Islam, Catholisism, religion, and conflict

[Bob's World]

In populace-based, revolutionary conflicts like we are seeing across the greater Middle East in the current decade, "understanding why 'they' fight" is interesting; but I believe it is in understanding why the broader population those fighters rely upon support the fight that is key.

There are many reasons why young men fight. There are many reasons that leaders of fighting organizations use in their public messaging. But these are the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of the mass behind these types of movements are an aggrieved segment of the population, that like an iceberg, is typically below the surface, not seen, and not well understood.

This is not dissimilar to recognizing that understanding why young men join the Marine Corps is very different than why our national leaders decide to employ the Marine Corps in combat - which in turn is very different than why our nation has a Marine Corps.

Not a perfect analogy, but point is that there are many layers to these things, and the layers that are the most visible and vocal are not of necessity the layers that are the most important to understand and address to move a situation toward some degree of durable stability.

[Bill Moore]

In populace-based, revolutionary conflicts like we are seeing across the greater Middle East in the current decade, "understanding why 'they' fight" is interesting; but I believe it is in understanding why the broader population those fighters rely upon support the fight that is key.

There are many reasons why young men fight. There are many reasons that leaders of fighting organizations use in their public messaging. But these are the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of the mass behind these types of movements are an aggrieved segment of the population, that like an iceberg, is typically below the surface, not seen, and not well understood.

This is not dissimilar to recognizing that understanding why young men join the Marine Corps is very different than why our national leaders decide to employ the Marine Corps in combat - which in turn is very different than why our nation has a Marine Corps.

Not a perfect analogy, but point is that there are many layers to these things, and the layers that are the most visible and vocal are not of necessity the layers that are the most important to understand and address to move a situation toward some degree of durable stability.

I agree up to a point. I'm not a huge fan of the center of gravity concept, especially Dr. Strange's proposal there is only one COG, and your approach sounds as though you have defined governance/government as the COG, and if we fix government/governance (again, how do we do that?) we will somehow achieve our ends against al-Qaeda.

While agreeing with your general argument about it being multilayered, I probably diverge from your view because I think we have to address all the layers to varying degrees (situation dependent). Where there are major insurgencies, it is unlikely the masses of locals that join that fight are entirely or even primarily motivated by religion. The foreign fighters? Unknown, but at least it is a possibility. Those that crashed planes into the WTC and the Pentagon, they were motivated by religion. The underwear bomber religion, etc. These networks are cleanly divided or easily defined, so multilayered is a good description. Within in these layers are some individuals (hundreds of them) that are highly motivated by religion to do us great harm. In the off chance they acquire a weapon of mass destruction they will be inclined to use it against our citizens because they believe they have the religious mandate to do so. We can't ignore religion, and at the same time we can't solely focus on it.

[slapout9]

Which is why the 4gw concept of a moral,mental,and physical level of war is becoming more important than more traditional forms warfare analysis.