Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology

[Joe Demko]

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3459646.html

Interesting article.  I was with him pretty much all the way through 'til the last few paragraphs.  When it turned into a justification for the government to do pretty much as it wants when dealing with terrorists, he lost me.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Pretty insightful...

Edit: On second thought, that's incredibly, wickedly, spectacularly insightful.  There are all sorts of people out there in the world for whom being the right "something" is more important than achieving any sort of real-world result.  Attempting to understand them on those terms works much better than trying to match up their stated intentions with their seemingly contradictory demonstrated results.

[The Rabbi]

Somewhat wordy and dull but still a great thesis and well worth reading.  Seeing al Qaeda as a disease to be treated/eradicated might be a better metaphor than war.
And I have no problem doing whatever it takes to get rid of them.

[Ron]

Somewhat wordy and dull but still a great thesis and well worth reading.

Couldn't have said it better.

Nice to see you posting again The Rabbi, seems like you weren't around for awhile.

I know we don't always agree on everything but what fun is it living in an echo chamber, right?

[Manedwolf]

The way we ought to deal with Al Qaeda, IMO, is how the British dealt with the Thugee cult. It apparently worked, because by 1870, that violent cult of murderers and highwaymen was completely extinct.

Combat with evildoers is not Clausewitzian war. You do not make treaties with evildoers or try to adjust your conduct to make them like you. You do not try to see the world from the evildoers point of view. You do not try to appease them, or persuade them, or reason with them. You try, on the contrary, to outwit them, to vanquish them, to kill them. You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic  you try to wipe it out.

Damn right.

[De Selby]

You have to love any opinion piece that starts out with a totally incorrect assessment of some historical event, and then goes on to provide you with the answer to some problem today.  His assessment of Montezuma and Cortes is like something you hear in the fifth grade-not even remotely realistic or based on the sources.

And hey, when you look through the article, what do you find?

Not one single citation.  Not even a single quote from an Al Qaeda ideologue or even an Al Qaeda member, yet he's drawing sweeping conclusions about "the worldview of Al Qaeda".

Please tell me how he managed to sell this as a professional comment.  If I can learn that trick and apply it to my work, I'll be a tenured professor at Harvard inside of six months.

There is no political policy we could take that would change the attitude of our enemies  short, perhaps, of a massive nationwide conversion to fundamentalist Islam.

Considering that Al Qaeda can and does regularly attack other Muslims for having the wrong policies, I'd have to say the real fantasy is that this guy actually knows something about the subject.

I especially like his expertise in Islamic theology:

But the real world of radical Islam is different  its fantasy ideology reflects the same philosophical occasionalism that pervades so much of Islamic theology:

Huh?  Oh well-no need to cite anything here. 

One continuing irony of all of these articles purporting to explain the ideology of Al Qaeda is the persistence of the word "martyr"-there is no word for "martyr" equivalent to the English in Arabic, just like there's no such word (or equivalent) as "infidel" in Arabic. 

But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant on how Arabs generally are irrational.  Paying attention to the facts would require us to recognize that they behave like everybody else, and admitting that they're humans who think just like we do would be "justifying terrorism" or "excusing evil".   

Unlike refusing to debate whether or not racism is the answer, which is apparently exactly what we will do once we agree with this author:

Pseudo-issues such as debates over the legitimacy of racial profiling would disappear: Does anyone in his right mind object to screening someone entering his country for signs of plague? Or quarantining those who have contracted it? Or closely monitoring precisely those populations within his country that are most at risk?

This article could be reviewed in the Onion under the heading: "Ideologue blasts other Ideologues for ignoring Reality; Not one source cited to prove his case."

[Ron]

Just for the record shootingstudent, I read that entire piece. As far as I can remember he never conflated his subject "radical Islam" with "other Muslims", "Islamic theology" or "Arabs generally".

Do you believe that those in Al Qaeda represent the Muslim community at large? It seems many in the Muslim community do view Al Qaeda as a disease or virus that weakens Islam as a whole. The more Muslim communities adopt that view the better off we all will be.

As long as Muslims such as yourself conflate attacks on Al Qaeda and other violent extremists as attacks on Islam there will continue to be tensions between the West and Islam in general.

[LAK]

Yep; stomp all over that ant mound! Jab it with a sharp stick as many times as it takes! Look - there's another one! Quick, jump all over it. We'll get 'em all in the end!

Yes, you can keep them out of your own yard to a degree, and you can certainly destroy individual mounds in your own yard. You are not going to eradicate them all over the neighborhood.

---------------------------------

http://searchronpaul.com
http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

[The Rabbi]

Yep; stomp all over that ant mound! Jab it with a sharp stick as many times as it takes! Look - there's another one! Quick, jump all over it. We'll get 'em all in the end!

Yes, you can keep them out of your own yard to a degree, and you can certainly destroy individual mounds in your own yard. You are not going to eradicate them all over the neighborhood.

---------------------------------

http://searchronpaul.com
http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org

Yeah, might as well not even try.  Just roll over and play dead.
If everyone had that sad attitude, we would be surrounded by Communist nations now.

[Manedwolf]

Yep; stomp all over that ant mound! Jab it with a sharp stick as many times as it takes! Look - there's another one! Quick, jump all over it. We'll get 'em all in the end!

Yes, you can keep them out of your own yard to a degree, and you can certainly destroy individual mounds in your own yard. You are not going to eradicate them all over the neighborhood.

Or you can stop screwing around with "limited war", and if you're going to have a war, have a war.

[Joe Demko]

Against whom are we having the war, exactly?  Al Qaeda?  Are they a nation with a chain of command and an infrastructure that we can destroy as one typically does when having a war?  Do they have a military that we can neutralize in the field?

[Ron]

Against whom are we having the war, exactly?  Al Qaeda?  Are they a nation with a chain of command and an infrastructure that we can destroy as one typically does when having a war?  Do they have a military that we can neutralize in the field?

They and their kind will only be suppressed by the Muslim world. It will have to become as shameful to be an Islamic extremist in the Muslim world as it is to be a neonazi or KKK'r in the USA. They won't be eliminated completely but they will have been marginalized.

Unfortunately the tactics of suicide bombings and mass murder against civilians are still looked at as legitimate by some in the Middle East. This causes a  blurring of the lines between radicals and moderates. Some Muslims (see shootingstudent above) act as if all condemnation of those tactics or those that believe they are legitimate are condemnations of Islam.

This is an Islamic problem that we cannot solve, even if we abandoned Israel and withdrew from the world stage the killing would continue.

[LAK]

The Rabbi,

I did say it could be done; only with limitations

Yes, you can keep them out of your own yard to a degree, and you can certainly destroy individual mounds in your own yard. You are not going to eradicate them all over the neighborhood.

Manedwolf,

I am not convinced that an "all out war" is possible against an idea. And like other insidious organizations in times past, Al Kidya will simply undergo a name change before it is eradicated.

[De Selby]

Just for the record shootingstudent, I read that entire piece. As far as I can remember he never conflated his subject "radical Islam" with "other Muslims", "Islamic theology" or "Arabs generally".

I quoted the part where he talked about "Islamic theology" and there were plenty of pieces where he talked about Arabs in general.

Do you believe that those in Al Qaeda represent the Muslim community at large? It seems many in the Muslim community do view Al Qaeda as a disease or virus that weakens Islam as a whole. The more Muslim communities adopt that view the better off we all will be.

They do accept that view, that Al Qaeda is a stain on humanity.  But the fact that Al Qaeda is a giant criminal conspiracy that kills old women and little children does not make the author of this piece any less wrong about what the ideology of the Al Qaeda criminal movement actually constitutes.

You can't ignore everything every member of Al Qaeda says, ignore its pattern of attacks and public propaganda, and cite absolutely no documents, speeches, or anything remotely indicative of AQ thinking, and then claim you've correctly identified the "fantasy ideology" behind it. 

As long as Muslims such as yourself conflate attacks on Al Qaeda and other violent extremists as attacks on Islam there will continue to be tensions between the West and Islam in general.

I quoted the piece where he gives his little one liner on things that "pervade Islamic theology"; but again, I'm not conflating this with an attack on all Islam.  It's not-it's just plain wrong, and not even loosely based on the information we have available about Al Qaeda or the trends in suicide bombing.

It is pseudo-analysis; ie, it's exactly the kind of ideological fantasy, unconcerned with the facts, that the author accuses Al Qaeda of adopting.

[De Selby]

I am not convinced that an "all out war" is possible against an idea. And like other insidious organizations in times past, Al Kidya will simply undergo a name change before it is eradicated.

Ding ding.

It is an ideology that has recruits for a number of reasons, none of which will be addressed by "all out war" short of simply exterminating a billion or so people. 

Before Al Qaeda, people in this part of the world were signing up in droves for communist guerrilla movements.  After Al Qaeda, they will do the same for whatever is next-who knows what it will be, but it might even be worse than Al Qaeda in the same way that Al Qaeda has proved worse than the communist guerrillas.  It is a product of the geopolitical situation of the region, not this or that particular set of words that come out on tapes every year from some clown in the mountains.

[Perd Hapley]

I am not convinced that an "all out war" is possible against an idea. 

And no one is arguing otherwise.  "War on Terror" is just a handy, short-hand phrase, take it as intended.  No one honestly believes that "terror" has a capitol city or national boundaries. 

[LAK]

Right; a nonstarter, a dead horse.

Terrorism is as old as mankind, and not going to be eradicated by any means. We can only keep it under control in our own yard. That is the best that can be expected.

[The Rabbi]

Right; a nonstarter, a dead horse.

Terrorism is as old as mankind, and not going to be eradicated by any means. We can only keep it under control in our own yard. That is the best that can be expected.

It depends on what you  mean by terrorism.  If you mean a method of inflicting fear and panic in a population by drastic violent means, then you are right.  That method has been used for some time and will continue to be so.
If you mean the semi-organized terrorism orchestrated, aided, or encouraged by radical Islam, then I would have to disagree.  After all you don't see many acts of terror being committed by Basques or the IRA these days.

[Joe Demko]

It's true you don't seem much Basque or IRA terrorism these days.  It's worth noting, however, that that is not as a result of killing all the Basque Separatists or IRA members.

[The Rabbi]

It's true you don't seem much Basque or IRA terrorism these days.  It's worth noting, however, that that is not as a result of killing all the Basque Separatists or IRA members.

True.  You don't need to kill all of them however.  You need to kill enough, and make it impossible for the rest to operate, in order to stop the operation.
This is pretty much what Israel did with Hamas.  They killed off the leadership and imposed harsh penalties on anyone participating in those activities.  Hamas isn't dead, of course, but attacks on Israel are way down.

[Iain]

Hate to point it out, but the reduction in IRA terrorism is at least in part due to their engagement with the political process. Rather a lot to do with that.

ETA are still active, they went quiet for a while, probably something to do with terrorism being an activity unlikely to achieve too much support in the direct aftermath of Madrid.

[Manedwolf]

The IRA was also motivated by political separatism, not by a sincere belief that martyring would get them 72 raisins in an afterlife.

[wooderson]

True.  You don't need to kill all of them however.  You need to kill enough, and make it impossible for the rest to operate, in order to stop the operation.

Except that, in the case of the IRA, increased brutality only heightened the fervor and attacks on England.

This is pretty much what Israel did with Hamas.  They killed off the leadership and imposed harsh penalties on anyone participating in those activities.  Hamas isn't dead, of course, but attacks on Israel are way down.

By "Hamas isn't dead," you mean "Hamas controls its own de facto state," right?

[Bogie]

You behave with them in the same manner that you would deal with a fatal epidemic  you try to wipe it out.

No. When dealing with a fatal epidemic which can be relatively easily contained, rather than implementing quarantine procedures to stop patient-to-patient spread, instead you politicize it, and make any attempt to alter behaviors which lead to further spread socially unacceptable.
 

[wooderson]

Yes, teh gayz should have been locked up in camps!