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

Just exactly what Middle East country were the Americans occupying when the WTC was first bombed?

What exactly were we doing when the Air India plane was bombed?

I want the 10 minutes back I just wasted reading your post.

..and I must ask, what countries did you travel too so that you could reach all these "leaders"?
Quote,
To me, it seemed, that basically every Islamic leader I had spoken too had that same message.
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
Just exactly what Middle East country were the Americans occupying when the WTC was first bombed?
We had troops based in various middle eastern nations (I believe Bin Laden actually cited this) as well as the fact that we were supporting Israel against the Palestinians (I'm sure there are many other complaints as well)

What exactly were we doing when the Air India plane was bombed?
... not really to do with the middle east I don't think, and I can't say I am really that knowledable on the details of it, but from what I understood it wasn't targetting us but the people on board? (I may be completely wrong on this, I can research it more of you want)

I want the 10 minutes back I just wasted reading your post.

I'm hurt.

..and I must ask, what countries did you travel too so that you could reach all these "leaders"?
Quote,
To me, it seemed, that basically every Islamic leader I had spoken too had that same message.

Glorious country of edmonton...we have a thriving local muslim community with links to the middle east. As I mentioned, that was just a part of forming my initial impressions, the actual evidence is below it, it was just this fact that tuned me to the idea that something was amiss.
 
Quote,
We had troops on based in various middle eastern nations(I believe Bin Laden actually cited this)  as well as the fact that we were supporting Israel against the Palestinians

...so I guess we should "jihad" Germany, England, and others then as they have had or have troops based in Canada......and they support Denmark.
 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
Quote,
We had troops on based in various middle eastern nations(I believe Bin Laden actually cited this)   as well as the fact that we were supporting Israel against the Palestinians

...so I guess we should "jihad" Germany, England, and others then as they have had or have troops based in Canada......and they support Denmark.

Well of course, I mean who likes Denmark???:P

Listen, you seem to be getting the impression I somehow support the bombers or don't support our involvement in afganistan or "left wing hippy", etc.

To make things very clear - I support military action in the War on Terrorism. I think anyone that feels the need to kill innocent civilians should be killed themselves. I feel no "sympathy" towards the bombers. I think that, especially in afghanistan, we are doing some very very good work, and that should be used as a model for future interventions. My point is that we need to be careful, or no matter how good our intentions, we will be confronted with anger, hatred, violence, and ultimately failure of our goals.

An additional bit.....

If we want to win the war are terror we either need to use such massive military force as to drive any will to resist from the very hearts of the people we are combating, or we need to be smart about it and prevent these people from arising in the first place.

It seems to be it would be better to take the latter route.
 
No, what I don't like is your assumption in your long post above is that somehow "we" created "those" people, go through history and you will see those with less usually attacked those with more...is that the fault of the person with more or visa-versa?
 
Of course it's not our fault (others might argue, not necessarily me, that it also goes the other way around as well though re the attacking).


As well I didn't really think it was an assumption, to me it seemed like that is what these people are telling us, especially the Iraqi insurgent. In the interview actually states that he started out supporting the American invasion, and it was only after witnessing the actions of the Americans that his opinion turned. I dunno but that seems pretty causal to me, but I may be wrong.
 
Infanteer,

Reading through and verifying the PEW study you highlighted regarding the indentities, and then verifying it and checking the methodoloy..... fine, alright alright, no Arab nationalism driving it. You win on that point :P (but nationalism still didn't come around till the french revolution.... which is why i think we started on this tac).

However, I think my analysis throws considerable doubt upon your theory of radical islamism driving these people at the same time (especially the interviews with the actual insurgents).

Brings me to ask, is there something in between we are both missing?

Or is it just as it seems... these people are getting angry at our actions because they think we are killing their friends, family, and fellow muslims for no good reason that they can see, while occupying lands and repressing peoples they have bonds with, plain and simple?... makes sense...

 
couchcommander said:
However, as I stated before, Qutb, Islamic fundamentalism, Al-Qaeda take a back seat when you actually stop reading the half digested puke coming out of Conservative American media, and farting back out the incoherent chunks (I'm not sure which is worse, that or google hershy squirts?).

Lay off the crackpipe kid.   Where in any of my posts do you find a single source that can be considered a neo-con?   Nice strawman.

It first really occured to me that the reasons behind the bombings and the insurgency could not be entirely attributed to fanatical religous extremism at the 10th annual interfaith symposium on terrorism held here at the U of A earlier this fall (sure beats google, and I am having a hard time remembering if it was before or after last weeks frat party.....). :P

It's nice to see that the leaders of the Islamic Insurgency ascended upon Edmonton to give you the low down.... ::)

I can't even begin to decipher what you prattled on about (like Bruce, I want my 10 minutes back), as you did nothing to back you original argument that Arab Nationalism is a new and strong force in the Middle East and that continued aggressive polices by the West will cause Arabs to band together and strike back.

Your exact claims were:

couchcommander said:
Once we see the birth of nationalism (ie recent history), trying to force a population to do something, and continue to do it for a long period of time, via large scale military force applied by another "nation" does not have that many examples of success
and
couchcommander said:
The nationalism we need to watch out for, and the sense of nationalism I was trying to identify (but did so stupidly) is Arab Nationalism, which is largely responsible for this almost automatic hostility towards the Americans for being on Arab land, regardless of what they do there.
and
Arab nationalism means that when we go into a middle eastern country not only are we pissing off the local tribes or religous sects, we are pissing off all of those who consider themselves Arab... which is a big problem.

You've since admitted that you didn't know what you were talking about, so I am guessing that you pulled that fluff out of your ass.   Yet you still contend, after admitting your theory sunk like the Titanic, that Islamist thought is not the dominant form of social expression in the Middle East.   There is no "something in between" that we are both missing.   You state that:

these people are getting angry at our actions because they think we are killing their friends, family, and fellow muslims for no good reason that they can see, while occupying lands and repressing peoples they have bonds with, plain and simple?... makes sense...

Everyone give a round of applause to Captain Obvious and his signaller Corporal Tips.   When did you realize that people go to war and risk death and dismemberment due to the fact that they feel they have a grievance and a cause to fight?   That's the biggest "no shit" I've seen in a long time.   The problem here is that you are confusing two separate concepts - individual motivations to fight and ways in which these motivations are manifested in a group setting.   Five Canadians will give you the reason they joined the Army, but you must look to higher level social and cultural trends to see what will bind these individual motivations and commit them to battle.   This is where Islamist thought, as the dominant form of social identity right now, comes in.   There is a whole multitude of reasons that a person will fight; William Lind's FMFM-1A: Fourth Generation War does an excellent job in highlighting this.   Yet most people don't just spontaneously go out and attack the enemy - they find an outlet for their anger and others who also find similar rational and outlooks in attacking the enemy; they need this to justify their emotions with their mores.   Once people establish the linkages for the outlet, you have a loose network of groupings of angry people that is aptly described in Thomas Hammes' The Sling and the Stone - this is the insurgent network, and the insurgent network feeds off of an ideological bearing which gives it its moral impetus to attack its opponents (just as a very similar network of Revolutionaries in the United States fed off of the ideology of Liberty and Independence in 1775).   Individual anger finds itself fed into a "fourth generation" ideological network, a network that has become an Islamic Insurgency which is bannered by the global Salafist jihad.

Don't believe me?   You gave testimonies of some US academic and 5 captured insurgents (who happened to fit your view).   Big whoop.   Are you going to determine social dynamics by the news testimony of 5 members of a group of organizations that contains tens of thousands of people?   Sure people have their own reasons to be pissed and to join the insurgency, but look how they are manifesting this anger.   Look at the names of the insurgent organizations in Iraq.   Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (Army of the Protectors of the Traditions), Jaish al-Islami fi Iraq (The Islamic Army in Iraq), the "Swords of Righteousness Brigade" (our latest gang of hostage takers), and Jama'at at-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War Movement; now renamed "The Base in Mesopotamia").   Watch the videos of insurgent attacks and terrorist proclamations - that is Qu'ranic scripture in the background and they are yelling "Allahu Akbar".   If you can, get translations of the music that accompanies their propaganda videos; it's all stuff about driving the Zionist and the Crusader from Dar al-Islam by attacking and killing him.   It isn't "Free Arabia" or "Sword of the Arab Defender" that is fighting the Americans, it is groups whos ties to radical Islamic thought is obvious in their proclamations, their actions, and their justifications of brutality.

Local insurgents are only one part of the equation.   Marc Sageman's detailed case studies (which I linked to in the above post) of terrorists finds that their motivation wasn't so primal; these were fairly well educated men who were living in the West and had no real histories of violence.   Their path to aggression is one of socialization, intensification of beliefs, and formal links into the Salfist network, one that is formed of "in-group love [rather] than out-group hate."   These people have entirely different personal experiences and yet, due to the fact that they run through the same ideological filter, their endstate (attacking Americans) is the same.

Both of these taken together serve to further underscore that when an angry Muslim in the Middle East or South Asia needs an outlet for his frustration and anger, it is going to be the entrenched views of Islamist thought (like that of Qutb) that will shape and direct that energy.   People are affected by policies - bin Laden and Co. speak to this anger and encourage violence as the solution.   If a guy's fruitstand gets run over, his mosque gets blown up, or he is stopped and stripped by Western soldiers then it only gives him further reason to believe that the preaching of the Salafi and the proclamations of bin Laden are infact correct and that Islam, his way of life, is under threat.   Then he gets organized and fights.

Of course, all of this is in the links I provided earlier; if you would have read them, you would have realized this....
 
Infanteer said:
Lay off the crackpipe kid.   Where in any of my posts do you find a single source that can be considered a neo-con?   Nice strawman.
It was you who linked to Kramer, right gramps? Maybe not neo-con, but certainly didn't vote democrat.

It's nice to see that the leaders of the Islamic Insurgency ascended upon Edmonton to give you the low down.... ::)
I thought it was nice of them too.

I can't even begin to decipher what you prattled on about (like Bruce, I want my 10 minutes back), as you did nothing to back you original argument that Arab Nationalism is a new and strong force in the Middle East and that continued aggressive polices by the West will cause Arabs to band together and strike back.
My intent was finding base motivations for insurgents, I had all but given up on the nationalism idea at this point as I was reviewing that PEW study.

You've since admitted that you didn't know what you were talking about, so I am guessing that you pulled that fluff out of your ***.
No, you presented a piece of hard, substaniated, methodologically sound evidence that blew my argument out of the water... continuing on that line of argument would have been stupid and rather useless other than to try and uphold my ego, makes more sense just to recognize the mistake.

Yet you still contend, after admitting your theory sunk like the Titanic, that Islamist thought is not the dominant form of social expression in the Middle East.   There is no "something in between" that we are both missing.
No, i contend that Islamism is not the primary motivating factor for the majority of insurgents. There was actually a book published to this effect, but for the life of me I can't remember the author, and thus have been unable to find it over the last few days. Hopefully I will, as he actually does a study of several hundred thwarted Palestinain suicide bombers and comes up with this same conclusion.... they were just pissed at what WE did to them.

Everyone give a round of applause to Captain Obvious and his signaller Corporal Tips.   When did you realize that people go to war and risk death and dismemberment due to the fact that they feel they have a grievance and a cause to fight?   That's the biggest "no crap" I've seen in a long time.  

Wow, great.... so then maybe we should stop??? I am reminded of (what seems to be) DG-41's favorite saying "Doctor, it hurts when I do *this*..."

The problem here is that you are confusing two separate concepts - individual motivations to fight and ways in which these motivations are manifested in a group setting.   Five Canadians will give you the reason they joined the Army, but you must look to higher level social and cultural trends to see what will bind these individual motivations and commit them to battle.   This is where Islamist thought, as the dominant form of social identity right now, comes in.   There is a whole multitude of reasons that a person will fight; William Lind's FMFM-1A: Fourth Generation War does an excellent job in highlighting this.   Yet most people don't just spontaneously go out and attack the enemy - they find an outlet for their anger and others who also find similar rational and outlooks in attacking the enemy; they need this to justify their emotions with their mores.   Once people establish the linkages for the outlet, you have a loose network of groupings of angry people that is aptly described in Thomas Hammes' The Sling and the Stone - this is the insurgent network, and the insurgent network feeds off of an ideological bearing which gives it its moral impetus to attack its opponents (just as a very similar network of Revolutionaries in the United States fed off of the ideology of Liberty and Independence in 1775).   Individual anger finds itself fed into a "fourth generation" ideological network, a network that has become an Islamic Insurgency which is bannered by the global Salafist jihad.
If we can prevent this anger from arising in the first place then we won't need to worry about sociological processes behind insurgencies. IE if we don't occupy muslims lands, or be seen killing muslims for what appears to the muslims to be no good reason.... then our problems are largely solved. I will make sure to look into those texts you've referenced.

Don't believe me?   You gave testimonies of some US academic and 5 captured insurgents (who happened to fit your view).   Big whoop.   Are you going to determine social dynamics by the news testimony of 5 members of a group of organizations that contains tens of thousands of people?   Sure people have their own reasons to be pissed and to join the insurgency, but look how they are manifesting this anger.  
Prevent the anger in the first place, once again we don't need to worry about it. And these testamonies are just the ones that googled so that I could use as open source examples for you guys. There are many many more.

Look at the names of the insurgent organizations in Iraq.   Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (Army of the Protectors of the Traditions), Jaish al-Islami fi Iraq (The Islamic Army in Iraq), the "Swords of Righteousness Brigade" (our latest gang of hostage takers), and Jama'at at-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Monotheism and Holy War Movement; now renamed "The Base in Mesopotamia").   Watch the videos of insurgent attacks and terrorist proclamations - that is Qu'ranic scripture in the background and they are yelling "Allahu Akbar".   If you can, get translations of the music that accompanies their propaganda videos; it's all stuff about driving the Zionist and the Crusader from Dar al-Islam by attacking and killing him.   It isn't "Free Arabia" or "Sword of the Arab Defender" that is fighting the Americans, it is groups whos ties to radical Islamic thought is obvious in their proclamations, their actions, and their justifications of brutality.
Sure I can accept that.

Local insurgents are only one part of the equation.   Marc Sageman's detailed case studies (which I linked to in the above post) of terrorists finds that there motivation weren't so primal; these were fairly well educated men who were living in the West and had no real histories of violence.   Their path to aggression is one of socialization, intensification of beliefs, and formal links into the Salfist network, one that is formed of "in-group love [rather] than out-group hate."   These people have entirely different personal experiences and yet, due to the fact that they run through the same ideological filter, their endstate (attacking Americans) is the same.

Your right in that home grown terrorists are a different breed than local insurgents, in fact I would agree with this 100%. I think I posted something to this effect a long time ago about the sociological processes that I viewed might come into play in developing "home grown terrorism" Explaining why someone who feels repressed kills someone and someone who's best friend was blow apart by a bomb are two different things, IMO.

Both of these taken together serve to further underscore that when an angry Muslim in the Middle East or South Asia needs an outlet for his frustration and anger, it is going to be the entrenched views of Islamist thought (like that of Qutb) that will shape and direct that energy.   People are affected by policies - bin Laden and Co. speak to this anger and encourage violence as the solution.   If a guy's fruitstand gets run over, his mosque gets blown up, or he is stopped and stripped by Western soldiers then it only gives him further reason to believe that the preaching of the Salafi and the proclamations of bin Laden are infact correct and that Islam, his way of life, is under threat.   Then he gets organized and fights.

Stop the motivation to get angry in the first place, you stop this process.

To me it seemed as though your argument was these muslims wake up one day, decide that their lands are unpure, think that hey, this Qutb guy might be on to something, then go to the local Abu-Mart, pick up the suicide bombing for dummies kit, join a group with a bad video camera, and go find some infidels to BBQ as a pass into some virgins pants. Thus, to combat this, we need to attack Islamism and the "terrorist network", etc. etc.

My point was that these people have primal motivations that come into place way before they start thinking of religious justications, and that if we stop pissing people off in the first place, we wouldn't have to deal with half as many terrorists as we have, nor would we really have to try and dismantel these so called "terrorist networks" (I put it in the alternate form of, if we continue to callously attack middle eastern countries for what appears to be no good reason... blah blah blah...)

Of course, all of this is in the links I provided earlier; if you would have read them, you would have realized this....
Have I mentioned how you all get so cute when you're angry?   ;) :P
 
couchcommander said:
Wow, great.... so then maybe we should stop??? I am reminded of (what seems to be) DG-41's favorite saying "Doctor, it hurts when I do *this*..."
If we can prevent this anger from arising in the first place then we won't need to worry about sociological processes behind insurgencies. IE if we don't occupy muslims lands, or be seen killing muslims for what appears to the muslims to be no good reason.... then our problems are largely solved. I will make sure to look into those texts you've referenced.
Prevent the anger in the first place, once again we don't need to worry about it. And these testamonies are just the ones that googled so that I could use as open source examples for you guys. There are many many more.
Sure I can accept that.

Wow.  Sure, ok, that's one way of thinking about it.  And I suppose that, in the case of a rape we could say "yes, well, she was wearing a short dress, so he was tempted", and then enact a law forbidding all short dresses so that no rapist will ever again be tempted.

I'd like to echo Infanteer's statement:

Infanteer said:
Lay off the crackpipe kid.

Even if we were willing to bow down to the terrorists and meet all of their demands, it would never be enough.  The modern day insurgency isn't motivated by any logical or realistic demands or grievences, it's motivated by a fantasy ideology and pure hatred with no logical cause.

If you're really interested in understanding why large masses of people sometimes do things that make no logical sense, check out this link:

http://www.policyreview.org/aug02/harris.html



Here's an excert:

My first encounter with this particular kind of fantasy occurred when I was in college in the late sixties. A friend of mine and I got into a heated argument. Although we were both opposed to the Vietnam War, we discovered that we differed considerably on what counted as permissible forms of anti-war protest. To me the point of such protest was simple - to turn people against the war. Hence anything that was counterproductive to this purpose was politically irresponsible and should be severely censured. My friend thought otherwise; in fact, he was planning to join what by all accounts was to be a massively disruptive demonstration in Washington, and which in fact became one.

My friend did not disagree with me as to the likely counterproductive effects of such a demonstration. Instead, he argued that this simply did not matter. His answer was that even if it was counterproductive, even if it turned people against war protesters, indeed even if it made them more likely to support the continuation of the war, he would still participate in the demonstration and he would do so for one simple reason - because it was, in his words, good for his soul.

What I saw as a political act was not, for my friend, any such thing. It was not aimed at altering the minds of other people or persuading them to act differently. Its whole point was what it did for him.

And what it did for him was to provide him with a fantasy - a fantasy, namely, of taking part in the revolutionary struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors. By participating in a violent anti-war demonstration, he was in no sense aiming at coercing conformity with his view - for that would still have been a political objective. Instead, he took his part in order to confirm his ideological fantasy of marching on the right side of history, of feeling himself among the elect few who stood with the angels of historical inevitability. Thus, when he lay down in front of hapless commuters on the bridges over the Potomac, he had no interest in changing the minds of these commuters, no concern over whether they became angry at the protesters or not. They were there merely as props, as so many supernumeraries in his private psychodrama. The protest for him was not politics, but theater; and the significance of his role lay not in the political ends his actions might achieve, but rather in their symbolic value as ritual. In short, he was acting out a fantasy.

To be a prop in someone else's fantasy is not a pleasant experience, especially when this someone else is trying to kill you, but that was the position of Ethiopia in the fantasy ideology of Italian fascism. And it is the position Americans have been placed in by the quite different fantasy ideology of radical Islam.

The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation - in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?

As the purpose of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia was to prove to the Italians themselves that they were conquerors, so the purpose of 9-11 was not to create terror in the minds of the American people but to prove to the Arabs that Islamic purity, as interpreted by radical Islam, could triumph. The terror, which to us seems the central fact, is in the eyes of al Qaeda a by-product. Likewise, what al Qaeda and its followers see as central to the holy pageant of 9-11 - namely, the heroic martyrdom of the 19 hijackers - is interpreted by us quite differently. For us the hijackings, like the Palestinian "suicide" bombings, are viewed merely as a modus operandi, a technique that is incidental to a larger strategic purpose, a makeshift device, a low-tech stopgap. In short, Clausewitzian war carried out by other means - in this case by suicide.

But in the fantasy ideology of radical Islam, suicide is not a means to an end but an end in itself. Seen through the distorting prism of radical Islam, the act of suicide is transformed into that of martyrdom - martyrdom in all its transcendent glory and accompanied by the panoply of magical powers that religious tradition has always assigned to martyrdom.

In short, it is a mistake to try to fit such behavior into the mold created by our own categories and expectations. Nowhere is this more tellingly illustrated than on the videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attack. The tape makes clear that the final collapse of the World Trade Center was not part of the original terrorist scheme, which apparently assumed that the twin towers would not lose their structural integrity. But this fact gave to the event - in terms of al Qaeda's fantasy ideology - an even greater poignancy: Precisely because it had not been part of the original calculation, it was therefore to be understood as a manifestation of divine intervention. The 19 hijackers did not bring down the towers - God did.


I'd suggest reading the entire article, hopefuly it will help you figure out what you've been missing.
 
The problem with Harris is he is looking at it as an isolated entity - rather than a entity that has mutated beyond his categorizations.

  He has a good point that the attacks where a way of showing the Muslim society that they could raise up and strike the West/US, and most importantly succeed.  The biggest failure of Al-Q would be a fizzle attack, and as such they train and only will make attempts that will have have high percentage to succeed -  However he neglects to mention that Al-Q is in Gen IV now and the cells are spinning off like a cancer, and  unrelated to the next - the perfect disease.  The Gen1, II international network is still very viable but in Afghan and Iraq -- other than funding the new blood is doing its thing without any guidance from above.  In my point of view the question is when will the Gen III and Gen IV cells attempt to hit the big time and go international  -- then you will have the ocean liners and theme parks attacked and real massacres will take place.

So you end up the requirement to kill the majority of the Gen III and IV pers in situ - or else they will migrate and turn their focus outward to draw us away from their homeland - and into ours.

OBL and Co. have no more control (or interest controlling) the footmen of the insurgency in Iraq and Afghan.  They have strategic targets - while they allows the pawns to be killing in great numbers to keep the eye on Iraq until the public tires.



- Cheers
Kevin
 
A much simpler explanation of the "Root Cause" of terrorism is the will to power. Since the Jihadis do not have the sort of cultural or intellectual background to compete with Western Civilization, they use naked force to threaten us and drive us away from the lands of Dar el Islam, but also they are very keen to unleash car bombs and beheadings against members of their own community.

The message of the West is pretty much "look at what you can do if you want"; while the Jihadis counter offer is "Do what we say, or else".
 
Time to step out of the box for a look back in time.

When the Germans invaded Denmark during WW2 my grandfather along with his father and brothers resisted until they were all killed or deported. They felt it was their duty as citizens. Now not everyone felt the same way, and those who collaborated were dealt with during and after the war.

I wonder how mass media would have influenced the conflict during the occupation of Denmark?

 
Stepping back in: This applies not only to Iraq, but in various forms to Afghanistan and the multitude of smaller theaters of operation for the duration of WW IV. This also applies if the war widens to encompass Syria, Iran or Saudi Arabia as well.

http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200512060813.asp

Strength & Constancy
It's a strategy.

In conjunction with President George W. Bush's public-diplomacy offensive to regain domestic support for the war effort, the National Security Council has now published a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." While the usual suspects have denounced it as more of the same, the fact is that it is a sound effort to outline what is necessary to achieve our goals in Iraq.

Properly understood, strategy refers to a plan for applying scarce means to achieve the nation's goals. Without a strategic framework for setting priorities and guiding the development and employment of the instruments of national power, it is difficult to evaluate proposed actions to ensure the nation's security and prosperity. Strategy making and implementation are dynamic processes, changing as the factors that influence the strategy change. Potential mismatches between ends and means create risks. If the risks resulting from an ends-means mismatch cannot be managed, ends must be reevaluated and scaled back, means must be increased, or the strategy must be adjusted.

In general, strategy serves three purposes. First, strategy relates ends, the goals of policy (interests and objectives) to the limited resources available to achieve them against an adversary who actively opposes the achievement of the ends.

Second, strategy contributes to the clarification of the ends of policy by helping establish priorities in light of constrained resources. Without establishing priorities among competing ends, all interests and all threats will appear equal. In the absence of strategy, planners will find themselves in the situation described by Frederick the Great: "He who attempts to defend too much defends nothing." Finally, strategy conceptualizes resources as means in support of policy. Resources are not means until strategy provides some understanding of how they will be organized and employed.

Strategy can be envisioned as the answers to a series of interrelated questions:

What conditions do we wish to prevail in the area of interest to us?

What steps do we need to take in order to achieve those conditions, i.e., what plan of action is most likely to bring about the desired conditions?

What combination of the instruments of power best supports the chosen strategic alternative?

What are the opportunity costs and risks associated with the preferred strategic alternative?

If we apply these various criteria to the Bush Iraq strategy, it comes out looking pretty good.

The Successes Continue

The document clearly describes victory as the desired outcome for Iraq. This would seem self-evident but the document recognizes that the goal will be achieved in stages. In the short term, success is defined as "making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces." By this measurement, our enterprise in Iraq has been successful.

Success in the "medium term" will be achieved when Iraq has a fully constitutional government in place, has taken the lead in the war against the terrorists and is providing its own security, and is on its way to achieving its economic potential. The elections in two weeks will constitute an important milestone in achieving victory in the medium term.

Final victory in Iraq will have been achieved when the country "is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism." This is a big order and much has to happen to reach this goal - but the report makes clear what we aim to do.

"Victory in Iraq" points out that success in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest. "Iraq is the central front in the global war on terror. Failure in Iraq will embolden terrorists and expand their reach; success in Iraq will deal them a decisive and crippling blow." But U.S. interests extend beyond Iraq to the greater Middle East as a whole.

All too often, strategies do a fine job of describing the goal but don't address the plan to achieve the goals. But this is the essence of strategy: How do we apply scarce resources in the most effective way to bring about our desired end? If the president's Iraq strategy left this out, it would be a serious omission. But this is not the case. The document lays out three interconnected tracks that describe the "how" of the U.S. approach in Iraq. These tracks incorporate "eight pillars," or strategic objectives:

Defeat the Terrorists and Neutralize the Insurgency
Transition Iraq to Security Self-Reliance
Help Iraqis Form a National Compact for Democratic Government
Help Iraq Build Government Capacity and Provide Essential Services
Help Iraq Strengthen its Economy
Help Iraq Strengthen the Rule of Law and Promote Civil Rights
Increase International Support for Iraq
Strengthen Public Understanding of Coalition Efforts and Public Isolation of the Insurgents


As sophisticated observers are always quick to point out, insurgencies are never won by military means alone. There must be a political track leading to a stable government. To bring about this outcome, the document calls for isolating the real enemy elements by driving a wedge between them and those who can be won over to the political process. The second component of the political track is to engage those outside the political process by inviting them to participate in the governing process if they are willing to turn away from violence Finally, the political track calls for building stable, pluralistic, and effective national institutions capable of protecting the interests of all Iraqis, enabling Iraq to be fully integrated into the international community.

But while military means are not sufficient to defeat an insurgency, they are nonetheless necessary. The security track focuses on defeating the terrorists while building up Iraqi forces. The security track also has three components: taking offensive action to clear areas of enemy control, killing and capturing enemy fighters and denying them safe-haven; holding areas that have been wrested from enemy control and using Iraqi security forces to extend the writ of the Iraqi government; and most critically, building up these security forces and improving "the capacity of local institutions to deliver services, advance the rule of law, and nurture civil society."

The final track of the strategy is economic. The elements of this track are to help the Iraqi government: restore Iraq's infrastructure enabling it to meet increasing demand and the needs of a growing economy; reform an Iraqi economy to make it self-sustaining; and build the capacity of "Iraqi institutions to maintain infrastructure, rejoin the international economic community, and improve the general welfare of all Iraqis."

This is a clear strategic roadmap, which establishes the desired outcome and outlines the steps necessary to achieve it. All the elements are mutually reinforcing. And the document includes an appendix that provides clear metrics for evaluating progress.

Perhaps most important, the strategy is flexible and adaptable, recognizing that our enemy in Iraq is sophisticated. War is, after all, still a struggle between two active wills, each trying to achieve its goals by subduing the other. It recognizes that although we have achieved most of our short-term and many of or medium-term goals, the kind of victory that means a favorable peace will take time. The strategy cannot be linked to a predetermined schedule. It depends on conditions on the ground. "No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one. But lack of a timetable does not mean our posture in Iraq (both military and civilian) will remain static over time. As conditions change, our posture will change."

The document makes clear the risks of failure. If the United States does not prevail in Iraq, it "would become a safe haven from which terrorists could plan attacks against America, American interests abroad, and our allies." In addition, "Middle East reformers would never again fully trust American assurances of support for democracy and human rights in the region." The resulting "tribal and sectarian chaos would have major consequences for American security and interests in the region." Accordingly, says the document, losing is not an option.

But the risks associated with following the administration's strategic roadmap are real as well. The specter of civil war is always present, as well as the possibility that the terrorists will reemerge once the United States leaves: "Defeating the multi-headed enemy in Iraq - and ensuring that it cannot threaten Iraq's democratic gains once we leave - requires persistent effort across many fronts."

No Viable Alternatives

The reaction of the Democrats to "Victory in Iraq" has been predictable and is reminiscent of the response to Ronald Reagan's first "National Security Strategy" when it was published in 1987. All during his presidency, Reagan's critics constantly accused him of having no strategy except to spend more money on defense. They were blind to the fact that the main objective of Reagan's strategy was to exploit the Soviet "center of gravity," the weakness of communist economic organization. [Interpolation,. We need to discover and exploit the Jihadi's "centre of gravity" as well, certainly much better than we are now.]

Reagan's "National Security Strategy" merely placed on paper what astute observers could ascertain on the basis of actions alone: that a critical element of Reagan's grand strategy was "to force the Soviet Union to bear the brunt of its domestic economic shortcomings in order to discourage excessive Soviet military expenditures and global adventurism." It did so by exploiting the economic mismatch between the U.S. and the Soviet Union: While the U.S. was spending a maximum of 6.3 percent of a large and growing gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, the Soviets were spending a considerably larger portion of a much smaller GDP on security. The fact was that the United States could afford an arms race; the Soviet Union could not.

Bush's critics are as wrong today as Reagan's were two decades ago. Long before this document was published, the Coalition was pursuing the three-track strategy described in "Victory in Iraq." The process began a year ago with the capture of Fallujah. Since then, Coalition forces have concentrated on interdicting the "ratlines" that permitted the insurgents to infiltrate into the heart of Iraq from the Syrian border. As Iraqi forces have improved, Coalition forces have not only been able to clear key regions, killing and capturing terrorists during the operations, but to apply force simultaneously, making it difficult for the enemy fighters to slip away to other locations. And because there are more Iraqi units able to pull their weight, Coalition forces are increasingly able to hold territory that the enemy once controlled.

Progress has not been constant, of course, because plans rarely work out the way they are supposed to. I hope NRO readers will forgive me for once more reminding them of the observation by Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the Prussian general staff during the wars of German unification, that "no plan of operation extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force. Only the layman thinks that he can see in the course of the campaign the consequent execution of the original idea with all the details thought out in advance and adhered to until the very end."

His observations apply in spades to Iraq. The commander, wrote Moltke, must keep his objective in mind, "undisturbed by the vicissitudes of events. But the path on which he hopes to reach it can never be firmly established in advance. Throughout the campaign he must make a series of decisions on the basis of situations that cannot be foreseen. The successive acts of war are thus not premeditated designs, but on the contrary are spontaneous acts guided by military measures. Everything depends on penetrating the uncertainty of veiled situations to evaluate the facts, to clarify the unknown, to make decisions rapidly, and then to carry them out with strength and constancy." In my estimation, the Bush administration and the commanders on the ground have done a reasonably good job of keeping the objective of the war in mind while "[evaluating] the facts, [clarifying] the unknown, [making] decisions rapidly, and then . . . [carrying] them out with strength and constancy." This is what has permitted the Coalition to wrest the initiative from the insurgents over the last year.

By all means, if the president's critics have a better strategy, let them present it. Of course, the dominant Copperhead faction of the Democratic party has nothing to offer but the demand that we pull out. Meanwhile, those with presidential aspirations try to have it both ways, criticizing the president's approach but trying to appear serious about national security by not taking the Murtha-Pelosi road. But they don't provide much of an alternative either - let's call it "Copperhead lite." For instance John Kerry calls for reducing U.S. forces in Iraq. But cutting U.S. combat power in Iraq would permit the enemy to recover the initiative that the Coalition seized last year in Fallujah. In fact, neither the Copperhead nor Copperhead lite plans for Iraq constitute serious strategic alternatives to the president's strategy. Alternative plans would serve only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

- Mackubin Thomas Owens is an associate dean of academics and a professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He is writing a history of U.S. civil-military relations.
 
http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens200512060813.asp
 
Some further elaboration on the historical roots of the Jihadis. Their philosophies come from a time before modern nationalism, before the Crusades and indeed before the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. As Ralph Peters once said, "we will be facing enemies from the Iliad and the Bible", referring to their motivations, which only seem alien to pampered and uneducated Westerners. (Read the classics; The Iliad, The History of the Pelloponessian Wars and so on. People think and act this way in about 3/4 of the world, the way WE think and act is totally alien to them....)

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200512130829.asp

Going Medieval
The nature of jihad and this war we're in.

One hears a lot about the Crusades when studying the terrorist threat, and almost exclusively in the form of an accusation. These centuries-old conflicts are raised whenever someone, whether from the region or not, seeks to activate the Western guilt complex. We have to understand this conflict from their point of view, one is told. Memories are long in the region. The time of Saladin is as though yesterday. Had the Europeans (and by extension Americans) not started it all with the Crusades, we might not have the problems we face today.

O.K., but what about their crusade? We are accustomed to looking at maps that show an area called "the Muslim world," stretching from West Africa across the Middle East to Southeast Asia, as though this always has been and must be; but before the time of Mohammed these same areas were Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or Zoroastrian, among others. How did they make the switch, and what happened when they did? This is the topic The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims a new anthology edited by Andrew G. Bostom. This exhaustive, 759-page tome contains both primary-source material and interpretive essays, dating from the earliest period of Muslim expansion to the present day. One learns very quickly that the caliphate was established not by evangelism but by the sword, and the non-Muslims who were subjected to the rule of the caliphs were either forced to convert, allowed to live as social inferiors under a religious caste system called dhimmitude, or simply killed outright.

There was no question among the early Muslim scholars that their faith should spread to the four corners of the world, and as quickly as possible. According to Islamic teaching, the time before the advent of Mohammed was the period of Jahiliyyah, or ignorance of the guidance from God. Once Mohammed brought the word of God, there was no longer any excuse for ignorance. And once an area was liberated and its people enlightened, they could not go back. Any place that became Muslim had to stay Muslim; thus groups like al Qaeda define the hoped for neo-Caliphate as encompassing not only areas where Muslims currently live, but all such places were they ever had influence. More to the point, this is only the first phase of consolidation. They will not stop there. The ultimate step in the al Qaeda program is the conversion of the world to their brand of Islam, and the realization of the vision first pursued by Mohammed and his successors.

The Legacy of Jihad deals at some length with the medieval roots of jihad, and the classical Muslim theologians and jurists writing on topics of the necessity of expansion, the legality of war, and the legitimate ways in which people may be enslaved. Some of the arguments may seem antiquated to modern ways of thinking, but one can find references to these same thinkers in the contemporary writings of the terrorists and their spiritual godfathers. Ibn Taymiyah, for example, the 13th-century scholar who justified rebellion against the Mongol occupiers of Baghdad even though they had nominally converted to Islam, is included in this volume. Today he is invoked by Iraqi insurgents for a similar purpose. Sayyid Qutb, the 20th-century Egyptian dissident whose writings are generally recognized as the inspiration for the current radical Islamist movements, was also inspired by Ibn Taymiyah. The book includes an excerpt from his seminal work Milestones in which Qutb discusses in some detail the nature of jihad as he understood it - something that "cannot be achieved only by preaching."

The nature of jihad is of course one of the central questions of the conflict. Frequently I have had students from Muslim countries explain very passionately that our understanding of jihad is flawed. That what we think of as jihad - violent struggle to extend the domain of Islam - is actually the "lesser jihad." True jihad is a moral struggle within each person to enjoin the good and resist evil, what is called the "greater jihad." Some say further that the idea that force can be used to convert is not Islamic; it would make the greater jihad impossible because the convert would not sincerely believe. All this may be true, in their understanding of the faith, and I have no quarrel with it. Would that everyone felt that way.

Nevertheless, not all Muslims are as interested in this spiritual quest, and some of the more radical adherents of the faith are convinced that nonviolence is not an option. Andrew Bostom's book shows comprehensively the historical roots of this school of thought, and its continuity over the centuries to the present day. It helps one understand jihad operationally; its use, its claims to legitimacy, its perceived inevitability. Whether this is or is not the way most Muslims view the concept of jihad in its totality is not particularly relevant because people sincerely engaged in "greater jihad" are not a national-security threat. Likewise, those terrorists who have made "lesser jihad" their avocation have no use for fellow Muslims who are seeking only to bring themselves closer to God's ideal as they understand it. As the Ayatollah Khomeini said of those who argued that Islam was a religion of peace that prevents men from waging war, "I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim."

This is a book rich in detail. It contains writings that have not previously been available in English, and is a useful sourcebook for scholars and students interested in the topic. It is a useful companion to contemporary terrorist statements and writings - you might be surprised how much is borrowed from other writers. Clearly given the length, the language, and complexity (and gravity) of the topic it is not a book for light holiday reading. But for those who want to deepen their understanding of the means and motives of the terrorists, there is more in one place than any other book of its kind. And you won't have to feel guilty about the Crusades any more either.

- James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and an NRO contributor.
   
  http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200512130829.asp
       

 
Tell James S Robbins to quit cribbing my posts.... :)
 
Yet more evidence this is a regional war. The Saudis, Iranians and Ba'athists have competing and mutually exclusive ideas of how the Middle East should look if they were in charge, but it is well to remember they have a common cause against the West and particularly the United States, since Western civilization has many "attractors" that would draw their native populations away from the ideologies they support, and only the United States has the military and economic power (and currently the will) to prevent any or all from acheiving their goals of regional hegemony.

Spreading freedom, free markets and democracy is perhaps the only way to defang the threat and achieve victory, and yes, you can export freedom on the point of a bayonet (the ancient Athenians did so, and these democracies were mostly undone by conquest and the installation of an Oligarchy by the Spartans and their Pelloponessian allies. More recent object lessons are the former "National Socialist" Germany and the Japanese Empire). Toppling Iraq and spreading support for local movements (like the Ceadar Revolution in Lebanon) are elements of this strategy.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/woolsey200512140823.asp

The Elephant in the Middle East Living Room
Watching Wahhabis.

By R. James Woolsey

Early in November, hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee examined hate literature being distributed in American mosques. This material had been translated and published earlier this year by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. (I was chairman of Freedom House at the time and wrote the book's foreword.) The hearings examined these Saudi publications in the context of assessing Chairman Arlen Specter's proposed Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. In addition to the material presented at the hearings, the underlying role of Saudi Arabia's state religion, generally referred to in the West as Wahhabism, deserves expanded attention for a variety of reasons.

Recently President Bush addressed a number of the ideological aspects of this long war in which we are now engaged. As he has put it now on two occasions, "Islamofascism" is one plausible characterization of our enemy. Although this is a major step forward beyond designating "terror" as the enemy (we're certainly at war with more than a tactic, albeit a terrible one) there was still a major element missing in his presentation. The elephant in the Middle East living room is Wahhabism. Over the long run, this movement is in many ways the most dangerous of the ideological enemies we face.

Within Sunni Islam, along with several more moderate schools, there are two varieties of theocratic totalitarianism. Both of these are Salafists, believing that only a literal version of the model of rule implemented in the seventh century in Islam has ultimate legitimacy. Both have the objective of rule by a unified mosque and state; for some this theocracy is personified by the caliph. Different individuals in these movements emphasize different aspects, but generally the common objective is to unify first the Arab world under theocratic rule, then the Muslim world, then those regions that were once Muslim (e.g. Spain), then the rest of the world.

Such totalitarian visions seem crazy to most of us; we thus tend to underestimate their potency. Yet the Salafists' theocratic totalitarian dream has some features in common with the secular totalitarian dreams of the twentieth century, e.g., the Nazis' Thousand Year Reich, or the Communists' World Communism. The latter two movements produced tens of millions of deaths in the 20th century in part because, at least in their early stages, they engendered "fire in the minds of men" in Germany, Russia, and China and were able to establish national bases. Salafists had such a national base for the better part of a decade in Afghanistan and have had one controlling the Arabian Peninsula for some eight decades. They haven't attained the Nazis' and Communists' death totals yet, but this is only due to lack of power, not to less murderous or less totalitarian objectives.

Salafists of both jihadist and loyalist stripe, e.g. both al Qaeda and the Wahhabis, share basic views on all points but one. Both exhibit fanatical hatred of Shiite Muslims, Sufi Muslims, Jews, Christians, and democracy, and both brutally suppress women. They differ only on whether it is appropriate to carry out jihadist attacks against any enemy near or far now â ” i.e. to murder Iraqi Shiite children getting candy, people working in the World Trade Center, etc. â ” or whether to subordinate such efforts for the time being to the political needs of a particular state, i.e. Saudi Arabia.

The relationship between the Salafist jihadists such as al Qaeda and Salafist loyalists such as the Wahhabis is thus loosely analogous to that between the Trotskyites and the Stalinists of the 1930's. Trotskyites, like al Qaeda, believed it was justified to use violence anywhere while Stalinists, like the Wahhabis, showed primary allegiance to protecting "socialism in one country", i.e. the U.S.S.R. The fact that this difference was only a question of tactics didn't prevent the Trotskyites and Stalinists from being the most bitter of enemies â ” Trotsky died in 1940 with a Stalinist axe in his skull.

The "IslamoNazi" Threat

Similarly, al Qaeda launches attacks in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis work with us to capture and kill al Qaeda members who threaten them. In this sense both Saudi government officials and probably even Wahhabi clerics are willing to "cooperate with the U.S. on counter-terrorism." But this cooperation does not negate the fact that al Qaeda and the Wahhabis share essentially the same underlying totalitarian theocratic ideology. It is this common Salafist ideology that the Wahhabis have been spreading widely â ” financed by $3-4 billion/year from the Saudi government and wealthy individuals in the Middle East over the last quarter century â ” to the madrassas of Pakistan, the textbooks of Turkish children in Germany, and the mosques of Europe and the U.S. Alex Alexiev, senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, testified before Congress on June 26, 2003, that this is approximately three-four times what the Soviets were spending on external propaganda and similar "active measures" at the peak of Moscow's power in the 1970s.

This underlying Salafist ideology being spread by the Wahhabis is fanatical and murderous, indeed explicitly genocidal. (The president's "Islamofascist" term is thus perhaps understated â ” the Italian fascists were horrible, but not genocidal. "IslamoNazi" would be more accurate.)

For example, the BBC reported on July 18 of this year that a publication given to foreign workers in Saudi Arabia by the Islamic cultural center, which falls under the authority of the ministry of Islamic affairs, advocates the killing of "refusers" (Shia). The imam of Al-Haram in Mecca, (Islam's most holy mosque), Sheikh Abd Al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, was barred from Canada last year after the translation of his sermons calling Jews "the scum of the earth" and "monkeys and pigs" who should be "annihilated." Materials distributed by the Saudi government to the Al-Farouq Masjid mosque in Brooklyn call for the killing of homosexuals and converts from Islam to another religion.

Ideas Have Consequences

The direct consequences of such murderous teachings extend to the war in Iraq. In November of 2004, 26 Wahhabi clerics in Saudi Arabia published a call for jihad against the U.S. in Iraq. Because of the high religious status of the clerics within Saudi Arabia, the exhortation was widely interpreted as a fatwa, a religious ruling. Several Saudi suicide bombers and other terrorists captured in Iraq have indicated that it was this fatwa that had turned them to terrorism. Said one: "I hadn't thought of coming to Iraq, but I had fatwas . . . I read the communiqué of the 26 clerics ... ." During the battle for Fallujah in 2004 Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Abikan said to the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, "What is happening in Falluja is the result of such fatwas ... [The resistance] is bringing about tragedy and destruction for Iraq, Falluja, and their residents." Nasser Sulayman al-Amer, one of the 26 signers of the call for jihad, admitted recently at a press conference in Kuwait that he had met with Iraqis on this matter. On November 13 of this year the Iraqi national-security adviser, Mowaffak Rubaie said: "Most of those who blow themselves up in Iraq are Saudi nationals."

Lost in Translation

Following the controversy over the 26 clerics' edict the Saudi government retracted it, in a sense. But the only two Saudi officials who released the retraction publicly were two Saudi ambassadors, those to the U.S. and the U.K. And the retractions were issued only in English.

Overbalancing such "retractions" of Wahhabi statements is the fact that Saudi education is turning toward, not away from, Wahhabi influence. In February of 2005 a secularist reformer, Muhammad Ahmad al-Rashid, headed the Saudi Education Ministry. As he was beginning to respond to internal criticism of curricula that incited hatred of non-Muslims and non-Wahhabi Muslims, he was replaced by Abdullah bin Saleh al-Obaid, a hard-core Wahhabi. Controlling 27 percent of the national budget, al-Obaid will have a substantial effect on the views of the next generation of Saudis. His views are illuminated by aspects of his background. From 1995 to 2002, al-Obaid headed the Muslim World League (MWL). According to the U.S. Treasury the MWL's Peshawar office was led by Wael Jalaidan, "one of the founders of al Qaeda." Moreover, the main arm of the MWL is the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO). The Egyptian magazine, Rose al-Youssef, describes the IIRO as "firmly entrenched with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization." In March 2002 the U.S. headquarters representing both organizations was raided and closed by federal authorities. One of the officers of the closed branch in Herndon, Virginia, was al-Obaid. The Wall Street Journal describes him as "an official enmeshed in a terror financing controversy."

Thinly Veiled Totalitarianism

Wahhabi ideology is also totalitarian to a unique degree in its repression of women. In 2002 the world press carried stories of an extreme example: Religious police in Saudi Arabia forced some young girls fleeing a burning school back inside to their deaths because they were not properly veiled. This is a fanaticism that knows no bounds.

Words and beliefs have consequences, and totalitarians are often remarkably clear about what they will do once they have enough power. Many brushed aside Mein Kampf when it was first written but it turned out to be an excellent guide to the Nazis' behavior once they had the power to implement it. We ignore the Wahhabis' teaching of Salafist fanaticism at our peril.

The Struggle for Islam

There are two important points we must understand in dealing with this ideology and its teachings.

First of all, the rest of us â ” Christians, Jews, other Muslims, followers of other religions, non-believers â ” are under absolutely no obligation to accept the Wahhabis' and their apologists' claims that they represent "true Islam." This is equivalent to the claims of Torquemada in the 16th century to represent "true Christianity." He tortured and persecuted Jews, Muslims, and dissident Christians, burned many at the stake, and stole their property. We are under no obligation to take Torquemada's word that he represented "true Christianity" and would be under no obligation to take the word of any successor should one arise. By the same token, we are under no obligation to accept the Wahhabis' claim to represent the great and just religion of Islam.

Second, it is difficult for Americans to bring themselves to draw distinctions among those who claim they are following the requirements of their religion â ” we generally do not want to quarrel with others' religious beliefs even if they seem very strange to us. But we must realize that murderous totalitarianism that claims religious sanction is different. We have defeated four major totalitarian movements in the last six and a half decades: German Nazism, Italian Fascism, Japanese Imperialism, and Soviet Communism. Only Japanese Imperialism had a major religious element. Communism however was secular, so our current generation of leaders has little experience with a totalitarian ideology that seeks to hide behind one of the world's great religions the way Torquemada cloaked his murderousness in claims to represent Christianity. This makes it difficult for most Americans to understand IslamoNazism. We tend to regard each person's religious beliefs as a private matter. But we must learn to make an exception for theocratic totalitarianism masquerading as religion.

During the Cold War we had little difficulty in distinguishing between, say, the Khmer Rouge and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, although both called themselves "Socialists." But it is harder for us to bring ourselves to distinguish between those who follow the Wahhabi party line on the one hand and, on the other, brave and decent individuals such the American Sufi leader Sheik Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, who has been warning Americans of the danger of Islamist terror since well before 9/11. We must get over this reluctance to challenge the perpetrators of and apologists for theocratic totalitarianism.

Cold War Lessons

Does taking on Wahhabism and its supporters mean that we must stand opposed to all cooperation with the government of Saudi Arabia, or attempt to change the Saudi regime in short order? No. The needs of statecraft must also be considered. We fought the Communist ideology in different ways from 1917 through the Cold War. But while we were fighting it, for nearly four years during World War II we were close allies of the Soviets, because we needed them with us against Hitler. Over the years we had commercial relations with them (they bought our wheat and Pepsis, we bought their oil) and some of us spent years negotiating arms-control agreements with them, sometimes to positive effect. In short, we worked as the need arose over the years with the Soviet state, but we generally kept up our ideological struggle against Communism, especially after 1947.

We need to keep this history in mind when dealing with the government of Saudi Arabia. The royal family has some reformers in it, including, to a mild degree, King Abdullah, with whom we may make some common cause. We need to work with the Saudi government on reform and, of course, on issues related to oil. But just as we took steps in the 1980s to try to limit Europe's dependence on Soviet natural-gas supplies we would be well advised today to reduce our own oil dependency. And we must never forget the underlying totalitarian ideology of the Saudi state.

How might we undertake to fight this Wahhabi ideology? Again, we should recall some Cold War lessons. By the 1950s, after a congressional attempt to outlaw Communism was struck down by the Supreme Court, and after Joseph McCarthy's attempt to spread guilt by association was defeated, we hit upon several ways to deal with our domestic Communists. We made them register. We infiltrated them with large numbers of FBI agents. We essentially made their lives miserable. It was legal for them and their front groups to exist â ” indeed they perennially ran Gus Hall for President â ” and they even recruited some spies for the Soviets. But despite their best efforts they were not a serious force in American life, nor did they succeed in undermining our ability to fight the Cold War. At the same time we made common cause with Democratic socialists around the world, just as we must make common cause today with the hundreds of millions of decent Muslims with whom we have no quarrel.

We should have a frank national discussion about how we may learn from this history and deal with Sunni theocratic totalitarianism â ” so that we may help it join its secular cousins, Nazism and Communism (and its predecessor totalitarian religious movements such as Torquemada's Inquisition) where they all rightly belong: on the ash-heap of history.

â ” R. James Woolsey is a former director of Central Intelligence 

  http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/woolsey200512140823.asp
       

 
Bruce Monkhouse said:
No, what I don't like is your assumption in your long post above is that somehow "we" created "those" people, go through history and you will see those with less usually attacked those with more...is that the fault of the person with more or visa-versa?

More evidence from history that we are fighting a regional war with far higher stakes then "oil" or "Realpolitik"



America's Earliest Terrorists
Lessons from America's first war against Islamic terror.

By Joshua E. London

At the dawn of a new century, a newly elected United States president was forced to confront a grave threat to the nation - an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim terrorists. Worse still, these Islamic partisans operated under the protection and sponsorship of rogue Arab states ruled by ruthless and cunning dictators.

Sluggish in recognizing the full nature of the threat, America entered the war well after the enemy's call to arms. Poorly planned and feebly executed, the American effort proceeded badly and at great expense - resulting in a hastily negotiated peace and an equally hasty declaration of victory.

As timely and familiar as these events may seem, they occurred more than two centuries ago. The president was Thomas Jefferson, and the terrorists were the Barbary pirates. Unfortunately, many of the easy lessons to be plucked from this experience have yet to be fully learned.

The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib ("Land of Sunset"), denoting Islam's territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed's armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.

The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America's struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.

Although there is much in the history of America's wars with the Barbary pirates that is of direct relevance to the current "war on terror," one aspect seems particularly instructive to informing our understanding of contemporary Islamic terrorists. Very simply put, the Barbary pirates were committed, militant Muslims who meant to do exactly what they said.

Take, for example, the 1786 meeting in London of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain. As American ambassadors to France and Britain respectively, Jefferson and Adams met with Ambassador Adja to negotiate a peace treaty and protect the United States from the threat of Barbary piracy.

These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, "that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."

Sound familiar?

The candor of that Tripolitan ambassador is admirable in its way, but it certainly foreshadows the equally forthright declarations of, say, the Shiite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1980s and the Sunni Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, not to mention the many pronouncements of their various minions, admirers, and followers. Note that America's Barbary experience took place well before colonialism entered the lands of Islam, before there were any oil interests dragging the U.S. into the fray, and long before the founding of the state of Israel.

America became entangled in the Islamic world and was dragged into a war with the Barbary states simply because of the religious obligation within Islam to bring belief to those who do not share it. This is not something limited to "radical" or "fundamentalist" Muslims.

Which is not to say that such obligations lead inevitably to physical conflict, at least not in principle. After all peaceful proselytizing among various religious groups continues apace throughout the world, but within the teachings of Islam, and the history of Muslims, this is a well-established militant thread.

The Islamic basis for piracy in the Mediterranean was an old doctrine relating to the physical or armed jihad, or struggle.

To Muslims in the heyday of Barbary piracy, there were, at least in principle, only two forces at play in the world: the Dar al-Islam, or House of Islam, and the Dar al-Harb, or House of War. The House of Islam meant Muslim governance and the unrivaled authority of the sharia, Islam's complex system of holy law. The House of War was simply everything that fell outside of the House of Islam - that area of the globe not under Muslim authority, where the infidel ruled. For Muslims, these two houses were perpetually at war - at least until mankind should finally embrace Allah and his teachings as revealed through his prophet, Mohammed.

The point of jihad is not to convert by force, but to remove the obstacles to the infidels' conversion so that they shall either convert or become a dhimmi (a non-Muslim who accepts Islamic dominion) and pay the jizya, or poll tax. The goal is to bring all of the Dar al-Harb into the peace of the Dar al-Islam, and to eradicate unbelief. The Koran also promises rewards to those who fight in the jihad, plunder and glory in this world and the delights of paradise in the next.

Although the piratical activities of Barbary genuinely degenerated over the centuries from pure considerations of the glory of jihad to less grandiose visions of booty and state revenues, it is important to remember that the religious foundations of the institution of piracy remained central.

Even after it became commonplace for the pirate captains or their crew to be renegade Europeans, it was essential that these former Christians "turn Turk" and convert to Islam before they could be accorded the honor of engagement in al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea.

In fact, the peoples of Barbary continued to consider the pirates as holy warriors even after the Barbary rulers began to allow non-religious commitments to command their strategic use of piracy. The changes that the religious institution of piracy underwent were natural, if pathological. Just as the concept of jihad is invoked by Muslim terrorists today to legitimize suicide bombings of noncombatants for political gain, so too al-jihad fil-bahr, the holy war at sea, served as the cornerstone of the Barbary states' interaction with Christendom.

In times of conflict, America tends to focus on personalities over ideas or movements, trying to play the man, not the board - as if capturing or killing Osama bin Laden, for example, would instantly end the present conflict. But such thinking loses sight of the fact that ideas have consequences. If one believes that God commands something, this belief is not likely to dissipate just because the person who elucidated it has been silenced. Islam, as a faith, is as essential a feature of the terrorist threat today as it was of the Barbary piracy over two centuries ago.

The Barbary pirates were not a "radical" or "fundamentalist" sect that had twisted religious doctrine for power and politics, or that came to recast aspects of their faith out of some form of insanity. They were simply a North African warrior caste involved in an armed jihad - a mainstream Muslim doctrine. This is how the Muslims understood Barbary piracy and armed jihad at the time, and, indeed, how the physical jihad has been understood since Mohammed revealed it as the prophecy of Allah.

Obviously, and thankfully, not every Muslim is obligated, or even really inclined, to take up this jihad. Indeed, many Muslims are loath to personally embrace this physical struggle. But that does not mean they are all opposed to such a struggle any more than the choice of many Westerners not to join the police force or the armed services means they do not support those institutions.

Whether "insurgents" are fighting in Iraq or "rebels" and "militants" are skirmishing in Chechnya or Hamas "activists" are detonating themselves in Israel, Westerners seem unwilling to bring attention to the most salient feature of all these groups: They claim to be acting in the name of Islam.
It is very easy to chalk it all up to regional squabbles, economic depression, racism, or post-colonial nationalistic self-determinism. Such explanations undoubtedly enter into part of the equation - they are already part of the propaganda that clouds contemporary analysis. But as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams came to learn back in 1786, the situation becomes a lot clearer when you listen to the stated intentions and motivations of the terrorists and take them at face value.

- Joshua E. London is the author of Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation (John Wiley & Sons, September 2005); for more about the book visit
www.victoryintripoli.com.

  http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/london200512160955.asp
       

 
More evidence that the campaign is indeed regional

Khomeini Redux
Tehran Rising.

There are two key rules to keep in mind when looking at the world strategically. First is the inevitability of change. Stability is chimerical. The past century has seen at least five distinct strategic environments, depending on how you count them. Powers with global influence have risen and others have fallen — or both in the case of the Soviet Union. All countries seek security, and many of them also strive to increase their power and authority. When faced with a state pursuing an aggressive plan to achieve regional hegemony, the worst move is to seek to institutionalize the status quo. The rising power won't accept it, though it might say it does; and the established powers will cling to the familiar, and grow complacent. The results are what you might expect; Europe in the late 1930s, for example.

The second rule is to give credit to people that they are sincere in their beliefs. Western liberals, who prize reason, are subject to the tendency to explain away beliefs they consider unreasonable. Progress and freedom are inevitable because they are the natural courses of history. Ideologies that do not fit our predetermined vision of the future are not worth taking seriously. Extremism cannot triumph because it does not make sense. Therefore, the Bolsheviks and their successors were not really after global Communist revolution, even though they said they were. The Nazis would not really commit armed aggression and genocide, even though they advocated both. And while Khmer Rouge military leader Khieu Samphan's 1959 doctoral thesis identified the urban bourgeoisie as a parasite class that had to be removed to the countryside, they wouldn't really empty Phnom Penh of its 2.5 million citizens and subject them to collectivization, reeducation, and execution, would they? Isn't that just plain crazy?

So when a freshly ambitious Iran claims it has "the inalienable right to have access to a nuclear fuel cycle," and radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies that Iran seeks to build nuclear weapons, states that Israel must be "wiped off the map," should we be concerned? Perhaps "concerned" is an understatement.

Ilan Berman has written a useful new book that helps make sense of Iran's ambitions, and the means they are using to try to achieve them. "Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States describes the consequences of the worst-case scenario, an emboldened nuclear-armed Iran establishing regional hegemony and continuing to utilize the cat's paw of terrorist surrogates that it has perfected in over 25 years of state sponsorship. Iran is a prime example of what strategists refer to as a "nexus" state, combining hostility to the United States with nuclear potential and access to a global terrorist network. This was the very combination of threats that made Saddam Hussein's Iraq a candidate for aggressive regime change. In addition, as the author notes, the Iran question goes well beyond the nuclear issue that is currently the focus of the world's attention. The book is a comprehensive threat assessment that finds Iranian activity in other spheres of power (political and economic, as well as military) and in many parts of the world (the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and even the Western Hemisphere).

As with any state, the threat to U.S. interests comes not from Iran's capacity to make mischief, but its intention to do so. Ahmadinejad's assumption of the presidency last summer brought a more bellicose tone to Iranian rhetoric, which has increased these concerns. But there is some good news. As the author notes, two clocks are racing in Iran, the "nuclear" clock and the "regime change" clock. The United States, its allies, and Iran's neighbors have a vital interest in seeing that Iran experiences a democratic transition before the current regime can realize its nuclear ambitions.

There are some indications that such a transition is on the horizon. The Iranian population is young (the median age is just over 24 years old) and most did not live under the shah's regime — which was a model of progressive liberalism compared to the darkest days of the Khomeini theocracy. They have shown little interest in Ahmadinejad's desire to restore the revolutionary virtues of two decades ago; many scoffed when the Iranian Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council issued an edict banning western music from state radio, saying that the "promotion of decadent and Western music should be avoided and the stress should be put on authorized, artistic, classical, and fine Iranian music." There is open agitation for liberal reform, and occasional riots and other forms of protest. It is possible that as the grip of the reactionaries tightens, the democratic elements could rally the Iranian people to participate in a "color revolution" of the types that have brought change in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon. Yet, these developments seem to be moving more slowly than the nuclear program, and in any case, the current regime is probably more determined to hold power — mobs in the streets sometimes make revolutions, and sometimes are treated to a "whiff of grapeshot." Let's not forget Tiananmen Square.

So what can be done? Berman notes that U.S. policy towards Iran has been ambiguous and contradictory over the years. For example, Iran is the number-one terrorist state sponsor, and is giving support to the insurgents in Iraq, yet somehow has not been called to account even as we fight a global war on terrorism. The U.S. is vitally concerned about the proliferation of WMD technologies, yet takes a backseat to the Europeans in trying to settle the Iranian nuclear issue. (In my opinion, this may be a good thing in that it places the Europeans on the frontlines and prevents them from simply being critical of the United States as we try to solve the issue — but that political benefit must be weighed against the possibility they will not get the job done.) Perhaps, as the author suggests, we can contain Iran through a diplomatic campaign to make other countries in the region understand the magnitude of the threat. However, if they have not figured that out by now (and if the behavior of countries like Turkey is any indication, they have not), what can the United States do to convince them?

I recommend Tehran Rising as a sober and objective assessment of the threats, both actual and potential, that the United States faces from Iran. One hopes the international community will increase the pressure on Tehran to forgo its nuclear ambitions before the matter has to be resolved by other means. So long as President Ahmadinejad continues to speak his mind publicly, the world will have no doubts as to the regime's intentions. We just have to take him at his word.

— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, a trustee for the Leaders for Liberty Foundation, and an NRO contributor.

http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins200601030825.asp
 
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