Future War
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think it could be a bit of both, really. I mean, look at the bombing in Bali - what did the people there have to do with American foreign policy and military intervention, Israel, US air bases in Saudi or anything like that? They were just young hedonistic people having fun, and in the eyes of some people that makes them servants of the Devil, simple as that.
IdleRich
IdleRich
That's what I'm saying, it is a bit of both and the West has to be aware of that especially when making policy.
That's not an argument that the bombing was nothing to do with policy, terrorism by definition attacks innocent people who are in some way loosely related (perhaps by nationality) to the people who do make those decisions. When the IRA puts a bomb in Manchester shopping centre the people walking through it have no say in whether or not Ireland is for the Irish, it doesn't mean that the IRA hate shopping.
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vimothy
yurp
I think that it's worth digging into this a bit because I see this lying at the heart of the problems with the West's repsonse to terrorism.
It's basically a mistake about who we are fighting. So, for instance:
This is a flawed analogy: Bali is not Ireland, and the Balinese are not responding to Western actions against them (according to your logic) but supposedly to Western actions to the worldwide umma. It is the equivalent of ethnic Irish in the USA bombing San Fransisco in response to British policy in Northern Ireland.
When Jihadists talk about bombing nightclubs, they justify it because nightclubs are disgusting places.
- Salman Rushdie, http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1002
You say that (among other things) Islamist terrorism is a response to Western intervention in the Middle East. However, this thinking is deeply wrong.
You are not an Islamist, you are a secular liberal westerner. What pisses off fundamentalist religious fanatics is always going to be qualitatively very different to what pisses you off. It makes it very easy though, doesn't it, to understand these people if they have a rational reason for hating people in nighclubs, it makes the world a bit simpler? The last century was typified by wars fought for existential reasons, not for rational political outcomes. ("If we fly planes into the NYC skyline, maybe Israel will leave the Palestinians alone"). We've been here before, it is absolutely the same impulse: terrorism = totalitarianism. Camus nailed this fact to the ground long ago. But liberal people find it impossible to concieve of actions which originate in such harmful and seemingly irrational ideologies. We had the same problem at the start of WWII. "Oh, the Germans only want to redress the balance which was put out after WWI", etc. The people who flew the planes were rich and educated, part of the globalised, westernised world. They haven't been oppressed and they don't resent their lack of choices. Choices are the problem. Islamism is an attack on modernity, not on an unjust US foreign policy.
The Islamist's don't agree with you. Do you think bin Laden gives a toss about the sufferings of individual Palestinians? About the sufferings of ordinary Muslims? Not a chance, bin Laden cares only for the cause: he is a fanatic. Do they talk about the Palestinian problem in terms of a two state solution? Nope: Palestine belongs to the Islamic Empire, that's the whole damn reason that fundamentalists fight, that's what jihad is: fatah, the opening. "End the occupation of Muslim lands", get it? Because Islamists are historicist in their world view, they want their historical glory restored. Remember what got bin Laden so upet in the first place? US troops in the penninsula, never mind the fact that they were there in the first place to defend Kuwait from Saddam, Muslim land is Muslim land only, "end the occupation".
And that's what Israel represents to Islamism, the occupation of part of a historical power, and not just by the rival christian empire (what does bin Laden call the coalition? "Christian crusaders") but by the fuggin Jews, by dhimmis, by no one, who not only occupy Muslim lands, but who have also humiliated all arabs armies who tried to destory them, even from a position of extreme Israeli asymmetry, when no one expected the IDF to win. The humiliation can only be further evidence of the fact that the Muslim world has fallen from the truye path of righteousness and can only return to greatness by returning to the goals and systems of the four "righly guided caliphs", back to the ways of the salaf, the companions, and away from the secular modernist ideas (Arab socialism, pan Arabism, etc) whihc have failed to lift the Mid East.
Why, for instance, did Islamists not target Saddam Hussein when he committed acts of genocide against two separate groups of people in Iraq? There is no explanation which fits your analysis. How many acts of genocide have the Americans committed against Muslims? Why do the Islamists not target regimes where gross acts of human rights abuses take place? Why do they not campaign for an end to the stoning of women in Iran if they care so much for the lives of down-trodden Muslims? Why do they not aggitate for political freedoms in Egypt? Nobody kills and oppresses more Muslims than other Muslims, and that is a very sad fact but a fact nonetheless.
Can you point to the actual US actions and policies which the Islamists are reacting against, or is this more of a feeling that you have?
A read a piece by Phares (Lebanese counterterrorism expert) relating how on the day after 9/11 he was watching al Jazeera, two clerics where arguing venomously about whether now was the correct time to strike out against America. Not whether it was the right act, but whether it was the right time. Phares said that the realisation that whilst in the US people didn't even understand why this had happened, amongst the jihadists the debate had already moved on, shocked him.
Most imortantly of all though is the fact that 9/11 was not aimed at the West to prove anything to Western governments, principally. It was done for its true audience: the Muslim world, everything bin Laden does is for the benefit of this audience. He certainly doesn't give a shit about what you or I think, we're kuffar. 9/11 was pure spectacular propaganda on an unimaginable scale, wiht the aim of lighting up the umma with his cause: the restoration of the caliphate, the return of the Islamic empire and the resumption of jihad, of the opening of dar el harb to dar el Islam.
It's basically a mistake about who we are fighting. So, for instance:
This is a flawed analogy: Bali is not Ireland, and the Balinese are not responding to Western actions against them (according to your logic) but supposedly to Western actions to the worldwide umma. It is the equivalent of ethnic Irish in the USA bombing San Fransisco in response to British policy in Northern Ireland.
When Jihadists talk about bombing nightclubs, they justify it because nightclubs are disgusting places.
- Salman Rushdie, http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1002
You say that (among other things) Islamist terrorism is a response to Western intervention in the Middle East. However, this thinking is deeply wrong.
You are not an Islamist, you are a secular liberal westerner. What pisses off fundamentalist religious fanatics is always going to be qualitatively very different to what pisses you off. It makes it very easy though, doesn't it, to understand these people if they have a rational reason for hating people in nighclubs, it makes the world a bit simpler? The last century was typified by wars fought for existential reasons, not for rational political outcomes. ("If we fly planes into the NYC skyline, maybe Israel will leave the Palestinians alone"). We've been here before, it is absolutely the same impulse: terrorism = totalitarianism. Camus nailed this fact to the ground long ago. But liberal people find it impossible to concieve of actions which originate in such harmful and seemingly irrational ideologies. We had the same problem at the start of WWII. "Oh, the Germans only want to redress the balance which was put out after WWI", etc. The people who flew the planes were rich and educated, part of the globalised, westernised world. They haven't been oppressed and they don't resent their lack of choices. Choices are the problem. Islamism is an attack on modernity, not on an unjust US foreign policy.
The Islamist's don't agree with you. Do you think bin Laden gives a toss about the sufferings of individual Palestinians? About the sufferings of ordinary Muslims? Not a chance, bin Laden cares only for the cause: he is a fanatic. Do they talk about the Palestinian problem in terms of a two state solution? Nope: Palestine belongs to the Islamic Empire, that's the whole damn reason that fundamentalists fight, that's what jihad is: fatah, the opening. "End the occupation of Muslim lands", get it? Because Islamists are historicist in their world view, they want their historical glory restored. Remember what got bin Laden so upet in the first place? US troops in the penninsula, never mind the fact that they were there in the first place to defend Kuwait from Saddam, Muslim land is Muslim land only, "end the occupation".
And that's what Israel represents to Islamism, the occupation of part of a historical power, and not just by the rival christian empire (what does bin Laden call the coalition? "Christian crusaders") but by the fuggin Jews, by dhimmis, by no one, who not only occupy Muslim lands, but who have also humiliated all arabs armies who tried to destory them, even from a position of extreme Israeli asymmetry, when no one expected the IDF to win. The humiliation can only be further evidence of the fact that the Muslim world has fallen from the truye path of righteousness and can only return to greatness by returning to the goals and systems of the four "righly guided caliphs", back to the ways of the salaf, the companions, and away from the secular modernist ideas (Arab socialism, pan Arabism, etc) whihc have failed to lift the Mid East.
Why, for instance, did Islamists not target Saddam Hussein when he committed acts of genocide against two separate groups of people in Iraq? There is no explanation which fits your analysis. How many acts of genocide have the Americans committed against Muslims? Why do the Islamists not target regimes where gross acts of human rights abuses take place? Why do they not campaign for an end to the stoning of women in Iran if they care so much for the lives of down-trodden Muslims? Why do they not aggitate for political freedoms in Egypt? Nobody kills and oppresses more Muslims than other Muslims, and that is a very sad fact but a fact nonetheless.
Can you point to the actual US actions and policies which the Islamists are reacting against, or is this more of a feeling that you have?
A read a piece by Phares (Lebanese counterterrorism expert) relating how on the day after 9/11 he was watching al Jazeera, two clerics where arguing venomously about whether now was the correct time to strike out against America. Not whether it was the right act, but whether it was the right time. Phares said that the realisation that whilst in the US people didn't even understand why this had happened, amongst the jihadists the debate had already moved on, shocked him.
Most imortantly of all though is the fact that 9/11 was not aimed at the West to prove anything to Western governments, principally. It was done for its true audience: the Muslim world, everything bin Laden does is for the benefit of this audience. He certainly doesn't give a shit about what you or I think, we're kuffar. 9/11 was pure spectacular propaganda on an unimaginable scale, wiht the aim of lighting up the umma with his cause: the restoration of the caliphate, the return of the Islamic empire and the resumption of jihad, of the opening of dar el harb to dar el Islam.
IdleRich
IdleRich
No it's not.
I agree with Rushdie
Especially about it being at least partly to do with Iraq (or Israel etc).
I'm not going to reply to your whole thing bit by bit but I will say (as I have before in this thread and others); some Muslims are fundamentalist fanatics who fit perfectly your description, some are most definitely not, there are others on a sliding scale in between these two points. Most of your arguments seem to treat a whole group as though they are all at that extreme, I think that is foolish.
vimothy
yurp
What!? - When have I ever said that all Muslims are religious fanatics?
Read my post, I'm talking about jihadism.
It seems obvious and tautologtical that since we are fighting religious totalitarianism, those Muslims who don't fall into the category, who aren't part of the problem, are not the Muslims who we are fighting against.
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT WAR WITH THE WHOLE MUSLIM WORLD. (Goddamnit, it doesn't even make good strategic sense).
Read my post, I'm talking about jihadism.
It seems obvious and tautologtical that since we are fighting religious totalitarianism, those Muslims who don't fall into the category, who aren't part of the problem, are not the Muslims who we are fighting against.
I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT WAR WITH THE WHOLE MUSLIM WORLD. (Goddamnit, it doesn't even make good strategic sense).
IdleRich
IdleRich
But I think that there are a number of fundamentalists who have been recruited, radicalised, whatever in part (or at least this has been made easier) by the actions of the West. I strongly disagree with this bit
My point is that it would diminish it by some amount. Presumably not to zero but the people on the "softer" edge of the spectrum that I previously referred to would be harder to recruit, the less people you have the harder it is to do stuff.
I said that I wasn't going to respond to it bit by bit. That's because most of it was saying in different ways that Bin Laden is a fanatic.
For example
Well, maybe he doesn't but some people who do have flocked to his banner because they perceive that the US support of Israel means that he's the only show in town.
Don't really see how that is relevant but I would guess because they saw that as a fight between moslems. What analysis by the way?
You gave a quote where he said "it" (I presume not be Sep 11 but terrorism in general because Iraq happened after that) depends on both hatred of ham and actions of western government. Of course I agree with it, it's pretty much what I said before wasn't it?
vimothy
yurp
So for the anti-imperialist fundamentalists, violence towards Muslims is fine, if it's perpetrated by other Muslims?
Your analysis: that terrorism is caused by both religious bigotry and US foreign policy.
Who are the Islamists killing, in terrible ways, in droves in Iraq? (Hint: it isn't US troops).
DigitalDjigit
Honky Tonk Woman
You think we are only fighting the jihadist but in fact we do not seem to be doing that. Bush said himself that he doesn't care about Bin Laden anymore. On the other hand we deposed a secular regime (Saddam) that was a bulwark against jihadists and Iranian extremists.
So it seems we are doing the same thing as Al-Qaeda. The thing about fighting terrorists is propoganda to attract support for the cause while the real objectives lie elsewhere.
vimothy
yurp
Ok, to make it easier, my argument:
1. Islamist and liberal disagreements with the West are fundamentally different.
2. Liberal westerners by their very nature find it hard to appreciate the mindset and the irrationality of religious extremists.
3. Islamism is motivated by a hatred of modernity.
4. Islamism justifies itself in historicist terms, in terms of the ancient Islamic idea of Jihad, Empire and Islamic theology, not in terms of social justice.
5. Islamists are not opposed to the oppression of Muslims, in fact it is their chief goal.
6. US foreign policy in the Muslim world has been at least good and bad in equal measure. Certainly they have done less to harm Muslims than most Muslim governments.
7. 9/11 in particular was an act with a specific audience in mind: the Muslim world, not liberal westerners.
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vimothy
yurp
Jihadism is obviously a lot bigger than al Qaeda or Saddam. Jihad is the idea which drives Muslim terrorism.
Your second point is better, IMO, and one of the keys to 4GW: narrative warfare; how can a much stronger force defeat a weaker force and maintain the moral high ground? Al Qaeda is a lot better at 4GW than the USAF.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Well, I think that while it may not be fine they probably consider it preferable to that perpetrated by infidels. I don't really see what this has to do with what we were talking about though, I mean I know we digressed anyway but this seems like a big and random jump.
OK, got you, but I'm completely at a loss how Bin Laden not attacking Iraq makes that analysis wrong. (I wouldn't just say US foreign policy by the way).
Seems to me that everyone is killing everyone, it's completely fallen apart. The civilians bear more of the brunt of that than the US soldiers because they are weaker and less protected. But again, you've lost me.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Ta
Agreed (and you're also saying that I cannot help but think that they disagree with the actions of the West in the same way that I do - maybe true but I hope not).
Oh yeah, I guess I just covered that.
I think some people who fall under that name are motivated by that, some aren't. You are saying that you only intend to select the ones who are, I ask how many that is etc etc
Contentious but let's say I let you have it. (Bear in mind that at no point did I say i would like to be forced to live under a moslem morality - in other words, of course I think that a non-religious, human-rights based legal system is better than a religious one)
Could be true but that's not how they see it though is it? Messing about in people's affairs does not make you popular
I agree that it was designed to make him friends in the Muslim world but my guess (and obviously it is only a guess) is that it was also designed to make the West (governments and citizens both) sit up and take notice. He would have to know that they would do something so he must have given some thought to what they would do right?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd agree with those points except perhaps 6, which just seems too difficult to quantify, and perhaps impossible to quantify in any genuinely objective terms. What about Muslim governments - and, by extension, factions/armies like the mujahideen/Taliban - that have been funded, armed or otherwise supported by the US? What about the current Iranian leadership, which draws massive popular support for its anti-Western stance at least in part because of the help given to Saddam by a number of Western countries during the Iran-Iraq war?
Please note that I'm not putting across the old 'Saddam was Reagan's Frankenstein' rhetoric, which sounds (to me) ironically racist as it can be boiled down to "Anyone selling arms to an Arab/Muslim is basically guilty of murder because senseless war and violence is simply what they do over there"...
vimothy
yurp
I'm drawing attention to the fact that while Islamists are supposed to resent the fact that America has messed with their countries, causing the oppression of their fellows, they are not actually bothered about the fact that their fellows are being oppressed, just that somewhere, somehow (not clear to me) America has been involved.
Why do you think they are only bothered by the involvement of the US, and not the actual oppressive policies and regimes themselves?
The US is there, it's big, it's decadent and it's polluting the mind of the Muslim world with its TV shows, it's big macs and its dangerous ideas about political freedom (show me one Muslim leader who doesn't feel this last point!). Bin Laden or Jihadists in general are not bothered about Msulims being oppressed just as they are not bothered about US foreign policy, except when it is directed at them (indeed you can easily make the same point about the war/low intensity conflict in Iraq: it's only a recruiting tool). Islamists want the old Mulism empire back (inc Andalusia, remember), all of it, "end the occupation of Muslim lands", and they want to return to the goal of the Islamic Empire, Jihad, to open the House of War to the House of Islam.
The terrorists are not killing US soldiers because it's a lot harder than killing normal Iraqis. I'm sure that they would be happy to do so, however. The terrorists are killing ordinary Iraqis for the same reason that they would happily kill you or I given the chance - because they wish death upon those who have left the true path, who are infected with Jahilya, who are not like them. Islamists are nihilists in love with death in the name Allah (inc their own), not political agitators who's demands can be met through negotiation.
They kill Muslims in large numbers because they are involved in a war for the Muslim world and Muslims are the battle ground. They want to kill Muslims; violence against Muslims is the sine qua non of Islamism.
vimothy
yurp
Ok let's take some specific examples of US actions in the Muslim world: Bosnia, Afghanistan and Palestine.
In Bosnia there was widespread violence culminating basically in genocide or attempted genocide. Peace was restored by interventionist foreign policies originating with Blair and backed by American firepower. The EU was a lame duck, hovering between disinterest and complicity.
Positive US foreign policy? Do Jihadists think so?
In Afghanistan the native Muslim population was oppressed by a very hardsh regime made up of foreign militants and ISI backed forces who basically wanted to experiment with creating the most reactionary hell whole on earth, seeing as how Saudi Arabia was getting all "liberal". The Taliban were overthrown by USAF.
Positive US foreign policy?
Or what about US campiagns to resolve the Palestinian situation, to restore their lands, to negotiate with Israel on their behalf - culminating in the Israeli offer of a Palestinain state at Oslo, to provide mammoth amounts of aid to the Palestinians?
Positive US foreign policy? Have any Muslim governments done as much for the Palestinians?
In Bosnia there was widespread violence culminating basically in genocide or attempted genocide. Peace was restored by interventionist foreign policies originating with Blair and backed by American firepower. The EU was a lame duck, hovering between disinterest and complicity.
Positive US foreign policy? Do Jihadists think so?
In Afghanistan the native Muslim population was oppressed by a very hardsh regime made up of foreign militants and ISI backed forces who basically wanted to experiment with creating the most reactionary hell whole on earth, seeing as how Saudi Arabia was getting all "liberal". The Taliban were overthrown by USAF.
Positive US foreign policy?
Or what about US campiagns to resolve the Palestinian situation, to restore their lands, to negotiate with Israel on their behalf - culminating in the Israeli offer of a Palestinain state at Oslo, to provide mammoth amounts of aid to the Palestinians?
Positive US foreign policy? Have any Muslim governments done as much for the Palestinians?