Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
Forming A Movement or Green Beret Stuff 2013 style all kinds of edumacated (just invented that word)stuff in this video



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG8qNSQzIOw
This is just politics 201, not Green Beret stuff in my view, though our ranks should understand it. We're generally better off if we don't get involved and let the political evolution unfold. UW has merit in very select cases, but in most cases we're better providing diplomatic, financial and information support to movements we want to see gain steam.

Posted by Bob's World

Well, Dayuhan, most people who we call "terrorists" are not really terrorists at all, but simply are people fed up with the situations of government they are forced to live under.
This is generally true, but it doesn't effectively capture the intent of transnational terrorist groups who have global or regional ambitions that have nothing to with how effective or ineffective the governments are. In Al-Qaeda's case it is the caliphate. When the USSR was promoting communism they exploited bad governance in some cases, but frequently organized resistance in countries that had decent governments. Again it takes less than 15% of the population resisting the government to present an existential threat.

Getting back to your point we have conflated AQ with all acts of terrorism conducted by Muslims. Many are conducted by people feed up with their government or an occupying power and their act has nothing to do with a larger global agenda, but we generally put them in the same category, which demonstrates a dangerous lack of understanding on our part.