Another excellent article on Sultan Knish, which describes the real issue behind the futility of the 'war on terror' - namely the fact that it does not become a 'war on Islam'. Since it is pretty long, I will attempt to bring out the main points here, and anyone who is still interested can check the link at the bottom."While drone strikes can be quite useful within the context of a larger military operation, without that context they're nothing more than a game of 'Whack a Mole'... You might take out a few terrorists, if you're lucky and manage to get good intel out of enemy territory, but sooner or later the terrorists will execute a 9/11 or a 7/7 on your own soil. The terrorists lose 3 or 4 people, you lose hundreds or thousands of people."
"... And having eyes in the sky is nowhere near as good as having boots on the ground... Smart strikes are a military variation on smart power. What they have in common is the smug illusion that people sitting in D.C. office buildings can control events thousands of miles away without putting anyone or anything at risk... The key advantage of occupation is that it actually puts troops into a position to counter the enemy and bar him from the country's centers of power. The current US tactics may make it unlikely that we will destroy the Taliban, but in turn it makes it impossible for the Taliban and their allies to seize power or operate freely in strategic parts of Afghanistan."
"The Taliban can take a beating and outwait us... any US withdrawal that leaves behind the Taliban will allow them to claim victory over the US.
What is the answer then? ... The US nation building project in Afghanistan is one solution, but it is a very limited solution at best. And like most limited solutions it is the product of misunderstanding the nature of the problem. And the problem is one whose name we dare not speak. Islam."
"The Taliban were not the product of Afghanistan. They were the product of Pakistani Islamic Madrassas. Those schools of Islamic study... generate an army of guerrillas and terrorists to fight in Afghanistan... The Soviet invasion destabilized Afghanistan, and US backed guerrillas helped push out the Soviets, creating an opening for an Islamic militia like the Taliban to seize power."
"But virtually every Muslim country or country with a sizable Muslim population has a group like the Taliban waiting in the wings, to bring "true Islamic reforms" to the corrupt political culture... Islam is a militant religion. Its devotees will always rediscover the idea that all problems would be solved if only every Muslim and non-Muslim country were ruled under Islamic law, and will repeatedly take up arms to make it so."
"It is possible to kill every single member of the Taliban, only to have another bunch of Madrassa grads and regional bandits form a new Taliban militia under some semi-charismatic Mullah. To understand why, imagine if there were 1 billion people in the world who viewed the ideals of Nazism as a religion, brought up their children to Heil the Fuhrer, sent them to schools that taught the values of National Socialism and funded Nazi organizations. Most of these people would not be prepared to actually go out and kill people in order to create a new Reich, but most of them would be willing to passively or financially support those who do. The result would be constant Nazi terror and attempted uprisings anywhere that the sitting government was weak, those uprisings would quickly mutate into attacks beyond the borders of those countries where they seized power, these uprisings could be temporarily put down, only to pop up again. That is because destroying them would require fighting a whole different kind of war."
"That is exactly the situation we face with Islam. Understanding that means understanding the War on Terror... With enough Madrassas in America and Europe, Pakistan and Afghanistan will simply become relay points in a war fought on our own home soil. And if you doubt that it can happen, take a closer look at France or Israel. Because it can and given time, it will."
"The enemy is not simply the Taliban, it is the ideology of Islam itself... [Islam] is far more decentralized, which in turn makes it much harder to suppress or destroy... as a religion it is deeply embedded, it is part of the structure of cultures and communities... Islam in non-Muslim countries must inevitably turn to violence as both a military and political tactic. What does all that tell us about winning the War on Terror?"
"The Muslim religious school trains the terrorists of tomorrow... The boys and men who study in them... form the core of Islamic terrorist ideology. The Mosque serves as the base for any Muslim community, particularly abroad where the Muslim preacher can incite violence. The Koran serves as the manual for terrorism... In order of importance, these are the real commanders and bases of the enemy... To the extent that they prosper and spread, we will have nothing but war."
"The War against Islam will have to be fought more on a cultural and political level, than on a military level, because that is where the roots dig deep into the rotten soil. That will require... cooperation between Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and many others as well. It will involve distributing the truth about Islam, countering Islam's political gains with strong anti-Muslim activist coalitions and shutting Islamic organizations out of the political process and away from their attempts at mainstreaming Islam."
"We know who the enemy is. It is not simply the terrorists lurking at their base camps, it is the cleric in Al Azhar University who signs off on a Fatwa that legitimizes murdering our people. That cleric is a much better target than the terrorists, because the cleric provides the ideology that creates Islamic terrorism in the first place... let us be really smart about it by making sure that we do not waste time striking at a tentacle of the octopus, when we can strike at the head instead."
"The War on Terror will not end by entering a bunker and finding the 'Leader of Terrorism' dead. Islamic terrorism has no leader, it has motivation. Breaking Islam of its enthusiasm for power and expansionism is the only way we will win. Victory is possible. The only question is do we want it badly enough."
The full article: The Future of the War on Terror, is the War on Islam
0 Comments - Share Yours!:
Post a Comment