-Americans was a ethnocentric response that had been brewing since the 1800's in California including the despotic practices of utter slavery endured by the Chinese who built the rail roads in the west.

To balance this you have 2000 years of societal religious warfare between various dictates of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In a Hatfield versus McCoy moment the mullahs have basically set the destruction of Western Society as a primary goal of Islam. You'll notice I said "Western Society", and not Christianity. I'm sure many of the mullahs would be more than happy to see the Western Societies become as repressive and totalitarian as they ascribe to. Their fear is our freedom not our religion.

There is little in common between ethnocentrism and classicism, and being protectionist towards a religious servitude to a jihadist ideal.

[Bill Moore]

I see our Muslim population as a potential asset, not a threat. It is a population that we (non-Muslim Americans) can either alienate and turn into a threat, or one that we can treat as fellow Americans. The second option has obvious strategic IO value, because it shows the world we're walking or talk. If we choose the first option, we'll give the Al Qaeda Network an IO weapon the equivalent of a Nuclear weapon. I had the opportunity to work with numerous Muslim Americans since 9/11, and they put their lives on the line like the rest of us for their country. They love their country, and many are looking for an opportunity to serve despite the current wave of bias.

A Muslim America speaking about the virtue of freedom and democracy in Afghanistan or Iraq brings a lot more credibility to the message, than a red headed farm boy from Kansas. Of course there will be risks, and some penetrations. That is the nature of the game, just as the KGB occassionally penetrated our CIA, FBI, and military intelligence, but the risk is definitely worth the potential gain. Just what exactly will they compromise anyway?

The real battlefield isn't physical turf, but it is a battle over minds. In this case we're ultimately talking about the interpretation of the Koran and Islam. If American Muslims could have a moderating effect on the radical Muslim voice, that would have much more strategic impact than deploying additional Brigades into the fray. If we're only going to fight at the physical level, and not use the IO realm, then we're only left with options that much more draconian.

[AdamG]

Did anyone read this September 2004 Chicago Tribune article on the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States?

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=1647

After he joined, he learned the names of other local members.

"I was shocked," he says. "These people had really hid the fact that they were Brotherhood."

He says he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office.

[Eddie Beaver]

I'm not sold on this idea. It sounds like another knee jerk reaction, akin to opening military recruiting stations in overseas countries. It is rife with potential, serious issues, all of them obvious.

I agree that putting a muslim face on our efforts in both theaters should be a top priority, but to me it isn't worth taking this risk.

I dislike stereotyping as much as anyone else. But untill we have a deeper understanding of Islam I think it is a brutal fact of reality that all muslims are suspect. It seems to me that we should stick to hiring muslims as Department of Defense Civilians, contractors and the like. I'm reminded of the fragging that the 101st experienced and I wonder, how can a devout muslim justify serving in a western military in operations against fellow muslims? For now, I think that we should keep muslims at arms length.

Once the enemy is inside the wire, the damage they can do is disasterous, and it's hard to root them out.

Having read Vasili Mitrokhin's "The Sword & The Shield" & "The World Was Going Our Way", I'm reminded of the relative ease by which the KGB "turned" DOD civilians, contractors and "the like". Far more contractors were traitors than soldiers, their sense of honor and camaraderie being far less than that of those in uniform.

This leads me to lean towards Jedburgh's observation of "spy vs. spy" when reading about the numerous "Muslim" traitors. Money, ego & pride, blackmail, these would seem to the real factors, Islam normally just being a "front".

Imagine also the number of potential traitors within our midst working for the Saudis (special relationship and all those petro dollars, combined with the paranoia the Saudis have always had about us only heightened by some of anti-Saudi rhetoric after 9/11).

A "but" regarding that first of methods Jedburgh mentioned: nationalism (and tribal identity of a sort). While underway last summer during the Israeli-Hezbollah mess, I sought out the reactions of three sailors of Lebanese descent I knew of and found them intensely angry with the US and the military for backing Israel, especially once the IDF started hitting Lebanese infrastructure like the airport, bridges and seaports (ostensibly to prevent resupplying of Hezbollah). No Islam involved, all three of them were Christians. IMHO, their sense of betrayal and disapointment at what they viewed as US heavy-handedness could have made them optimal targets for intelligence operators.

The US will of course need to be wary when supporting our "friends" and "allies" actions that take sides in long-running disputes and cause substantial suffering among civilians and/or infrastructure. As a nation of immigrants, the blowback could well be substantial and be from within.

[Bill Moore]

Eddie, good points, and one I want to expand on briefly. One result of globalization is multinational corporations (even Ford claims to be a MN, not a U.S. Company). Some MN companies have extensive political sway in different parts of the world, and if it benefited them to see a particular group win a conflict, even if it wasn't in synch with U.S. interests, would they try to influence the situation to benefit the Company? I think it has been done before, but I need to research it. Assuming they are U.S. citizens, are they traitors, or rather are they part of the new global community, and their primary loyality goes to their Company? Spy versus spy threats are no longer restricted to State versus State. Is this any different than a large Company donating money to both the Democrats and Republicans to cover all their bases? Of course it is, but in concept it isn't.

[SSG Rock]

Eddie, Bill, those are very cogent points. Non-state entities do present a new (well, not that new) wrinkle to the issue. And so does the Interent I'm afraid.

It doesn't take a master spy to do the damage these days, it could be a pimply faced teenager prodigy with an Interent connection and maybe someone to give him some financial benefit?

I guess I need to have faith that our smart guys have covered all of the bases in implementing an active recruiting campaign toward muslims. Maybe I'm jaded, I could be.

Cross our fingers and roll the dice I guess.

[goesh]

Obviously we would be better off in time of extreme need to draft the Amish's horses rather than the men and the same applies to Quakers, Shakers, Mennonites, Hassidic Jews, Hutterites,bonafide Buddhists and the Left in general and Muslims in general. We just can count on many of these folks to do any fighting or directly contribute much to military/intelligence affairs. It's a waste of resources, about like trying to convince couch potato teens to join the football team. Civilian contracting for interpretation duties is another matter though and that maybe should be pushed a bit. There's lots of low key data that needs to be interpreted and collated.