Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
The conflict against some terrorism waged by AQ and its affiliates by the USA, allies and friends is above all an ideological, political competition. AQ plus have via their message been able to mobilise and motivate a tiny minority to wage a violent Jihad. Many others, still a minority, have provided non-lethal support and waged the non-violent Jihad.

Several times AQ's message has been rejected and still is by the vast majority who it is aimed at.

Political mobilisation abroad for the USA, allies and friends can be hard to understand, let alone anticipate. Nor does it come from amassing data, viewing the world via a VDU and relying on the "men in black" aka SOF.
Certainly there's a political and ideological competition going on, but I'm not at all sure it's a competition between us and AQ, or even between us and our allies and AQ. I see it more as an internal competition in the Islamic world, a competition between a more progressive Islam that is willing to coexist with the west (while not subservient to or even totally enamored of Western agendas) and a fundamentalist Islam that sees the West purely as an antagonist. I wouldn't say we have no part in that competition, but we have to accept that we're not one of the competing parties, and we aren't necessarily trying to build our influence. Trying to hard to push our own influence can actually work against us, it feeds the narrative of the fundamentalist and the perception that we are trying to dominate the Islamic world. We're trying to support the competitive position of the groups that are most willing to coexist, even though they are not necessarily friends or allies. That requires subtlety, which has never been our strongest suit. We cannot credibly position ourselves as the champion of the oppressed Muslims, and we will step on our collective putz if we try. We can and should demonstrate that if people attack us we will kill them, but we have to separate that from anything that looks like an attempt to control Muslim countries or impose western ways on Muslims.

The comment that this will be a long fight but it needn't be a long war was perhaps based on an overly civilian view of what war is, but I think that view exists among those who make decisions as well. Call it a war and we immediately conjure up visions of large forces, of campaigns, of overwhelming force. I don't think that's what we need. While this fight - war if you will - will need action, that action will best come from law enforcement in places where there's law, from SF operations where there isn't. Large operations of the sort generally thought of as "war" need to be avoided whenever possible IMO. Even when they succeed they feed that narrative of Westerners conquering Muslims and provide a discrete target for jihadi recruitment and fundraising.