Quote Originally Posted by selil View Post
Sageman v. Hoffman. I think they are arguing over nuts and berries while the forrest burns down around them. I've read two of Sagemans books, seen his lecture on "Leaderless Jihad", and I've read Hoffmans book too. It is a perspective and point of view difference. Quite silly the vitrol that has been tossed around but not unusual in academia. Neither author is really providing actionable base theory. If I could get a select dozen of the SWC around a table for a day we could exit with actionable plans to wipe AQ off the face of the earth. Problems v. Solutions.

ETA: Yes I know that sounds grandiose, but ... After reading several dozen books on terrorism I was struck by the epiphany that.... They all discuss the problems and not even ONE discusses the solutions. Now I'm grumbling.
Sam

I worked aniti-terror in the early 90s and soon discovered that it was a cottage industry on the cusp of going global, meaning that we did not do solutions. We did threats. Threats by definition had to grow and they always had to be a surprise. Therefore we could only speculate about those threats and how they were growing around us.

This is very remmiscent of that experience. It is intellectual "rice bowl" stuff.

Tom