We need less Chemo and Surgery and more "Voom."

[davidbfpo]

In recent discussions with analysts several have commented on the importance of the local Muslim faith context changing, as the Salaf school gains adherents, so enabling the strand that supports the violent Jihad (Salafism has many strands and may not support the violent Jihad). Islam has changed in many ways recently, notably with external private funding of the more conservative schools of thought - even in places like Kashmir, where a local variant dominated.

I expect someone has written on this private funding, much of it from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia and the possible impact on the violent Jihad. Suggestions or pointers please.

We know that the local context can suddenly and rapidly change when foreign fighters arrive to reinforce an existing insurgency. Of late Mali and Syria have been cited as examples, although the Pakistani reinforcement, if not creation of the Taliban in Afghanistan is the most well known example.

Clint Watts directed attention to a pro-regime, Syrian newspaper report yesterday, so a caveat applies:

published the names of 142 foreign fighters from 18 countries the regime said were killed alongside rebels in Syria's conflict....47 Saudis, 24 Libyans, 10 Tunisians, nine Egyptians, six Qataris and five Lebanese. It also listed 11 Afghans, five Turks, three Chechens, one Chadian and one Azerbaijani.

Link:http://www.thenational.ae/news/world..._campaign=feed

The violent Jihad has a long history before 9/11 and the appearance of AQ. Sometime ago I read a book on them in Imperial India and beyond, they were simply called something else.

[wm]

Bob's World started this thread with a reference to a Panetta speech, a medical metaphor, and the The Cat in the Hat Comes Back. He proceeded to ask "Where is Cat Z and what is 'voom'?"

I think that the starting point and frame of reference are somewhat mistaken. Try reading "Yertle the Turtle" instead:

The eponymous story revolves around a Yertle the Turtle, the king of the pond. Unsatisfied with the stone that serves as his throne, he commands the other turtles to stack themselves beneath him so that he can see further and expand his kingdom. However, the stacked turtles are in pain and Mack, the turtle at the very bottom of the pile, is suffering the most. Mack asks Yertle for a respite, but Yertle just tells him to shut up. Then Yertle decides to expand his kingdom and commands more and more turtles to add to his throne. Mack makes a second request for a respite because the increased weight is now causing extreme pain to the turtles at the bottom of the pile. Again Yertle yells at Mack to shut up. Then Yertle notices the moon rising above him as the night approaches. Furious that something "dares to be higher than Yertle the King", he decides to call for even more turtles in an attempt to rise above it. However, before he can give the command, Mack decides he has had enough. He burps, shaking the stack of turtles and tossing Yertle off into the mud, leaving him "King of the Mud" and freeing the others.

As I'm sure you can see, at least two levels of metaphoric interpretation are available for King Yertle and the pond/mud puddle. Please note that the turtles solved their problem without recourse to outside intervention. The turtles apparently saw no need to ask an eagle (Little Cat Z?) to swoop down from the sky and carry King Yertle away (voom?).

The polar positions taken in the rest of this thread remind me of another Theodor Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss and Theo. LeSieg) story--"The Zax"--while the need to define terms precisely in order to identify the problem and its sources)/solutions is reminiscent of "Too Many Daves" (both in The Sneetches and Other Stories). For those who want to get past the children's literature, I'd suggest a review of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations discussion of family resemblances as a way of trying to solve the problems of applying definitions to achieve identification.

BTW, my simple answer to Bob's initial question is to suggest that maybe the Cat in the Hat with his matroysha (nested Russian Dolls) solutions ought to stop calling in places where he isn't invited.
Or, more tersely, "Cat in the Hat, MYOB!*"

*MYOB =mind your own business

[Bob's World]

There is some truth to the idea that everything we need to know about dealing with these situations "we learned in kindergarden."

But that would be "too simplistic," so we seek the long, complex, expensive, intrusive, violent, controlling solution instead. (and the special equipment, gangs of contracted SMEs, massive defense budgets to go with).

[jmm99]

"the two levels of metaphoric interpretation" are what ?

Regards

Mike

[wm]

"the two levels of metaphoric interpretation" are what ?

Regards

Mike

Level 1: King Yertle is the US (post Truman Doctrine), the Pond is the Earth and the other turtles are the various countries in the world.
Level 2: Yertle is the tyrannical leader of any country/organization with grandiose ambitions, the pond is just that country/organization while the other turtles are various segments of the dominated populace/workforce/organizational membership.

[Dayuhan]

"Cat in the Hat, MYOB!*"

Amen.

"Simple" and "Simplistic" share the same root word, but are on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to understanding some situation.

I applied the term "simplistic" purely to your conclusions about the fall of the Roman, Holy Roman, British, and Soviet empires, and the extent to which those falls were caused by expanded access of populaces to information. I would stand by the observation that both those conclusions and their application to the interface among the US, Muslim Governments, insurgents, and terrorists are simplistic.

Simple is so very incredibly difficult to get to yet so very easy to apply. So often we reject simple solutions because we fear they are so, well, "simple," that they could not possibly have merit. So we instead embrace confused, complex and complicated approaches, because if anything is so hard it must be worthwhile, and if I am not producing the results I intended, that is to be expected, after all, this is "complex."

I've nothing against simple solutions, but they have to presented in clear and specific terms to be implemented. I note that your pescriptions are often cast in extremely general terms.

As to AQ, I don't overrate AQ, but certainly our approach to AQ over the past decade-plus holds them in very high esteem. After all, if everything we have so carefully crafted (from our image of ourselves to our goals for the governance of the Middle East, etc) are all falling about our ankles, it must be some very important, very powerful enemy that is causing that to happen. Right? Wrong.

No, I think AQ is largely a joke, but a very dangerous one who will have the last laugh if we do not stop chasing them in such a complex, complicated, confused manner from pillar to post around the country, with Intel leading our strategy, and military leading our foreign policy, and no nation's sovereignty more important than our own fear of this little band of opportunists.

I don't think AQ is a joke at all: people attacking us and killing our people are never a joke. I don't see any evidence that anything is "falling around our ankles" in the Middle East, and to the extent that anything is, that's not a consequence of anything AQ has done.

We need to strike 80% of the organizations currently on the "terrorist" list off, not add more to. We need to analyze why some group loosely associated with AQ is not part of AQ so the we can address them wisely, not why they are AQ so that we can address them simplistically.

I agree that affiliation to AQ is vastly overestimated and that many organizations described as "AQ linked" probably have little or no impact on us. A better question would be whether any given organization is attacking us or killing our people, or trying to. If they are, that requires a response, whether or not AQ is involved.

But the Pied Piper is a fairly tale, and so is the idea that ideology causes terrorism and insurgency. Governments cause these conditions and they manifest deep withing broad segments of any given populace.

I'm disturbed by the way "terrorism" and "insurgency" are lumped together here, suggesting that they are the same thing, or inextricably linked, or are products of the same causes. Any such contention would require supporting evidence that is not given here. I'd certainly agree that governments are a leading cause of insurgency, but I think the link that you draw between insurgency and the type of terrorism exemplified by AQ is extremely tenuous and requires far more support than you've provided. It's not enough to say that it is so.

Governments are the arctic winds blowing down from the north, and insurgent populaces are like large masses of ice that form and break away from the pack to cause trouble. Our COIN and CT approaches go after that aspect of such masses that floats above the surface, and largely ignores the reality that any effort designed to simply shave ice off of the top or to press the entire mass through brute force beneath the surface, out of sight and mind, is a fool's errand. It can produce temporary effects that look like success, but that are very temporary and symptomatic in nature, and that require constant energy to sustain. So the typically fail, unless the warm waters of good governance work to melt and blend that entire mass into the larger sea.

I can see how this analogy applies to insurgency, but I don't see how that needs to concern us: other than the ones we created with our ham-handed regime changes, there's not an insurgency on the planet that requires a major commitment from us. In fact, I think we need to ditch the "COIN"-driven assumption that insurgency is someting that by definition should be countered, and start looking at it as an opportunity.

How this all relates to "terrorism" in the AQ mold is another question entirely, and again the proposed link between insurgency and AQ-style terrorism is in no way clear.

AQ does not make icebergs, but they work to leverage the destructive energy within and across a sea of such icebergs of popular discontent.

AQ has not successfully leveraged popular discontent with Muslim governments. They've tried, but they've failed. The discontent that they have leveraged stems from broader relations between "the West" and the Islamic world, and the perception that "the West" oppresses Islam. I see no evidence to suggest that the terrorists who struck at the west or the fighters who flocked to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan or the Americans in Iraq were driven by anger at their own governments. Any claim that this was indeed the case needs to be supported with specific evidence and compelling logic. It is not self-evident truth.

As to Muslim governments being broken, no, we did not "break" them any more than a rich, entitled man "breaks" his children when he allows them to act out with massive unearned wealth with few rules and little consequence for bad behavior. We have manipulated the governance of the region for our own purposes and our actions have indeed allowed many regimes of the region to act with growing impunity toward their own populaces.

This contention seems to me paternalistic to the point of being patronizing. These governments are not our children. Certainly we tried to manipulate them; they also tried to manipulate us. Arguably they were the more successful manipulators. These governments did not require our permission or help to oppress their populaces; they did it on their own and of their own free will. We can't make them stop and we never could. I don't see any evidence that we "enabled" them to oppress or that they would have been any less oppressive if we hadn't been there.

We did not break this and we cannot fix this. We are, however, the major player in the mix.

I don't think we are or need to be "the major player in the mix".

We can, however, form a more helpful perspective and be willing to accept that change is happening and that many of these systems will find solutions that work for them that do not necessarily make us happy. It is not about us. We must learn when to simply let people sort things out for themselves, and how to better set red-lines for all parties that work to minimize the violence of change, and how to better mediate from neutral positions, rather than mandate from biased positions we take so often.

I agree for the most part, though I don't think this requires much change: again, these governments do not depend on us for sustenance, we are not keeping them afloat, and we have little or no control over their actions. Setting red lines for all or any parties is something I'm less comfortable with: we have no business setting red lines in the internal affairs of other countries and there's no point at all in setting red lines you're not able or willing to enforce.

It is not for us to mandate, nor do we do so. Neither is mediation any of our business, unless it is requested by all parties to a given conflict. Trying to impose ourselves as a mediator or as self-appointed spokesperson for any group is an excellent and dramatic way to self-destruct.

So, yes, simple is hard. But it is my goal. But what I offer may not be quite to simple yet, I assure you, it is not simplistic.

Mind our own business to the greatest possible extent. Do not unilaterally interfere in the internal affairs of others. Kill those who attack us.

What could be simpler?

[Bob's World]

So, what, pray tell, is a "terrorist" organization?

Terrorism is, after all, merely a tactic. Many insurgents use terrorist tactics. Many governments (to include our own) use terrorist tactics. Many non-state actors with broad political agendas, such as AQ, use terrorist tactics.

Frankly it is a label that bundles all manner of actors based upon a particular tactical approach. I don't find that very helpful, as it does not create a category that frames or suggests a particular family of solution to apply.

Which leads to "counter-terrorism," which equally is a little more than a commitment to seek to disrupt, defeat, deny, etc those individuals and organizations that employ terrorist tactics. It is very symptomatic in nature, and as such does not much consider WHY some organization or individual is acting out, or why they have come to a position where they believe terrorist tactics are their best hope for achieving their goals.

AQ is actually more accurately a non-state political action group that operates outside the rule of law to conduct unconventional warfare to leverage the insurgent populaces of a wide range of primarily Muslim states, employing both guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics, to force change upon the governments of those states and their foreign allies.

This cannot be well addressed by "counter-terrorism." Nor can this be well addressed by the slightly broader concept of "combating-terrorism." What I have long argued is that we we really need is a much broader, more holistic construct of "counter-unconventional warfare." This gets us past an excessive focus on the tactics employed, and instead forces us to think in the context of the actual operations being waged. Much of our jousting in the "3rd world" with the Soviets during the Cold War was essentially counter UW. We did not fly drones to Moscow and attempt to kill soviet leaders with missiles. But we fly drones in the sovereign airspace of many countries where AQ and nationalist insurgents operate and attempt to kill them. I find this odd at best.

But the energy source of any successful UW campaign is an insurgent populace. One cannot go to a stable, satisfied populace and create an insurgency. One can, however, go to place where such conditions are strong, but suppressed, and employ ideology, motivation, arms, leadership, funding, etc to move such a populace to action.

Che Guevara did not understand this fundamental truth of UW. He wanted to ignite a flame of insurgency that would spread and envelope all of South America. He looked at his map and picked a country in the middle of the continent and decided to light his fire there. So he went to Bolivia. But Bolivia had already had a revolution and much of the latent insurgent energy of the populace there was already released. He found few recruits and no sanctuary among the people. He was in short order hunted down and killed. He failed because he did not understand UW and the necessity for conditions of insurgency to fuel any such movement. AQ does not make that mistake, or perhaps they do not understand either, but the fact is there are so many populaces across so many countries in the Middle East with high conditions of insurgency that they cannot hardly help but finding fertile ground for their operations.

If not AQ, it would be someone else. They exploit the opportunity, they do not create the opportunity. I suspect this is why AQ has never resonated nearly as well among the Muslim populaces of the Asia-Pacific Region as they have in those areas that have not had the political revolutions yet such as have occurred there. As you well know, things are not perfect in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cambodia, or the Philippines - but these people and these nations have already thrown off the major aspects of external, illegitimate manipulation and are working toward their own destiny. Small groups and small numbers of individuals are open to help from groups such as AQ, but nearly so much as in the greater Middle East.

This is political. There are simple, fundamental aspects of human nature that provide a framework for understanding these problems. Each is unique in its details, but all are similar in their fundamentals.

[wm]

Terrorism is, after all, merely a tactic.

I'm not so sure that terrorism is always a tactic. Saying so is equivalent to saying that terror activities are being used as a means to some end. I suspect that some terrorist acts are conducted as ends in themselves. I am thinking primarily of some of the things done by so-called anarchists in the later 19th Century, but Timothy McVeigh's exploit in OKC might also fit in that category.

Which leads to "counter-terrorism," which equally is a little more than a commitment to seek to disrupt, defeat, deny, etc those individuals and organizations that employ terrorist tactics. It is very symptomatic in nature, and as such does not much consider WHY some organization or individual is acting out, or why they have come to a position where they believe terrorist tactics are their best hope for achieving their goals.

The above categorization of counter terrrorism seems rather shallow. I see two aspects to counter terrorism. The first includes those actions one might take to prevent terrorist activity. These are what, for example, the Counter IED community calls actions to the left of the boom. Seeking to answer Bob's "why" question above, rightly belongs in this part of counterterrorism. I submit demotivating someone from the commission of terrorist acts is rather hard without knowing what is motivating him or her to engage in them in the first place.
The second aspect of counter terrorism is remediation--restoring order/cleaning up the mess after the terrorist action has occurred. How one does this may well fuel further terrorism. Knocking down the hovel next to the big hole left by the IED in the process of filling the hole, enforcing a curfew to "keep people safe" until we find the terrorists, or just leaving the restoration to the locals' own devices are probably not conducive to achieving the sort of results that the first aspect of counter terrorism is attempting to achieve.

[Steve Blair]

I remain unconvinced that terrorism is "merely" a tactic. As WM points out, there are far too many cases where terrorism is clearly an end and not a mean. Also, there are too many examples of groups that have over time spun into a cycle of violence where the attack is the end in and of itself and the why of the attack no longer has any real meaning.

[Dayuhan]

Which leads to "counter-terrorism," which equally is a little more than a commitment to seek to disrupt, defeat, deny, etc those individuals and organizations that employ terrorist tactics. It is very symptomatic in nature, and as such does not much consider WHY some organization or individual is acting out, or why they have come to a position where they believe terrorist tactics are their best hope for achieving their goals.

Disrupt, defeat, and deny is essential. It may not be the only the only thing that's essential, but it's certainly essential. That doesn't mean you don't have to look at and address the "why", it just means that when someone is actively trying to kill you or your people you stop them first and then worry about why.

One of the problems with efforts to identify and address causes is that they are very much open to erroneous interpretations of causes. One trend we often notice in the US is the tendency to assume that everything happens because of us, and that everyone else simply reacts... thus if AQ wants to kill us that must be a "backlash" against something we did to them, and we can make them stop by not doing whatever that was. I think we underestimate the extent to which AQ is proactive, acting not in response to situations but in an attempt to initiate conditions they believe will be conducive to their growth.

AQ is actually more accurately a non-state political action group that operates outside the rule of law to conduct unconventional warfare to leverage the insurgent populaces of a wide range of primarily Muslim states, employing both guerrilla warfare and terrorist tactics, to force change upon the governments of those states and their foreign allies.

Again we have the contention that AQ primarily exploits an "insurgency" dynamic (built around relationships between Muslim governments and the populaces they govern) rather than a wider perception of direct occupation of Muslim land and direct oppression of Muslims by the West. This contention could use less repetition and more supporting evidence, as it is anything but self-evident.

We did not fly drones to Moscow and attempt to kill soviet leaders with missiles. But we fly drones in the sovereign airspace of many countries where AQ and nationalist insurgents operate and attempt to kill them. I find this odd at best.

Not odd at all. By the time we had effective drones the Soviet Union no longer existed... and there was always that MAD thing going on.

But the energy source of any successful UW campaign is an insurgent populace. One cannot go to a stable, satisfied populace and create an insurgency. One can, however, go to place where such conditions are strong, but suppressed, and employ ideology, motivation, arms, leadership, funding, etc to move such a populace to action.

I don't see the relevance of this, since AQ is not creating an insurgency or moving a populace to action.

I suspect this is why AQ has never resonated nearly as well among the Muslim populaces of the Asia-Pacific Region as they have in those areas that have not had the political revolutions yet such as have occurred there. As you well know, things are not perfect in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Cambodia, or the Philippines - but these people and these nations have already thrown off the major aspects of external, illegitimate manipulation and are working toward their own destiny. Small groups and small numbers of individuals are open to help from groups such as AQ, but nearly so much as in the greater Middle East.

That's certainly not true in, say, The Philippines or Thailand, where "external, illegitimate manipulation" by national governments that Muslim minorities do not accept is alive and well. The limited appeal of AQ in these ideological markets stems more from AQ's preoccupation with pan-Islamic issues and foreign occupations that seem very remote in these parts: Southeast Asian Muslims are for the most part more concerned with their own domestic issues than with what's going in the Middle East or South Asia.

The assumption that those who support AQ do so because they want to change their own governments is inherently suspect and needs to be supported by evidence and reasoning. It's not credible simply because it's said to be so.

[jmm99]

I've said elsewhere that I have a "tortoise mind".

Here is where I got in considering your turtle story (before asking the question you answered).

OK, Yertle ends up in the mud; so, that's OK with Mack who got all the turtles off his back. But, what about all them other turtles - who also ended up in the mud ? Some of them undoubtedly would blame Mack for their now wet and muddy existence - he (that is, his burp) being the proximate physical cause of their condition. Some others of them, looking at the moral aspect, would blame Yertle, the prime mover of the turtle pile for his benefit. My conclusion: both Mack and Yertle ended up as turtle soup after the respective groups of muddy turtles got done with them. Sort of the Louis XVI and Louis St.-Just of their little turtle world.

You know from our other conversations that I don't have a philosophical mind. Now, you know that I don't have a metaphorical mind, either.

Regards

Mike

PS: Not being a complete Luddite, I did order Philosophical Investigations (this is the 2009 Hacker-Schulte German-English version of 592 pp.) - and, to fill out my collection of Works by Whackos, The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Collected Works 1955-1980 with Commentary ("Many Worlds" etc.).

[Bob's World]

I think the discussion on getting to a more sensible perspective on terrorism and counterterroism is an important one.

Just as it is important to understand what is insurgency, role of the energy source of the nature of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed, as well as the role of those external to those dynamics (such as AQ today) who seek to leverage that energy to their own ends.

Dayuhan mentions that there are many Muslim populaces who still have high levels of this "energy," or what I call conditions of insurgency across the Pacific. That is very true and I am very encouraged by recent actions by the government of the Philippines to change their approach in their Bangsamoro program to better address those conditions. But AQ's agents have not had much success with their UW campaign in the Pacific. Indonesia and Malaysia are primarily Muslim, and both of those countries have, since addressing the colonial problem, been largely stable. Are these works in progress? Absolutely, revolution brings change, but typically also brings ineffective and chaotic government. These things take time. I don't think they are very vulnerable to AQ exploitation, nor do I think they need much US help in dealing with the few agents of AQ that do show up, or those small internal movements who still act out within their current systems. Less is more. We need to focus, as we have in the Philippines, on respecting host nation sovereignty and helping to build partner professionalism, rather than capacity.

And while I appreciate that there are some few individuals over the course of history who have created terror for terror's sake, that certainly does not apply to what governments called the "Anarchist" movement of the last century. That was not much different than what is going on now. A movement intended to force government and society to evolve to change with the tremendous changes that were occurring with the rise of the industrial age and electronic communications. Old systems of entitlement were being challenged to make room for rising classes. Did a few wingnuts join the cause? Certainly. I am sure there are a few wingnuts sitting around AQ campfires as well.

But by and large, in the middle of the bell curve, terror is a tactic. Which leads us to CT. We keep trying to expand CT to make it encompass every aspect of the current terrorist problem. In some ways its just a name, so why worry if so many activities that have very little to do with the tactic being countered are bundled together.

For me this is one of those important nuance issues. CT is threat centric. So inevitably when one bundles activities under a CT banner they all have an ultimate purpose of making some particular threat go away. I think that is far too symptomatic, and results in an endless series of short-sighted tactical approaches, driven by intel and led by the threat. I believe we are better served by keeping CT narrowly defined, and then coming up with a better name for a more holistic approach that CT would be a mere sub-set of.

Not only is CT far too symptomatic and threat focused, it also leads us too easily down the slippery slope of getting into actions of questionable legitimacy that are very abusive of the sovereignty of the nations where these CT activities take place. When one appreciates that in most of these places what we are calling "terrorists" is typically 8 parts nationalist insurgent movements and perhaps 2 parts external non-state UW actor one gets to why a different framework is so important. CT approaches tend to conflate those all as one "terrorist" problem, as that facilitates easier targeting. Far better if we take approaches that force is to break these organizations down by the nature of their relationships and by their primary purposes for action, rather than conflate them by their shared tactics, associations and ideology. Once we do that we can begin to out compete AQ for influence with the populace groups these insurgents emerge from, and also get to approaches with the governments involved that support, rather than degrade, perceptions of sovereignty and legitimacy. The lead should be policy and diplomatic approaches designed to help convince key partners they are better served by engaging their populaces more professionally, and by creating vehicles to give the people more effective ways to legally address their grievances within the context of their own cultures. This may mean that some in power will be legally replaced with new leaders, and it will certainly mean that many in power will need to evolve to stay in power.

Or we can just do CT to keep those pesky people in check and sustain governments we think will best support our interests. I don't recommend this. Conditions of insurgency grow for a reason. Insurgent organizations form and act out for a reason. Organizations with regional agendas form and wage UW for a reason. We need to focus more on understanding what those reasons are and how to best encourage or assist as necessary those governments in addressing those reasons. Currently we apply CT, and we attack the symptoms.