Swift Sword

Hello Anoop,

I would like to point out that many of the military, political and economic tools required to cap and roll back jihadis are redundant viz containment.

As to getting Muslims to publicly distance themselves from Muslims whose conduct we politically oppose, trying to crack the nut of Muslim solidarity is probably not going to yield a desirable outcome. Give the target audience some solid political reasons firmly rooted in local matters to oppose the jihadis and I suspect results would be forthcoming.

But it is precisely the political situation in many Muslim countries that allow the jihadis to recruit, train and operate. Why is terror rampant in Iraq but much less in Jordan? The religious faith of the target audience for jihadi propaganda makes them open to the suggestion but local demographics and strength of government institutions seems to play a huge role in whether the terrorists can get any traction. Political Islam in general tends to have a very local flavor.

Good question, and I have no easy short answer.

At the risk of being accused of using a non sequitor, I think it would be appropriate to say that we might define an appropriate range of things to say by firmly identifying things not to say or do.

For instance, enemy propaganda portrays the United States forces in the Middle East as locusts whom lay upon the land who bring nothing but subjugation and misery to Muslims. If we advocate regime change at the barrel of a gun and then install a friendly government that continues to torture and oppress the populace, we do nothing but validate the enemy's position. The United States has done a very good job of making what Osama bin Laden says appear to be true in the eyes of a great many people.

Non Muslims can compete with the Islamic scholars but it will likely have to be through proxies. Identifying and supporting members of the uleama and candidates for study at the better known Islamic colleges who are not anti-American or anti-Western is an avenue worth exploring. Support would probably have to be covert but there already exist networks of charitable organizations that support various Muslim causes which might be enlisted to this end.

Parihaka

I agree entirely about the at best flawed use of Iraq as a tar baby, but I disagree about the amount unreachable by a bullet. Shoot those diseminating terrorist doctrine, shoot those who materially support them and those others of whom you speak either have to put their head up themselves or their message goes unheard. PSYOPS and INFOWAR are good for dealing with the hoi polloi but they are not the problem. You are not fighting a conventional war.

Swift Sword

Parihaka,

The problem here is that many of those whom are spreading the ideology are not involved in criminal or military activity in many of the countries in which they operate which makes them difficult to shoot with any degree of legitimacy.

Some countries where people do not live free have already moved on them and some are moving to outlaw some of these groups and criminalize their activities. The problem is, at least in Western type liberal democracies, there is a goodly amount of due process that takes a bit of time and even then there is no guaruntee of success.

Stopping the spread of ideas is a difficult business.

Here I have to disagree with you: PSYOPS and INFOWAR have a proven track record in unconventional warfare and if for no other reason they ought to be used because the enemy is getting so much utility out them. His material is widely dissemenated and without much opposition; he should not be allowed so much freedom to manuever in this part of the battle space.

Confed999

Then the governments of those countries are in the same boat. Shoot them too...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

Parihaka

There ya go. With the countries, Swift Swords PSYOPS might actually be useful

Anoop C

Confed,

That may prove to be a slippery slope. Where does one draw the line between violent disagreement, bordering on verbal abuse of a particular ideology and incitement of hate? In India, where the possibility of communal clashes are high, the authorities generally keep a hawk's eye on large gatherings and closely monitor what is said at those meetings, even resorting to preventive arrests of known miscreants prior to such meetings. Would this be allowed in the US? Or would the right to free speech prevail?

Confed999

Same same. They do not let people incite to riot here either. Get a permit for your demonstration, follow the guidelines for that permit to the letter, or risk jail time.
You have the right to say anything you wish, but you do not have the right to be heard, and you certainly do not have the right to hurt people. Ask the demonstrators that decided to block traffic in New York durring the convention. They went to jail, and all they did was inconvenience people.

Anoop C

Confed,

Perhaps I wasn't clear in my previous post. One doesn't have to urge people to pick up arms and riot; a fiery speech, playing upon real and imagined grievances, while being perfectly legal, can incite one. That is the problem - poor evidence of wrongdoing by judicial standards, yet immense potential for trouble. However, this point is tangential to the main one and serves only to illustrate the dangers of excessive enthusiasm in suppressing dissenting voices.

When a Mullah delivers a fiery sermon that accuses the US/whoever of being the root cause of all the Ummah's problems, he is not breaking the law. He is only sowing a seed - of suspicion, perhaps even hatred. That is not illegal in most countries, except for the most draconian ones that permit no back-chat. What it does, however, is condition his audience to believe the worst of the target, which then makes the mind fertile for further exploitation. How do you combat that? That is the question.

Shooting the Mullah is not the answer, it is only a gateway to a much bigger problem.

Parihaka

10 fiery Mullahs, sitting on the wall,
10 fiery Mullahs, sitting on the wall,
and if 1 fiery Mullah should 'accidentally' fall,
there'd be 9 fiery Mullahs sitting on the wall.
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Where'd all the fiery mullahs go?

Swift Sword

Something tells me that shooting the government of United States would not get you very far

The United States has always been a haven for spurious ideolouges, disgruntled expats, terrorist fund raising and terrorist training camps. And someone said that Democracy was the cure for terrorism

Bluesman

[sarc]Yep, the ole US of A has come a total cropper. We're such hypocrites, to criticize anybody else when our house is so disorderly. No doubt you'd be happier elsewhere, where the pure-of-thought and doers-of-right dwell. Let me know what their immigration policies are when you find it, and I'll put in my application, too.

Actually, the United States has been a haven for dam' near everybody, and like as not we'll let in the wrong ones from time-to-time, or grow our own domestic creeps. And as long as that's happeneing, even just a little bit, go ahead and hate your country. We deserve your censure, dam' our black hearts.[/sarc]

As for democracy being the cure for terrorism, I'd say it's at least the best innoculation, and that's progress, when you compare it to the witch doctoring and folk cures going on in all other systems.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

Shek

Yeah, but with the high price of gas, it's hard to drive too far from Montana!

__________________
"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

Swift Sword

My position is that freedom comes with risks and if you want to live in a society with the freedom to assemble, freedom of the press and freedom from religious interference you have to accept the risk that people are going to use that freedom to propagate bad ideas and anarchical doctrine.

A competing position is that of the big government apologists in the Bush wing of the Republican Party: Americans are victims of terrorism and other social ills because we have too much freedom.

It was not my intent to imply that Americans are hypocrites because we have a hisotry of tolerating the propagation of ideologies that fuel terror and various activities best described as "the softer side of terrorism" but rather to point out a dichotomous tendancy. For instance, I find it amusing that troops are being sent beyond oceans dragging guns so large they need wheels to move them ostensibly to fight the forces of radical Isalm when the propagation of radical Islam itself does not even amount to a criminal act in the United States.

Oh yeah, I have no desire to flee the United States: any place that might be remotely cool enough to warrant a look in the first place has already been overrun by those insufferable Hollywood types with their puzzling values and troublesome political ideas


While I am all for propagating democracy, the historical record seems to show that democracies are ill equipped for fighting terrorism and have a poor track record in this department, especially weak democracies.

Dreadnought

While I am all for propagating democracy, the historical record seems to show that democracies are ill equipped for fighting terrorism and have a poor track record in this department, especially weak democracies


What would you expect between a civilized society and a murderous one?
Thats why there is only one way to deal with them and that is death to every follower and supporter.

Swift Sword

Civilized society seems to have been unable to murder its way to an equitable security situation viz terrorism in Iraq.