Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
It certainly bears watching but if this slate of buffoons in UK is any indication, we're dealing with the terrorism "D" team at this point.

What leaves me eternally perplexed is exactly what those guys are thinking. I'd love to talk to them and say, "Please connect the dots between murdering people on the streets and the conversion of the English to Islam and the adoption of sharia law." Do they really think millions of English are going to say, "Yowzee--a religion whose adherents murder women and children. Sign me up for that!"?
Excelent point; however I think it is more instructive to view the use of islamic based ideologies to motivate Muslim populaces today in a similar light as communist ideologies used to motivate populaces in SEA in the sixties that were striving to throw off colonial governments. Or perhaps more accurately, the protestant christian ideologies that were used to throw off the Catholic governance of the Holy Roman Empire over Europe a few years back.

While religion is at the root of the ideology in two of the cases, in all of the cases the role of ideology is to motivate the populace to support the insurgency, while at the same time taking a position that the counterinsurgent is either unable or unwilling to co-opt or concede.

We get too focused on the message, and lose sight of the purpose and effect. It does not matter if it is an accurate portrayal if Islam, what matters is that it is effective in getting people to join the cause. What we must do is break down the message, and where we can, agree or co-opt the platform as our own. We must then, not attack the message, but instead compete a more effective message in that same marketplace of ideas.

You don't buy Toyotas over Chevys because Toyota runs a major ad campaign attacking Chevy. You buy Toyotas because they build a better product and sell the benefits of buying that product.

So, are we building a better product and if so, are we selling it?

I believe the populace-based ideology crafted by our founding fathers is a piece of timeless genius. I recommend we step back from some current concepts of what America is and go back to our roots, and start selling that.