See, I am still using the term terrorist, but mostly because it is easier for finding common understanding. During my experience in the US government it was very evident that few people working on terrorist issues understood the underpinnings of terrorism or the ideological and legal basis for terrorist actions. Most people had captured a few catch phrases, but that was about it. How can you fight a "war" if you don't understand its causes and motives? This is even more important when dealing with an insurgency.
Islam is a very legalistic religion, and filled with different schools of legal thought, especially regarding the interpretation of teachings. For terrorist insurgent groups to carry out their war and for them to obtain support of the people, there must be a basis in religion and an ideology steeped in Islam but which interprets certain events and actions in a way that supports their long term aims. To win the fight and end this insurgency we must understand the ideology, its goals, and combat them in ways other than kinetic.
I would recommend reading the works of Hassan al-Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Sayyid Qutb, his intellectual successor. These two man, with others, are the main ideological background of modern terrorism, even though at times they espoused a more moderate resistance to the oppression of the Egyptian government. We should also read "The Management of Savagery," by Abu Bakr Naji, an unidentified individual or group of individuals possibly affiliated with al'Qaeda. Two major points come immediately to mind when reading these works.
Many members of the Muslim Brotherhood, where jailed, and some executed, by the Egyptian government in the 1960's and 70's. All where tortured while in prison. There are many that would argue that what happened to America on September 11th, 2001, was born in the prisons of Egypt. Torture created a thirst for revenge, the humiliation suffered by these men led to intense hatred of the Egyptian regime and its principal support, the US. After being broken and humiliated, these men left prison with a deep desire to seek revenge. This would argue against using torture, or "enhanced interrogation" as a tool since it would only lead to greater desire to do us harm and breed more enemies.
The second thing that stands out when reading these works is that victory, as defined by these groups is not victory as we in the west would define it. In "The Management of Savagery" it becomes clear that the insurgents understand they cannot win a war with the US, nor do they intend to. Their objective is propaganda. They want the US to intervene militarily in the Middle east, become bogged down in wars, and cause terrible hardship for the people in the region. The goal is not to win, however, the goal is to not lose. By standing up to the US and not being totally defeated, the insurgent groups gain prestige and legitimacy in the region. In addition, with the suffering of the people at the hands of the US, the insurgents gain new recruits to continue the fight. In the end, the US will leave and the insurgents will fill the vacuum.
We can argue how important these writings are to modern insurgents, and I would argue they do play a role, but we need to understand them because the insurgent groups obtain intellectual and spiritual support from these writings, and they form the basis of their strategy.
More later.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The War of Terror
This will be the first in a series on postings on terrorism. I hope to provoke a lively and spirited discussion.
The first point is that I hate the term "War on Terror." War denotes a specific undertaking, and requires the harnessing of ALL instruments of national power toward the goal of winning said war. Let's face it folks, we haven't harnessed anything but our complaining power. To fight a war requires us to change our way of life, focus our industrial power to producing the material needed to fight the war and getting every man and woman in this country working toward winning the war. We would need to devote the majority of our national economic resources to achieving this goal. We haven't done any of this, including reinstating the draft (which i do not advocate).
Calling this a war is a misnomer. It gives the American people the wrong impression and leads us to use the wrong tools to combat terrorism. This is more akin to a police action of the Cold war, or more properly, and counterinsurgency, which brings me to my second point. This is not a war on terror. Terrorism is a tactic used by the enemy to counter our overwhelming conventional superiority. We don't fight tactics. It would be as if World War Two were called the war against the Blitzkrieg, instead of a struggle against Fascism. The point of this is to understand what we are fighting so that we can use the proper tools to combat the enemy and defeat them.
We are faced with a global insurgency that uses terrorism as its most prevalent tactic. Their goal is the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in the Middle East with them as the ruling elite. If they could develop a large, conventional military that could stand up to American military power they would, however, they can't, so they turn to time honored insurgency tactics, which include terrorist attacks. So let's call this what it is, a global, nongovernmental insurgency whose goal is to seize power throughout the Islamic states. To do that they must drive the United States, and their western allies, out of the region and end their support for the regimes currently in power throughout the region. This will allow the insurgents to topple the governments one by one, establish sharia states, and rule according to their beliefs, which are inimical to U.S. and western interests.
There is the crux of our problem. I point this out because countering an insurgency takes more than military power to win. We saw how ineffective military power was in Vietnam, even coupled with a weak political/economic program. We do need a military component in our fight against the Islamic insurgency, or whatever we call it, but military power cannot be our sole or even most important component of our struggle, and that is the topic of the next posting.
The first point is that I hate the term "War on Terror." War denotes a specific undertaking, and requires the harnessing of ALL instruments of national power toward the goal of winning said war. Let's face it folks, we haven't harnessed anything but our complaining power. To fight a war requires us to change our way of life, focus our industrial power to producing the material needed to fight the war and getting every man and woman in this country working toward winning the war. We would need to devote the majority of our national economic resources to achieving this goal. We haven't done any of this, including reinstating the draft (which i do not advocate).
Calling this a war is a misnomer. It gives the American people the wrong impression and leads us to use the wrong tools to combat terrorism. This is more akin to a police action of the Cold war, or more properly, and counterinsurgency, which brings me to my second point. This is not a war on terror. Terrorism is a tactic used by the enemy to counter our overwhelming conventional superiority. We don't fight tactics. It would be as if World War Two were called the war against the Blitzkrieg, instead of a struggle against Fascism. The point of this is to understand what we are fighting so that we can use the proper tools to combat the enemy and defeat them.
We are faced with a global insurgency that uses terrorism as its most prevalent tactic. Their goal is the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in the Middle East with them as the ruling elite. If they could develop a large, conventional military that could stand up to American military power they would, however, they can't, so they turn to time honored insurgency tactics, which include terrorist attacks. So let's call this what it is, a global, nongovernmental insurgency whose goal is to seize power throughout the Islamic states. To do that they must drive the United States, and their western allies, out of the region and end their support for the regimes currently in power throughout the region. This will allow the insurgents to topple the governments one by one, establish sharia states, and rule according to their beliefs, which are inimical to U.S. and western interests.
There is the crux of our problem. I point this out because countering an insurgency takes more than military power to win. We saw how ineffective military power was in Vietnam, even coupled with a weak political/economic program. We do need a military component in our fight against the Islamic insurgency, or whatever we call it, but military power cannot be our sole or even most important component of our struggle, and that is the topic of the next posting.
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