Studies on radicalization & comments

[Bob's World]

No, really? Ah hadn't noticed...

Yes, I know we keep coming back to it, but it's an issue at the core of how we're trying to handle the current mess, and I'm not quite willing to let it go.

The idea that foreign fighters represent an insurgent populace at home is something that needs to be examined, and I'm not convinced that it stands up to examination. After all, an abundance of foreign fighters flocked to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets... were they also representatives of an insurgent populace? Fighting the Russians in Afghanistan seems an odd way of expressing discontent with American influence over the homeland. I'm not sure quite why you would say that foreign fighters indicate insurgency on the home front, rather than a relatively small number of young men driven by a potent mix of testosterone, religious fervor, and lack of anything better to do at home... a mix that has sent young men off to fight in wars of dubious purpose many times in the past (the Crusades might be cited as an example).

I agree with Bill, who said what I was trying to say in a good deal fewer words:



Regarding this...



In the case of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, this of course gets us exactly nowhere, because we don't give them any aid and they are not in any way dependent on us. Even if we had leverage, though... how do you think the populace of, say, Saudi Arabia would react if we demanded or even suggested that the Saudis need "a reasonable and certain procedure for the populace to affect changes of governance". I wouldn't expect any appreciation or gratitude. I'd expect them to tell us to mind our own damned business, amid a great deal of suspicion that our intention is to use that mechanism in some devious way to insert of Government that will be subject to our control, a suspicion that AQ will be all to eager to promote and exploit. AQ, after all, is agitating for more despotism, not less.

Whatever our actual intentions, I suspect that the policy you suggest will be perceived, even among its intended beneficiaries, as arrogant imposition, self-interested meddling, or both.

The notion of "dialogue with the populace" is I think hopelessly simplistic. Many of these populaces are extremely fractured and factionalized, and there is nothing even resembling consensus on who speaks for the populace or what policies are desired. What one faction sees as an irreducible minimum demand may be seen by another as an intolerable provocation. The problem in many cases is not that there is no dialogue, but that the dialogue has devolved into a screaming match, or a shootout.

You mentioned Algeria and Yemen... Algeria has an elected National Assembly with over 20 political parties represented. Yemen has what on paper appears to be a quite admirable set of democratic institutions. Of course these institutions don't work the way anyone would want them to. Your suggestion seems to assume that the Governments in question have the capacity to make things work, but don't choose to do it, and that we can force them to make things work by threatening to reduce aid. I doubt that's going to work, because the sad reality is that they have no idea how to make things work, and neither do we.

In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states I really don't think there's any major popular demand for a mechanism to remove and replace Governments. These are very conservative countries, and there is a pervading fear that establishing such a mechanism would generate intense competition for position, and the result would be chaos. For better or worse, many in that part of the world fear chaos more than they fear despotism.

Certainly there was much discontent in SA during the 90s, driven by the combination of the oil glut and the highly visible US military presence. In many eyes these two phenomena were related: just as Americans tend to blame high oil prices as a conspiracy driven by the Saudis and the oil companies, Saudis tend to blame low oil prices on a conspiracy between Americans and oil companies. Despite prodigious efforts to exploit that discontent, UBL et al were never able to generate anywhere nearly enough support to drive an insurgency. Today the narrative of resentment from those days has dissolved almost completely under a rain of dollars: it's amazing what sloshing a few hundred billion around will do to mellow out a disgruntled populace.

I think it's dangerous to assume that AQ's attacks on us were a reactive phenomenon that was driven by our policies and can be undercut by a change in our policies, and that if we follow that assumption we can easily spend a great deal of effort in policies and actions that are not productive and may be counterproductive.

But as the airwaves and print are full of the same steady drum beat of a majority opinion that has us 8 years into a war, and strategcially worse off and an economy in tatters and a national reputation at arguably an all time low to show for it.

I could be wrong, its theory and I have no metrics to prove my case.

There are strong metrics however that the majority opinion is wrong.

(Oh, and 5 minutes of google research on foreign fighers and and insurgent movements will show you the clear connections that I speak to. And I have NEVER, EVER said we should impose our values on others, quite the contrary. In fact, I beat a steady drum that we need to stop the hubris, and stop trying to control every outcome, and to help enable populaces everywhere to enjoy their own self-determination, and that in so doing we will turn down the heat on a global security environment.)