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Fighting & Winning The Global War on Terror (WW IV)

MCG said:
We are at war with the enemy, but there is very much that is criminal about some of the enemy's tactics.   The Hague and Geneva conventions have achieved customary status (meaning even non-signatories are held to be governed by these international laws).

I think you'll have to dig deep to find a point where the Hague and Geneva conventions where applicable to a "4th Generation Foe" like Al Qaeda and the "Islamic Insurgency" (let alone a Middle Eastern state).  We can say that it is customary, but seeing how most folks in that area of town haven't given it de jure (in writing) or de facto (in their actions) recognition means that us placing their actions within this Western construct of international law is a stretch.

Identifying individuals as war or humanitarian law criminals may do noting to win the war.   However, holding the murderers accountable gives us a tool to ensure they are punished and locked away well after the war is over.

I think holding them accountable as murderers is only a facade.  As I've consistenly argued, I believe these folks have declared war in an appropriate manner within their socio-legal system (Fatwas and Jihad) and that they target our civilians and our infrastructure because it is where we are vulnerable - just as we did when we levelled German and Japanese cities with thousand bomber raids.  To me, labelling them criminal (and going after them in such a manner) is like labelling them cowardly; it does nothing but hype up the rhetoric.

To me, the biggest effort should be in undermining them to their own people.  When we call them murderers and convict them of crimes, we only convince ourselves that we are right.  But we won't truely be right until we are victorious and we have destroyed the will of the enemy to resist.  We should put our energy and our policies in pointing out how these people are wrong within their cultural framework (re: Islam) as opposed to ours.  Sounds like a Psyops job rather than a legal one (the latest piece by William Lind discusses this in detail - check it out here).

We did not pretend that the holocaust was legitimate because the Nazis executed it through a war, and we should not pretend the terrorists are employing legitimate means either.

Apples and oranges.  The Nazi's persecuted their own people, while the Islamists have made frequent and clear pronouncments of their intentions to declare war upon the West and to attack us where they can.  Was the 9/11 attack really a case of underhanded duplicity that nobody saw coming, or should it have been plainly freaking obvious that we would get hit considering that they did it in 1993 and didn't quite pull it off....

I'd have to do a little more investigating before I could answer this.   However, just as a thinking point: Was the Soviet approach in Afghanistan similar to the Russian approach in Chechnya? (i.e.: very heavy handed & not much in the way of reconstruction)   Could it be that Soviet failure in Afghanistan was a failure to win a â Å“hearts & mindsâ ? campaign?   Could it be that Soviet failure in Afghanistan was a failure to establish institutions (esp security agencies) that would sustain themsleves?   Could it be that Soviet failure in Afghanistan was because the Afghanis new that the Soviets had no intentions of returning that country to its own independant destiny?

As I've said, our intentions are much better than the Soviets, but I think relying on this might miss the point.  Sure, Soviet brutality did drive many to the Mujihadeen, but they were doing it to drive "atheist invaders" out of their country.  All the "big picture" things don't lead me to believe that our invasion could be seen as anything different than the Soviets, the British, the Indians, the Persians, or Alexander.  3,000 years of recorded history seems to point to these folks as being xenophobic and distrustful of other peoples (especially infidels like us) showing them how to live.

Who knows though - from my understanding, we've moved in upon Afghanistan at a time when it is more fractured than usual.  The oddity of the Taliban rendered apart Afghanistan's historically strong religious and tribal framework, giving us an oppurtunity to exploit by getting in while the Afghans are simply worn out.  Needless to say, I remain suspicious of the end-state of our efforts there....

I think you are over simplifying the meaning behind "terrorist ideology."   It has room for â Å“Jihad against trasgression of dar al-Islam by infidels and apostates,â ? but it also includes identifying the west as responsible for certain hardships or alienation.

I was targetting "terrorist ideology" because I feel it puts them on the level of nutjobs like the Unibomber.  I think that their ideology is far more grounded and complex than that.

The concept of "total war" was evolved describing states fighting states.   Obviously, to apply it to our current enemy (which does not exist as a state) requires some literary license.   Our enemy cannot mobilize the full resources of the state to draft armies and manufacture weapons.   The enemy does not have the firepower to put us into a MAD nuclear battle.   However, make no mistake, the enemy is putting every available resource into this war.   The enemy does not consider the principal of proportionality when determining valid targets.   The enemy is determined to not only destroy our ability to fight, but to destroy our society.

Agreed - some may not see destruction of our way of life as an immediate goal, but success tends to snowball into expectation, and it would be foolhardy to think that many groups within the "Insurgency" would stop at the immediate goals of getting us out of Dar al-Islam.
 
couchcommander said:
Infanteer,

The people we are dealing with are indeed terrorists IMO. This can be seen in the methods they use to acheive their goals, namely employing tactics which are designed more to instill fear in the general population than to do serious damage to their target (our nations as a whole).

The 9/11 attacks or the Madrid bombings didn't do serious damage to their targets?!?   In my opinion, drubbing the economy of an Information Age state and affecting the elections (to your favour) of a liberal democracy seem to be "serious".

These men use terrorist tactics  (I don't deny it) but within a framework of Total War - they see their attacks as neccesary in undercutting our will on the mental and, more importantly, the moral Levels of War.   As such, I put their terrorist attacks on the level of Acts of War (things we've done in the past - the OSS in WWII and Strategic Bombing of enemy cities) rather than on the level of lunatic fringe groups that conduct attacks to generally be a nuisence.

Furthermore, these individuals and groups are pursuing very specific aims, though each groups particular reasons differ, in large part it is to get us out of middle east.

Agree.   Probably best desribed as an "NGO", I view the Islamic Insurgency as a wide array of groups with a wide array of aims - we've been noticing them of late because Osama bin Laden and Co. has done a bang-up job of focusing their attention on the United States and the West in general - this is why we have Algerian, Filipino and Ugandan groups swearing fealty to Al Qaeda and expanding beyond their domestic squabbles.

Finally these groups and individuals are indeed conducting criminals acts (and IMO need to be dealt with accordingly).

See above regarding criminality.

They cannot declare war on a nation state anymore than you or I could (well, we could, but it would be meaningless...).

Why not?   They have (very publically) and they have backed up their words with actions.   I follow the line of people like William Lind and Martin van Crevald that this war is a "4th Generation" one in which the State has lost its monopoly on war - we now have groups, gangs, tribes, and organizations doing so.   The legality of whether they can is moot because they have.

Though there are indeed cases where this "War on Terror" will lead us into "war" (I say "war" because if the US decides, like it has for the last half century, to forgo the requirement of international law to actually declare war before invading a country, then it's difficult for me to call it war proper), ie when we encounter a state that is sponsoring terrorism, like Afghanistan, Iraq, and what will likely end up being Iran, NK, Syria, and a host of other smaller targets; groups that carry out attacks independantly of a state are criminals, however organized and effective they might be. This is because they are indeed committing a crime, both in the state in whch they launch their attack, and in the state from which they operate. They are not a state, I wouldn't even call them a nation. They are not a government. They have no authority to proclaim legislation, govern, declare war, etc.; they are citizens of another state (or sometimes our own) who are breaking laws.

Again, bashing a square peg into a round hole with an inappropriate Western framework of war and legality.   How does the ramrodding all these snazzy conventions tied to Western tradition and the Westphalian model of the State do us any good against a foe who has, since the Hijra of Mohammed, looked to the Qu'ran and the Hadith for guidence (and not to the Peace of Westphalia or the Geneva Conventions)?

As I mentioned above in my response to McG, I'd rather be focussed on undermining their efforts through their reference point and not ours.

3 years in, and Al Qaeda seems to be doing better than Imperial Japan was in 1944.   Let's move on about whether these guys are legally the enemy or just a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.   I'll again fall back to Martin van Crevald and The Transformation of War as a rough guide.

Regarding the notion that we are in a state of total war, sorry MCG but I really have to disagree. IMO Right now we are engaged in a very low intensity conflict with dispersed and heterogenous combatants who are pursuing actions against us on a realtively infrequent basis using a limited set of resources.

As I've said before, the war pervades every facet within all societies involved, is, like the past "total" conflicts is based upon socio-political orders (authoritarian monarchies, fascism, communism, and now fundamentalism), and has dire consequences for failure on either side (in other words, you won't walk away the same if you lose).   There are no "rear areas" and no safe havens; everybody and everything has become a target (including London subways and Saddam Hussein), whether they like it or not.

Intensity is inconsquential - getting nailed with a 707 is just as intense as getting shelled by a Soviet Artilley Brigade (I'd imagine, I've never experience either)

When every single person who believes in this extremist cause picks up a rifle and does everything they possibly can to kill or injure our soldiers and citizens whenever possible using every single resource they can get their hands on, then THEY will be in a state of total war, though I doubt we would be.

If they are willing to go this far and we aren't, then perhaps we are in trouble, are we not?   After all, so many of the threads in these forums are calls for the Canadian Public to wake up and smell the roses...
 
Infanteer said:
I was targetting "terrorist ideology" because I feel it puts them on the level of nutjobs like the Unibomber.   I think that their ideology is far more grounded and complex than that.
It might be better to think of "terrorist ideology" as putting them on the same level as â Å“nut-jobsâ ? like Hitler and his national socialist ideology.

Infanteer said:
3,000 years of recorded history seems to point to these folks as being xenophobic and distrustful of other peoples (especially infidels like us) showing them how to live.
Which is why reconstruction has to be seen helping them get back to living under their own path.

Infanteer said:
To me, the biggest effort should be in undermining them to their own people.   When we call them murderers and convict them of crimes, we only convince ourselves that we are right.   But we won't truely be right until we are victorious and we have destroyed the will of the enemy to resist.   We should put our energy and our policies in pointing out how these people are wrong within their cultural framework (re: Islam) as opposed to ours.   Sounds like a Psyops job rather than a legal one (the latest piece by William Lind discusses this in detail - check it out here).
Agreed, but . . .
Infanteer said:
I'd rather be focussed on undermining their efforts through their reference point and not ours.
one COA need not be mutually exclusive of the other.   We must do both.

Infanteer said:
I think holding them accountable as murderers is only a facade.   ...   To me, labelling them criminal (and going after them in such a manner) is like labelling them cowardly; it does nothing but hype up the rhetoric.
If we do not hold the enemy accountable to customary international law, then it legitimizes their tactics.   I'd rather not send the message that the elementary school in town is a legitimate target of war.

Infanteer said:
As I've consistenly argued, I believe these folks have declared war in an appropriate manner within their socio-legal system (Fatwas and Jihad) and that they target our civilians and our infrastructure because it is where we are vulnerable - just as we did when we levelled German and Japanese cities with thousand bomber raids.
After the Second World War, we looked back at the horror of some tactics (of both sides), did some re-thinking of what was right, and humanitarian law has evolved.   While legal in 1945, things such as the London Blitz and the fire bombing of Dresden would violate international law today.


... too bad that MMI was not writing her essay now.   This thread would certainly give her more to look at now.
 
MCG said:
It might be better to think of "terrorist ideology" as putting them on the same level as â Å“nut-jobsâ ? like Hitler and his national socialist ideology.

Hitler made up his own ideology while sitting in jail - the only thing that invalidated it was the fact that we levelled it to the ground (both figuratively and literally).   From what I understand, Osama bin Laden has grounded his cause in 1300 years of Islamic history and a string of events which, no denying, are happening (we do support Israel, we are in the Middle East, we have invaded Iraq, we do dip our fingers in the Oil - the morality of these isn't what I'm debating, just the fact that they are happening).   It seems that many in the Islamic world, from reactionary to conservative to liberal, agree with his message to varying degrees.

I'm curious as to where we are going with the definition "nut job"?   Is it merely some one who uses force to achieve their own means?   As I said before, this would be the rule, and not the exception.

Which is why reconstruction has to be seen helping them get back to living under their own path.

Reconstruction of civil society sure, but as I alluded to before, I'm not sure Mr Karzai is going to be too legitimate considering he never fought in any of the Afghan wars and he walks around guarded by Americans.   Do you not agree that this could be construed as "puppet" by many?

Also, we may move from simple reconstruction to "searching for monsters to destroy" - this could get us involved in other peoples fights.   I've read some stuff that makes a good point that the Pashtun (nor Pakistan) may not sit well with the Afghanistan that we are building in our image.

Agreed, but . . . one COA need not be mutually exclusive of the other.   We must do both.

No, but if one COA simply inflames the enemy, then is it the right thing to do?   I have the feeling that we earn scorn by retaliating to an attack by sicking the New York 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on them.   It is plainly obvious what language the enemy understands, so lets give him his full measure and leave the rest until after the game.

If we do not hold the enemy accountable to customary international law, then it legitimizes their tactics.   I'd rather not send the message that the elementary school in town is a legitimate target of war.

Nor I, but until most of the Islamic world takes to the streets to oppose nailing a school with a bomb, than customary international law does nothing.   If we have to bend our message of disapproval into their rules, than so be it.

After the Second World War, we looked back at the horror of some tactics (of both sides), did some re-thinking of what was right, and humanitarian law has evolved.   While legal in 1945, things such as the London Blitz and the fire bombing of Dresden would violate international law today.

Well, some of this I consider a bit of revisionism -   I don't consider the bombings to be the wrong thing; it was done in the proper context of Total War and contributed to victory.   We like to pretend that we're better because we can use PGM's now, but we in the West still reserve the right to loose megatons of destructive power upon entire cities if we must.   As discussed elsewhere, I don't believe in progress - we humans are as nasty and brutish as we were when the Walls of Jericho fell....
 
And Then They Came After Us
We're at war. How about acting like it?

First the terrorists of the Middle East went after the Israelis. From 1967 we witnessed 40 years of bombers, child murdering, airline hijacking, suicide murdering, and gratuitous shooting. We in the West usually cried crocodile tears, and then came up with all sorts of reasons to allow such Middle Eastern killers a pass.

Yasser Arafat, replete with holster and rants at the U.N., had become a â Å“moderateâ ? and was thus free to steal millions of his good-behavior money. If Hamas got European cash, it would become reasonable, ostracize its â Å“military wing,â ? and cease its lynching and vigilantism.

When some tried to explain that Wars 1-3 (1947, 1956, 1967) had nothing to do with the West Bank, such bothersome details fell on deaf ears.

When it was pointed out that Germans were not blowing up Poles to get back lost parts of East Prussia nor were Tibetans sending suicide bombers into Chinese cities to recover their country, such analogies were caricatured.

When the call for a â Å“Right of Returnâ ? was making the rounds, few cared to listen that over a half-million forgotten Jews had been cleansed from Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and lost billions in property.

When the U.N. and the EU talked about â Å“refugee camps,â ? none asked why for a half-century the Arab world could not build decent housing for its victimized brethren, or why 1 million Arabs voted in Israel, but not one freely in any Arab country.

The security fence became â Å“The Wall,â ? and evoked slurs that it was analogous to barriers in Korea or Berlin that more often kept people in than out. Few wondered why Arabs who wished to destroy Israel would mind not being able to live or visit Israel.

In any case, anti-Semitism, oil, fear of terrorism â ” all that and more fooled us into believing that Israel's problems were confined to Israel. So we ended up with a utopian Europe favoring a pre-modern, terrorist-run, Palestinian thugocracy over the liberal democracy in Israel. The Jews, it was thought, stirred up a hornet's nest, and so let them get stung on their own.

We in the United States preened that we were the â Å“honest broker.â ? After the Camp David accords we tried to be an intermediary to both sides, ignoring that one party had created a liberal and democratic society, while the other remained under the thrall of a tribal gang.

Billions of dollars poured into frontline states like Jordan and Egypt. Arafat himself got tens of millions, though none of it ever seemed to show up in good housing, roads, or power plants for his people. The terror continued, enhanced rather than arrested, by Western largess and Israeli concessions.

Then the Islamists declared war on the United States. A quarter century of mass murdering of Americans followed in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, East Africa, the first effort to topple the World Trade Center, and the attack on the USS Cole.

We gave billions to Jordan, the Palestinians, and the Egyptians. Afghanistan was saved from the Soviets through U.S. aid. Kuwait was restored after Saddam's annexation, and the holocaust of Bosnians and Kosovars halted by the American Air Force. Americans welcomed thousands of Arabs to our shores and allowed hundreds of madrassas and mosques to preach zealotry, anti-Semitism, and jihad without much scrutiny.

Then came September 11 and the almost instant canonization of bin Laden.

Suddenly, the prior cheap shots at Israel under siege weren't so cheap. It proved easy to castigate Israelis who went into Jenin, but not so when we needed to do the same in Fallujah.

It was easy to slander the Israelis' scrutiny of Arabs in their midst, but then suddenly a few residents in our own country were found to be engaging in bomb making, taking up jihadist pilgrimages to Afghanistan, and mapping out terrorist operations.

Apparently, the hatred of radical Islam was not just predicated on the â Å“occupationâ ? of the West Bank. Instead it involved the pretexts of Americans protecting Saudi Arabia from another Iraqi attack, the United Nations boycott of Iraq, the removal of the Taliban and Saddam, and always as well as the Crusades and the Reconquista.

But Europe was supposedly different. Unlike the United States, it was correct on the Middle East, and disarmed after the Cold War. Indeed, the European Union was pacifistic, socialist, and guilt-ridden about former colonialism.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslims were left alone in unassimilated European ghettoes and allowed to preach or promulgate any particular hatred of the day they wished. Conspire to kill a Salmon Rushdie, talk of liquidating the â Å“apes and pigs,â ? distribute Mein Kampf and the Protocols, or plot in the cities of France and Germany to blow up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center â ” all that was about things â Å“over thereâ ? and in a strange way was thought to ensure that Europe got a pass at home.

But the trump card was always triangulation against the United States. Most recently anti-Americanism was good street theater in Rome, Paris, London, and the capitals of the â Å“goodâ ? West.

But then came Madrid â ” and the disturbing fact that after the shameful appeasement of its withdrawal from Iraq, further plots were hatched against Spanish justices and passenger trains.

Surely a Holland would be exempt â ” Holland of wide-open Amsterdam fame where anything goes and Muslim radicals could hate in peace. Then came the butchering of Theo Van Gogh and the death threats against parliamentarian Hirsi Ali â ” and always defiance and promises of more to come rather than apologies for their hatred.

Yet was not Britain different? After all, its capital was dubbed Londonistan for its hospitality to Muslims across the globe. Radical imams openly preached jihad against the United States to their flock as thanks for being given generous welfare subsidies from her majesty's government. But it was the United States, not liberal Britain, that evoked such understandable hatred.

But now?

After Holland, Madrid, and London, European operatives go to Israel not to harangue Jews about the West Bank, but to receive tips about preventing suicide bombings. And the cowboy Patriot Act to now-panicked European parliaments perhaps seems not so illiberal after all.

So it is was becoming clear that butchery by radical Muslims in Bali, Darfur, Iraq, the Philippines Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and Iraq was not so tied to particular and â Å“understandableâ ? Islamic grievances.

Perhaps the jihadist killing was not over the West Bank or U.S. hegemony after all, but rather symptoms of a global pathology of young male Islamic radicals blaming all others for their own self-inflicted miseries, convinced that attacks on the infidel would win political concessions, restore pride, and prove to Israelis, Europeans, Americans â ” and about everybody else on the globe â ” that Middle Eastern warriors were full of confidence and pride after all.

Meanwhile an odd thing happened. It turns out that the jihadists were cowards and bullies, and thus selective in their targets of hatred. A billion Chinese were left alone by radical Islam â ” even though the Chinese were secularists and mostly godless, as well as ruthless to their own Uighur Muslim minorities. Had bin Laden issued a fatwa against Beijing and slammed an airliner into a skyscraper in Shanghai, there is no telling what a nuclear China might have done.

India too got mostly a pass, other than the occasional murdering by Pakistani zealots. Yet India makes no effort to apologize to Muslims. When extremists occasionally riot and kill, they usually cease quickly before the response of a much more unpredictable angry populace.


What can we learn from all this?

Jihadists hardly target particular countries for their â Å“unfairâ ? foreign policies, since nations on five continents suffer jihadist attacks and thus all apparently must embrace an unfair foreign policy of some sort.

Typical after the London bombing is the ubiquitous Muslim spokesman who when asked to condemn terrorism, starts out by deploring such killing, assuring that it has nothing to do with Islam, yet then ending by inserting the infamous â Å“butâ ? â ” as he closes with references about the West Bank, Israel, and all sorts of mitigating factors. Almost no secular Middle Easterners or religious officials write or state flatly, â Å“Islamic terrorism is murder, pure and simple evil. End of story, no ifs or buts about it.â ?

Second, thinking that the jihadists will target only Israel eventually leads to emboldened attacks on the United States. Assuming America is the only target assures terrorism against Europe. Civilizations will either hang separately or triumph over barbarism together. It is that simple â ” and past time for Europe and the United States to rediscover their common heritage and shared aims in eradicating this plague of Islamic fascism.

Third, Islamicists are selective in their attacks and hatred. So far global jihad avoids two billion Indians and Chinese, despite the fact that their countries are far tougher on Muslims than is the United States or Europe. In other words, the Islamicists target those whom they think they can intimidate and blackmail.

Unfettered immigration, billions in cash grants to Arab autocracies, alliances of convenience with dictatorships, triangulation with Middle Eastern patrons of terror, blaming the Jews â ” civilization has tried all that.

It is time to relearn the lessons from the Cold War, when we saw millions of noble Poles, Romanians, Hungarians, and Czechs as enslaved under autocracy and a hateful ideology, and in need of democracy before they could confront the Communist terror in their midst.

But until the Wall fell, we did not send billions in aid to their Eastern European dictatorships nor travel freely to Prague or Warsaw nor admit millions of Communist-ruled Bulgarians and Albanians onto our shores.

â ” Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200507220816.asp
 
A lovely photo essay to remind us all on just who exactly we are dealing with. We think this started on 9/11, but then again....

http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/07/21/everything-that-came-before-iraq-war/
 
I just posted this on another thread, but John Howard's comments seem appropriate here, too:
PRIME MIN. HOWARD: Could I start by saying the prime minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it. My first reaction was to get some more information. And I really don't want to add to what the prime minister has said. It's a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here.

Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?

When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

PRIME MIN. BLAIR: And I agree 100 percent with that. (Laughter.)
http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_07_17_corner-archive.asp#070312
 
Garth Pritchard is a straight shooter and a great guy.  And a true professional.
 
Infanteer said:
From what I understand, Osama bin Laden has grounded his cause in 1300 years of Islamic history and a string of events which, no denying, are happening.   It seems that many in the Islamic world, from reactionary to conservative to liberal, agree with his message to varying degrees.
This does not make the â Å“terrorist ideologyâ ? any less of an ideology.   It is in fact a nationalist ideology (and even in western nations, nationalism has managed to fuse itself with conservative, liberal, and socialist ideologies).   Like other ideologies it inculcates people to its views (including teaching them not to be influenced by opposing ideologies), it advocates reforms in the structures of society, it prescribes a solution to perfect human behaviour (adherence to Islam), and it includes a path to implementing the ideology (militant jihad that sees civil populations as legitimate targets).  

Infanteer said:
I'm curious as to where we are going with the definition "nut job"?
Just threw it in to quote your use.

Infanteer said:
Reconstruction of civil society sure, but as I alluded to before, I'm not sure Mr Karzai is going to be too legitimate considering he never fought in any of the Afghan wars and he walks around guarded by Americans.   Do you not agree that this could be construed as "puppet" by many?
Once again, this is why elections are important.

Infanteer said:
Well, some of this I consider a bit of revisionism - I don't consider the bombings to be the wrong thing; it was done in the proper context of Total War and contributed to victory.
City bombing in the Second World War could really devolve into a thread of its own.   Some attacks were certainly against legitimate targets, but others were launched against questionable targets (and any military gain from these attacks was typically well down on the list of objectives).   In the end, the world did not know any better back then.   We do now.   Thus, using these horrors of our past is inappropriate to legitimise terror tactics today

More to follow.
 
devil39 said:
Garth Pritchard is a straight shooter and a great guy.   And a true professional.

What his article said was pretty frightening though...Unfortunately I believe it 100%

Slim
 
MCG said:
This does not make the "terrorist ideology" any less of an ideology.   It is in fact a nationalist ideology (and even in western nations, nationalism has managed to fuse itself with conservative, liberal, and socialist ideologies).   Like other ideologies it inculcates people to its views (including teaching them not to be influenced by opposing ideologies), it advocates reforms in the structures of society, it prescribes a solution to perfect human behaviour (adherence to Islam), and it includes a path to implementing the ideology (militant jihad that sees civil populations as legitimate targets).

Ok, sure.   Again, I question the use of the term "terrorist ideology" as it relegates this movement to the fringe, which I don't believe it is.   As well, "terrorist ideology" seems to imply that random violence is the main focus and the endstate of such a pattern of thought, which it isn't.   I'd say that Islamists are no more prone to using violence to achieve their means then the mulititude of other human societes (one only has to look at the history of the West for the last 100 years to bear that out) - they only arrive at the end point in a different manner.

I'd rather refer to it as an "Islamist ideology", and we can put it on the pedestel with our "Liberal Democratic ideology".   Just as when "Liberal Democratic ideology" faced off against "Communism/Bolshevism", in the end it will be conviction, will, and resilency that will show us which one is stronger.

MCG said:
Once again, this is why elections are important.

And once again, is throwing "instant elections" on a people in which the concept is foreign really workable?   From my understanding of Islam, popular will and representaion isn't a big factor in politics - it seems that the legitimacy of a ruler is found in his ability to protect and promote the Shari'a and to have the support of the Ulemma.

Of course, there is some particularities of Afghan society with regards to tribal politics and the Loya Jirga, but pasting these institutions on a liberal democratic, Constitutional framework still seems to be stretch to me.   It took us a few hundred years of political and social evolution to figure out that popular elections worked for us - hell; women and non-Europeans (meaning, universal sufferage) haven't even had the vote for 100 years yet, so I think expecting others to pick it up as useful to civil society is a stretch.

MCG said:
In the end, the world did not know any better back then.

Ahh...the illusion (hubris?) of the notion of progress.   We didn't know better in 1944 when we levelled cities with bombers, so now we have nuclear weapons that can do the job with the press of a button.

I'm trying to guess the point in which we (in the West I'm assuming) purified ourselves of banality and became moral in our killing of other people.   I have no doubt in my mind that we could easily step back to that level of savagery if so desired - it's in the basic nature of humanity to do so.
 
No offense to you Bossi, but the Garth Pritchard article was just a longer version of the sameone I posted under the Thread "CBC loses the truth".  But I still like what he says in this longer version.
 
I think the crux of the matter is that some people refuse to look at the enemy as "the enemy".  Kudos to Garth Pritchard for the good piece.
 
Infanteer said:
I think the crux of the matter is that some people refuse to look at the enemy as "the enemy".   Kudos to Garth Pritchard for the good piece.

I wonder what their opinion will be if/when downtown Toronto/Montreal/Vacouver/Calgary start to go boom right under their smug little noses?!
 
Slim said:
I wonder what their opinion will be if/when downtown Toronto/Montreal/Vacouver/Calgary start to go boom right under their smug little noses?!

We all know the answer, CBC "There were serveral explosions (not bombings of course), in (insert city name here) this morning.  The cause of these explosions is not known at this point yet, early reports indicate they may have been caused by humans opposed to the Governments current military occupation of Afghanistan.  We have expert Gwynne Dyer hear at CBC world HQ in Toronto, to help us understand the present situation.  Gwynne your thoughts?"
 
Tristan Blakemore said:
Well, the station isn't called the Communist Broadcasting Corporation for nothing!!

Well, with any luck the Freedom Fighters (Read: Murdering terrorist scumbags) would hit CBC first...I don't suppose we'de be that lucky though.

Kind of makes one wonder what the media in this country really want...Because under the theocratic auspises of the the Taliban and A.Q. they woiuldn't be able to say even a tenth of what they wanted to.

Their only goal in life seems to be trying to get a rise out of people...And its not a new thing either. I saw an interview with PM Pierre Trudeau the other day during the FLQ crisis. He had just invoked the War Measures Act and deployed the crunchies to Ottawa and Montreal. Some jerkoff from the media was trying to give him a rough go and embarrass him on camera. I must say that even though I don't like what Trudeau did to the military he certainly gave better than he got and made the reported look like an ass...And did it so that the country actually realized it too!

Precious moments in history!

Slim
 
Just as a side note, I accidentally ended up on the CBC last night and they were doing a special on the new Diamond Mine towns in the Northwest Territories.

Specifically, they managed to turn the mini-documentary into an indictment of the corporations for having the nerve to pay good wages to natives who otherwise would've been unemployed, because the natives were choosing to spend this newfound wealth in Yellowknife gambling and transitioning from alcohol abuse to crack and cocaine abuse.

In all seriousness, just as Martin made a good choice with Hillier to reengineer the CF, he needs to find someone else to reengineer the CBC....they do so much damage to this country with their apologist outlook, it's sickening....



Matthew.  :salute:
 
A good summation of the enemy forces in WW IV; not just terrorists, and not just governments either. You might think of this as "outsourcing" warfare, Iranian strategic goals, Saudi finance and Syrian logistical support is being contracted out to radical Jihadi groups (with AQ being the best known) to do the actual "trigger work".

In that sense the authour is correct, we are fighting a sucker's war since we are trying to kill wasps one at a time and not burning out their nests. In other threads, Infanteer has mentioned using local systems of belief to de legitamize the Jihadis, and I have spoken of using the "Cedar Revolution" model to break enemy governments and deny the power of the state to the Jihadis. A combination of these methods and others (such as economic carrots and sticks, pulling the plug on the middle eastern oil economy through reconfiguring our own economy, and the application of military power to high value targets) will be needed to take down the trheat to the West:

Coalition of Evil
The big picture of our war.

The al Qaeda watchers have a new chant: They tell us that the once-centralized terror organization is now largely decentralized, and that the separate cells have a great deal of autonomy. Osama bin Laden may still provide the ideology, but the locals do their own planning and operations. Thus, the Washington Post found that the expert consensus on the London attacks was that, yes, these people might be linked to al Qaeda in a broad, political/religious/ideological way, but the operation itself, like many in the recent past (Madrid, for example), was a local product.

To be sure, this claim is carefully hedged with language like â Å“but bin Laden (or Zawahiri or Zarqawi or whoever) still has a great deal of influence,â ? so that if it turns out that AQ is more centralized than not, they can still say â Å“I told you so.â ?

Nice to have that sort of flexibility. And they're right to be flexible, because there is every reason to believe that both statements are correct: There are plenty of independent cells (indeed, there are plenty of terrorist groups), but there is intimate cooperation, which runs through the terror masters of Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.

Some of the smartest AQ watchers, like Peter Bergen, have always said that the organization is like a decentralized corporation, not a military style top-down structure. So the notion of highly independent cells is old hat, neither an analytic breakthrough nor, in fact, a recent development.

Many of the watchers have earned their credentials and are entitled to our respect, but they're groping pieces of the animal, not sensing its overall shape. Shortly after the liberation of Afghanistan, I wrote that it no longer made sense to talk about al Qaeda as the primary organizing force of the terror network, because al Qaeda had been shattered and had lost its operational base with the defeat of the Taliban. I suggested that there were many different terrorist groups â ” the most important of which was, and is, Hezbollah â ” and they would cooperate on a rough division of labor, depending on local capacity, expertise, connections, and so forth. But I also argued that there was now a new operational base: Iran, where bin Laden and several others had fled from Afghanistan. And I insisted that there would be considerable coherence in terrorist actions, because the mullahs would insist on overall guidance.

The centrality of Iran in the terror network is the dirty secret that most everyone knows, but will not pronounce. Our military people in both Iraq and Afghanistan have copious evidence of the Iranian role in the terror war against us and our allies. Every now and then Rumsfeld makes a passing reference to it. But we have known about Iranian assassination teams in Afghanistan ever since the fall of the Taliban, and we know that Iranians continue to fund, arm, and guide the forces of such terrorists as Gulbadin Hekmatyar. We know that Zarqawi operated out of Tehran for several years, and that one of his early successes â ” the creation of Ansar al Islam in northern Iraq, well before the arrival of Coalition forces â ” had Iranian approval and support. We also know that Zarqawi created a European terror network, again while in Tehran, and therefore the â Å“newsâ ? that he has been recycled into the European theater is not news at all. It is testimony to his, and the Iranians, central role in the terrorist enterprise. And we know â ” from documents and photographs captured in Iraq during military operations against the terrorists â ” that the jihad in Iraq is powerfully supported by Damascus, Tehran, and Riyadh.

The insistence that â Å“al Qaedaâ ? â ” defined as the main enemy â ” is highly decentralized has a lethal effect on designing an effective antiterrorist policy, for it reinforces the strategic paralysis that currently afflicts this administration. If we conceive the war against the terrorists as a long series of discrete engagements against separate groups in many countries, we will likely fail, beginning with Iraq. We have killed thousands of terrorists there, and arrested many more, and yet we clearly have not dominated them. I quite believe that we are gaining support and cooperation from the Iraqi people, and I am in awe of the bravery and skills of our military men and women. But we are fighting a sucker's war in Iraq, because the terrorists get a great deal of their support from the Syrians, Saudis, and Iranians, all of whom are rolling in oil money, all of whom are maneuvering desperately for survival, because they fear our most potent weapon: the democratic revolution that is simmering throughout the region, most recently in a series of street battles in Iranian cities.

We can't win this thing unless we recognize the real dimensions of the enemy forces, and the global aspirations they harbor. The battle for Iraq is today's fight, but they intend to expand the war throughout the Western world. Indeed, that was their plan from the very beginning. From 9/11. Here is a story (thanks to Captain Ed at â Å“Captain's Quartersâ ? http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/) that should make the matter clear to all of us. It appeared in the London Times on July 24:

    Mohammed Afroze was sentenced (in Bombay, India) to seven years after he admitted that he had a role in an al Qaeda plot to attack London, the Rialto Towers building in Melbourne (Australia) and the Indian Parliament.

    Afroze admitted that he and seven al Qaeda operatives planned to hijack aircraft at Heathrow and fly them into the two London landmarks. The suicide squad included men from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Afroze said. They booked seats on two Manchester-bound flights, but fled just before they were due to board.

If that's right â ” and I would have expected a feeding frenzy over this court judgment, wouldn't you? â ” then 9/11 was conceived as a global extravaganza, not just an attack against the United States. And I wonder if the â Å“cellsâ ? in India, Australia and Great Britain were all that decentralized. After all, they were coordinated for a specific date, weren't they?

I have long believed that when we finally unravel the 9/11 plot, we will find a great number of terrorist organizations involved, each playing its role in supporting the enterprise. I don't believe it's sensible to believe that these various groups, scattered around the world, could have coordinated such an undertaking only by their own efforts; we have seen too many terrorist screw-ups to take that one seriously (if Mr. Afroze is to be believed, for example, he and his guys chickened out at the last moment, just like numerous other suicide terrorists have).

President Bush's original instincts were right: We are at war with a series of terrorist groups, supported by a group of nations, and it makes no sense to distinguish between them. We're fighting fiercely against the terror groups, and we're killing and defeating lots of them. But we're not nearly as vigorous as we should be in speeding up the fall of the mullahs, the Assads, and a Saudi royal family that has played the leading role in spreading the doctrines that inspire the terrorists.

Can we move a bit faster, please?

â ” Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/leeden200507270805.asp
 
What you have to understand about the CBC is that it's an institution dominated by aging baby boomers whose frame of reference was the Summer of Love in 1968, the Vietnam War and Watergate.  

Most of them have created sinecures within the CBC "system" and are generally so well entrenched that they are beyond reproach. To borrow some Gramsci - they are something of a class in themselves - establishing hegemony and imposing a kind of "dominant ideology" inside the corporation.

There is however what I like to call a CBC underclass because the corporation employs an astonishing number of freelancers, part-timers and other underemployed "personalities", writers and reporters. This underclass is in constant competition with each other for preferment and hiring - often with the view to getting a coveted permanent position within CBC. These preferments are granted by the aging overseers described above, and as a result, there is a high degree of ideological conformity required to survive and prosper.

Not surprisingly, therefore, they are almost overwhelmingly leftist in orientation (you know the type - wearing black all the time, hanging out in various trendy pleasure dens, complaining endlessly about the lack of a secure job in the "underfunded" CBC, always considering law school, always considering writing a novel, always considering going back to school and getting a PhD, etc, etc).

In terms of education, they are also overwhelming drawn from the liberal arts and have little knowledge or sympathy with business or science. (As for any serious knowledge of the military - forget it.)

Many are suffering from an odd mixture of "fame fever" and "the Hamlet complex" - to be or not to be - which makes them reluctant to adopt any value system that would impede what the pop psychologists would call "self-actualization." (Which BTW our senior NCOs are very good at instilling in recruits  >:D).

Typically, they will have an abiding contempt for what used to be called the "bourgeois" order and deliberately place themselves in opposition to middle-class values and other truisms they dismiss as conventional and arbitrary.

Consequently, they prefer bohemia to the suburbs and consider people who live there as conventional and uninteresting. Their taste for statist solutions and predilection for socialism in its more extreme forms is therefore a natural extension of this self-imposed social and cultural rebellion; (the statist tendency can be partly attributed to pure self-interest - since larger government spending benefits public institutions like the CBC.)

Relativism rules their lives to a degree most military people would find uncomfortable - if not antithetical to everything the military stands for. They often have a romantic fascination for the "rebel" (again for largely narcissistic reasons)   and a professed sympathy for the underdog - even if these categories are always applied within a leftist framework.

Their reaction to GWOT assumes that US imperialism is solely responsible - and the Iraq War irredeemable.   (It goes without saying that they would agree with Michael Moore's assessment of the Bush Administration.)

This has been amply demonstrated by the CBC's inability to adopt an editorial policy that labels the London bombers as "terrorists". But given the above description, is it any wonder?

Cheers, mdh
 
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