Assessing Al-Qaeda (merged thread)

[Bob's World]

Bill,

It is not nonsense. You calling someone else's professional, informed and supported position nonsense does not make it nonsense.

I would offer that you are looking more at the surface facts of a particular case whereas I am looking more at the fundamental nature of conflict. That does not make your position "nonsense," it is just a position on a different aspect of the problem.

Religion has always been a powerful tool of governance, equally to the challenge of governance. Why? Because it works. Many would argue that this is why religion was invented to begin with. I suspect that more accurately, political leaders have long recognized the value and have hi-jacked it for their own far more earthly purposes since the very beginning.

So no, I am not "looking at the wrong forest" - I am simply looking beyond the "what" and seeking to appreciate the "why."

But, since there are no governance problems in the places where AQ has been most effective, I will stand down.

Since the governments of those regions do not discriminate against the population groups that AQ has been leveraging, I will stand down.

Since the governments of the region allow open debate of governance and provide effective mechanisms within the context of their respective cultures to allow legal and peaceful evolution of governance I will stand down.

But of course none of those things are true about the governance in this hotly contested region where AQ operates. And as I stated clearly, Islam affects everything in that region and is a cornerstone of all governance.

But this isn't about how people feel about how religion is affecting their lives, it is about how they feel about how governance is affecting their lives.

My last point is that revolution is rarely, if ever, to bring better governance. Revolution is to challenge governance widely perceived as intolerable with no legal means of redress. For this reason revolutionary energy is often hi-jacked by locals with self-serving purposes; and equally by foreigners with self-serving purposes. This is the nature of revolution.

We focus too much on the hi-jackers; the tactics they employ, and the messages they use. We would be better served by focusing on understanding the perspectives of the populations being leveraged, and dealing with the systems of governance fueling those perspectives through their actions.

The problem is that one of the most important systems of governance fueling this is our own.

Most of the other systems of governance fueling this are our allies or partners.

So we do what governments faced with revolution typically do - we set out to put down those who dare to challenge the status quo and hope to get back to business as usual. The people are tired of business as usual, and AQ gets that very well and is tapping into that energy to advance their own agenda.

And I have never said this is about good or evil, or about effective or ineffective. It is about how people feel, and who they blame. And many are not putting up with it any more and they are blaming their governments at home and those who enable those governments to ignore their pleas for reasonable change. When governments are unreasonable, then ultimately the people will become unreasonable as well.