How Would They Do it?
POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 9, 2005 10:58
VIEWED: 3439
PAGE 2 of 4
I really don't think Osama's mob can win, because I'm not altogether sure they actually have a goal which they want to achieve beyond killing lots of people.
Q: What do you have when you are holding two little green balls in your hand.
A: Kermit's undivided attention.
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Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
The single most difficult thing for me to understand coming from "the right" is this idea that the terrorists can win. That they can somehow destroy our way of life and take away all the stripper/lawyer micro-miniskirted business suits.
So, how would they do it? How they gonna pull it off? I'm not looking for a fight; I'd really like to hear how folks see it going down if our worst fears were to come true.
HKCavalier
What we need to do here is determine just what it would mean for the terrorists to win. Are we talking an eradication of the American way of life? Is that the goal of Islamic extremists?
If that's the case, it's going to be incredibly difficult--nigh upon implossible--for them to "win". If that were their goal, they would have to give up terrorist tactics and fight like a conventional military. That would enable them to do two things: destroy the U.S. military and occupy and hold American soil.
Ladies and germs, it just isn't gonna happen. There is absolutely no way Islamic extremists will ever be able to field a conventional military that could defeat the U.S. So in that sense, they can never win. If the "metric of success" for the terrorist is the complete dominion of Islam over the U.S., there's no way in hell they could pull it off.
But what if that isn't their metric of success? What if it's something altogether different?
From what I gather from the last 4 years of involvement in intelligence support to Special Operations Forces fighting the war on terror, the goal of Islamic extremism is three-fold: 1) cause the withdrawal of western intervention in Muslim countries, particularly U.S. intervention, particularly in destabilized countries; 2) establish hard-line Sunni Islamic theocracies in destabilized countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and 3) destabilize countries with sizable Muslim populations or Mulsim majorities (e.g. the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan). (All of this is from unclassified sources and assessments. There. I've covered my ass.)
Now, this metric for success is somewhat more feasible. And, point of interest, terrorist tactics lend themselves to these kinds of objectives.
#1: To cause the withdrawal of western forces from the Muslim countries and from involvement in the war on terror, the Islamic extremists need only make such involvement politically costly. This is exactly what they did in Spain. Blow up a couple trains. Say, "It's because of Iraq." People don't want to get blown up, so they sweep a new leader into power who withdraws forces from the Iraq. Easy-peasy. The more unpopular the country's involvement, the more easy they will be to sway. And nothing makes involvement unpopular like busses and trains exploding.
#2: Once you've got the military muscle of western nations out of places like Iraq and Afghanistan, you bomb the living daylights out of police stations, government buildings and markets, until everyone is too afraid to oppose you. You have now created a power vacuum. All that's left is for you to step into it with the Quran in one hand and an AK in the other. Since you've got the population thoroughly cowed, they'll be happy as long as the bombing stops.
#3: Once you've got yourself two friendly pieces of turf to call your own, and have limited/ended the involvement of western powers in your affairs, you can turn your attention to Muslim countries with governments you don't like (e.g. Pakistan or Indonesia) and countries with sizable Muslim populations (e.g. the Philippines or Kenya). You have a nice base of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, boatloads of troops with real combat experience, and the assurance that western powers are too afraid to interfere with your activities.
Now this metric for success is attainable. All the Islamic extremists need do is hang in there. They are depending on western resolve to wane (which it almost certainly will) while simultaneously keeping up the pressure in Afghanistan and Ira
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I refuse to be the guy that killed the thread. Bump.
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I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.
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IB,
Thank you for that! It's looks, to me, to be the best assessment of the situation I've read on these boards. Or anywhere for that matter.
Quote:
Originally posted by InevitableBetrayal:
I read a recent article that posited that the only way to defeat Islamic extremism is to make it heinous to Muslims. If Muslims don't believe in the cause, then Islamic extremism will die, just like the communist terrorist organizations did (as with the Red Brigades of Italy).
This is THE key component that the Bushies can't seem to embrace. It seemed to me that after 9/11 we had a golden opportunity to work with Muslim communities diplomatically and marginalize the movement. Instead, it seems, we've done everything imaginable to give them cause to endorse it. From your experience/knowledge, what can we do at this point to convince them we're not the great Satan that Osama would have them believe?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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By the way, IB. I discuss these things a fair about at the Universal Board, do you mind if I re-post your article over there?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
This is THE key component that the Bushies can't seem to embrace. It seemed to me that after 9/11 we had a golden opportunity to work with Muslim communities diplomatically and marginalize the movement. Instead, it seems, we've done everything imaginable to give them cause to endorse it. From your experience/knowledge, what can we do at this point to convince them we're not the great Satan that Osama would have them believe?
Your are right. This is the KEY component that I can't understand. WHO were we supposed to negotiate with - the Taliban, Saddam or the weirdbeards running Iran? These are the people who were/are actively supporting the terrorists with land (for training bases), money and arms. These people don't give a damn about the opinion of their citizens. Yes, if we were dealing with governments answerable to their citizens then negotation would have been the path to persue but that isn't the situation we have.
Until the January election in Iraq, more arabs voted in Israel than anyplace else in the mid-East.
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Quote:
Originally posted by InevitableBetrayal:
All the Islamic extremists need do is hang in there. They are depending on western resolve to wane (which it almost certainly will) while simultaneously keeping up the pressure in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Thanks Inevitable, for reviving the thread and giving such a full answer. I wish some of the staunch supporters of this war would give a full and reasonable answer to the question. Otherwise, I can't help feeling that I've called their bluff. The "Terrorist take over" talking point, references to MAD, etc. is all really just a canard to keep us affraid and pliant.
Be that as it may, I just read a very insightful interview over at Aint-it-cool-news with Tim Robbins mostly about his new play EMBEDDED that goes into some real detail on these issues. In particular the idea that it may not be their goal for our "resolve to wane" but for our resolve to harden into real oppression. The relevant discussion is pretty long, so I've underlined the points I found particularly important. You can find the whole interview here: http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=20920
Quote:
SHELDRAKE: Let’s talk a little bit about London. One of things I read in the press that really struck me, someone said that one of the first casualties of the bombings was the BBC documentary THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES, a 3 hour documentary that tracks in parallel the rise of the neoconservative powerbase in America in tandem with the founding of extremist Muslim ideology, also, strangely enough, in America, both movements a response to a perceived decay in American morality. I’m sure you’ve seen it.
TIM: Oh my God, yes. Powerful.
SHELDRAKE: Incredible piece, brilliantly formed and conceived. It depicts how Leo Strauss and Sayyed Qutb BOTH came out of 1940s America and both responded to it with strident ideological utopian visions: Qutb with a utopian vision of a pure Islam, one that would respond to and drive out the Western elements already forming in Egyptian society, specifically in response to the Westernizing forces of Nassir; and in America, Leo Strauss with neoconservativism, he had the idea that American society had become lax and was falling apart morally, and that shows like GUNSMOKE and PERRY MASON provided USEFUL MYTHS. Useful, okay. Useful for what? For motivating large numbers of people to do things. Lots of different things. Go to work. Go to school. Go to war. It provides useful myths for forming a populace and for getting them all to do something that needs to be done and isn’t pleasurable. In a way it’s the collapse of the Pleasure Principle, the pursuit of happiness, as being a sufficient motivator...
TIM: Yes, absolutely.
SHELDRAKE: Strauss also believed, and the neocons believe, that American society was/is tiered intellectually. We’re back to The Republic, right, with the Gold, Silver and Bronze men. And the bronze men, the lowest order, get the myths to motivate them, because they don’t have the mental equipment or training to effectively deal with the real situation. They’d rather watch Perry Mason, or anything, American Idol, The Apprentice, whatever. Only the philosopher kings can manage things with their trained minds. But, “Quis cusotdiet ipsos custodies,” who manages the managers? This was all in the POWER OF NIGHTMARES.
TIM: Yes, that’s it. That documentary blew my mind. That’s some SERIOUS shit there. It’s really important filmmaking.
(Shellie says don’t believe us, read the transcripts yourself: http://web.telia.com/~u70316236/tpon/)
TIM: ...But it makes sense, what that documentary suggests, that what Al Quaeda WAS was a fledgling organization until WE empowered it. And NOW I’m sure it exists, and NOW I’m sure it’s more powerful than ever, beCAUSE they have the most powerful recruiting tool that you could possibly have dreamt of—the war in IRAQ. Now they have a place to go and fight! And a REAL war they can recruit for. London’s interesting though, and it relates to POWER OF NIGHTMARES—the timing of it. You haveNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
There are two valid directions of this discussion. IB addresses what happens externally(to us) and HK addresses what happens internally.
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To continue...
Bush and bin Laden are both using each other to gain power. Neither wants to end this dance of death because the specter keeps their followers in line. So we can forsee two populations clobbering each other while the leaders stoke the fear for their own purposes. EDITED TO ADD: I can think of other instances where war was used by both sides as a distraction- the Falklands war used by both Thatcher and Galtieri to distract from problems at home, but in that case the "sides" were unequal. I can think of MANY instances when one overwhelmingly powerful side used war as a political tool: the invasion of Grenada distracting from Marine deaths in Lebanon, for example. And I can think of war (or at least conflict) between approximately equal powers where ONE side used the war while the other side wanted to end the conflict (Germany and WWII). But this may be the first time in recent history when we've had essentially two equivalent powers BOTH cynically using war and fear for their own purposes.
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Have most of you already seen Rumsfeld's War on Frontline?
I watched it last night and found it very informative. It's not directly on the topic but gave me a much broader appreciation for the military's relationship to the White House over the last thirty years or so. It's a PBS production, so not entirely without the taint of liberal bias, but on the whole it's not pressing a particular agenda, and gives a really interesting portrayal of the differing approaches and goals of some of the people involved. I'd love you hear your comments about it. If you haven't seen it already, here's a link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/view/
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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