Quote Originally Posted by davidbfpo View Post
Bill,

Within the approach taken by the West (a very general phrase) and its allies against the violent jihadists there has been IMHO no over-arching, agreed strategy beyond containment. Pursuing containment for the West and some allies has been guided by reducing the level of violence and fear, so that in time political and other opportunities can be pursued.

For complex reasons our politicians have been unable to identify opportunities, so they have depended on containment, alongside decapitation (HVT), a very heavy dose of military intervention and a pathetic ideological / information response (IIR). Officialdom, here I would refer mainly to the UK government, which insisted there was a coherent working IIR. Then along came the impact of Syria first, then lately ISIS and the flow of foreign fighters which has "pricked the balloon".
I agree we haven't figured it out, nor do I have a strategy in mind to offer that would be acceptable to our perspective liberal governments. Our counter narrative has overly focused on the false belief everyone wants to be like us if they only had the chance. We're perplexed by the growing popularity of ISIS/ISIL when we use mirror analysis. I disagree with Bob's perspective that these movements can be countered by so-called legitimate governance alone. It all comes back to legitimate to who? The thousands of Muslims being murdered in the effected areas likely don't consider these jihadists legitimate.

I do think it takes a network to defeat a network, but not in the simplistic terms this phrase is often used. I also think we need to kill and capture at a higher than we have been doing. That means treating it like the war it is, and dismissing the failed attempt to display these terrorist networks on a chart, and then fool ourselves repeatedly by stating if we only remove these two or three nodes the network will collapse. That runs against the grain of the new American way of war where we still apply effects based operations to no discernible end. We also shoot ourselves in the foot when we promote Arab Springs in countries that quite simply are not ready for democracy. The governments in place admittedly are/were terrible and oppressive, but still better than the alternative. We need to help these societies prepare for democracy (assuming the ruling regimes will allow it, but in most cases it will be viewed as subversion) over time, and in the mean time find ways to convince these governments to govern better. I know it seems like, and may be, rainbows and unicorns, but our current approach isn't working.