Christian Whitton and Kristopher Harrison of the State Department make a private argument for the establishment of a government propaganda to fight “the ideology that underpins the global jihadist insurgency”. In an article in the WSJ they write:
The U.S. government needs to resurrect the nonviolent practice of “political warfare” and create an agency to manage it. The Bush administration started this process by providing more resources for public diplomacy and appointing prominent officials to oversee the task. But efforts to explain America’s values and ideals to Muslims need to be supplemented with measures that confront directly the jihadist ideology.
Mr. Obama’s administration could use as a model the British Political Warfare Executive, which rallied support for the Allied cause behind enemy lines during World War II, or the U.S. Information Agency, which helped network opponents of communism and undermine Moscow’s intellectual appeal during the Cold War.
A civilian should sit atop this new organization. His or her mission should be to undermine the jihadist ideology that underpins terrorism. We believe this mission is so important that the person should answer directly to the President, just as military combatant commanders do.
The question is: does fighting “the ideology that underpins the global jihadist insurgency” mean waging ideological warfare against Islam? In other words, it engaged in “information operations” in the same sense that Hezbollah today would understand it.
The Political Warfare Executive of World War 2 was specifically designed to discredit Nazism. It engaged in polemic, it de-programmed Nazis, it even engaged in campaigns of deception.
PWE included staff from the Ministry of Information, the propaganda elements of the Special Operations Executive, and from the BBC. Its main headquarters was at Woburn Abbey with London offices at the BBC’s Bush House. As the Political Warfare Executive was a secret department when dealing with the outside world PWE used the covername Political Intelligence Department (PID).
The main forms of propaganda were in the form of radio broadcasts and printed postcards, leaflets and documents. PWE created a number of clandestine radio stations including Gustav Siegfried Eins, Soldatensender Calais and Kurzwellesender Atlantik. In order to deliver its subversive messages, PWE also disseminated reliable news and information on events in Germany and the occupied countries, gathering intelligence from other services and agencies, including POW interrogations, and newspapers obtained from occupied countries, and bombing raid photo analysis. This latter source was used to broadcast lists of streets (and even individual houses) that had been destroyed and on occasion to mock up faked “real time” reports of actual raids. …
At the end of World War II PWE were tasked with the re-education of German Prisoners of War. As with different types of propaganda, PWE used the same ‘white’, ‘grey’, and ‘black’ classifications for German POWs. Prisoners classed as ‘black’ were considered dangerous ardent Nazis, with anti-Nazis classed as ‘white’ and regular non-political soldiers classed as ‘grey’.
The problem with creating a new Political Warfare Executive is not primarily bureaucratic. It is political. Western societies do not have the same uncompromising opposition to radical Islam that the wartime alliance had against Nazism. It is difficult to imagine the BBC, the State Department or PBS taking marching orders to discredit the foundations of radical Islam. Why even President Obama might object.
But Whitton and Harrison are right in arguing that the struggle against radical Islam can’t be won by bullets alone. The only problem is that they may be too right. No one — as yet — will bell this cat.
It may be far more cost effective to provide protection to dissident elements in the Islamic world itself. For example, Hot Air describes how Muslims in Mumbai have blocked the burial of the terrorist gunmen.
The influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Badakabrastan graveyard, said it would not bury the gunmen because they were not true followers of Islam.
Hanif Nalkhande, a spokesman for the trust, said: “People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim. Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime.” …
It is only a matter of time before the Jama Masjid Trust is put under collegial pressure — perhaps even from human rights organizations in the West — to bury the malefactors. Radical Islam itself engages in information operations by supporting the Wests’s own internal critics. It funds academic departments, provides lavish welcomes for its Western allies, etc. Why not return the favor?
Currently the West cannot even provide security for Salman Rushdie or Hirsi Ali. They have to shift for themselves. Given that, the best form for a Political Warfare Executive could be a witness protection program. If government can’t do it, then perhaps a billionaire can become the real John Beresford Tipton and hand out grants to Muslim dissidents on the run. That would be more effective, I think, than creating a propaganda bureaucracy whose heart won’t be in the task.
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50 Comments
1. Captain Ramen:That would put the Bush Administration in the position of discrediting Islam itself, since for the most part Islam is a totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion. Unfortunately we have needed the help of many other Islamic societies to fight the GWOT.
Notice there was no concerted effort to discredit fascism in general, as we needed the help of Portugal and other fascist or proto-fascist regimes.
Dec 1, 2008 - 1:31 pm 2. exhelodrvr:“Unfortunately we have needed the help of many other Islamic societies to fight the GWOT”
The point that many people miss when they complain about Pres Bush not speaking out more in more general terms against Islam. It would also have cost much of the cooperation the U.S. got from non-Islamic societies.
Dec 1, 2008 - 1:38 pm 3. a Duoist:The homicidal/suicidal (duocidal)impulse in jihadism is only possible when an entire population is disaffected, much as Nazism and fascism relied upon a disaffected German and Italian peoples for their success.
Jihad is an honored principle in the Qur’an, both as character improvement and as holy war. Discrediting the contemporary form of duocidal jihadism can only be accomplished from within Islam, by moderate Muslims concerned that their traditional doctrines have been perverted for nihilism.
Dec 1, 2008 - 1:41 pm 4. fred:Over at JihadWatch.org we have what is now a hackneyed expression that all of us are using sarcastically, whenever another violent episode of jihad happens (which is quite often): just another episode brought to you by the “misunderstanders” of Islam.
The West’s policy elites simply refuse to accept that jihad is central to Islam. They stubbornly REFUSE to do what we who frequent Robert Spencer’s site have done for ourselves: read the Qur’an and English translations of ahadith. We read all of Robert’s books, as well as the material published by Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Serge Trifkovic, Brigitte Gabriel, Walid Shoebat, Ibn Warraq, and Ali Sina. We note how the entire government – Homeland Security, Defense Department, and State Department, ostracize the work of Steve Emerson and Daniel Pipes.
The man at the forefront, who himself takes Saudi money for his services rendered to that master, of the efforts to repress criticism of Islam is a man who has done extensive contract work for our government is none other than Prof. John Esposito of Georgetown, one of Edward Said’s disciples. The same Edward Said who was the apologist for jihad terror and Palestinian violence against the Jews. THE same Edward Said who was a friend of Barack Obama and from whom Obama did take courses at Columbia.
I mean no insult to you, wretchard, but I feel this thread topic is pointless. It rests on the continual, stubborn refusal to see Islam as the problem and insists that jihad is an alien element that allegedly corrupts Islam. This is getting us nowhere.
I guess those who embrace jihad are just those ubiquitous misunderstanders of Islam.
Dec 1, 2008 - 1:43 pm 5. vanderleun:The hell with Islam. More Crusader Rabbit!
Dec 1, 2008 - 2:13 pm 6. vanderleun:As to the resurrection of any sort of operation described Whitton/Harrison … fat effing chance. Just a resume enhancing article.
Dec 1, 2008 - 2:15 pm 7. dan:not to mention that the past 7+ years have demonstrated that the Left and its revolutionary media vanguard will absolutely make such an enterprise impossible. as soon as such a topic would be breached it would be Wailed about by everyone from Der Spiegel to The Nation to The New York Times editorial page to Sen. Feingold to Chris Matthews to The Washington Post to George Cluny/Sean Penn’s next production.
this is the main problem with the Left: even if you were to engage solely in a peaceful, political (diplomatic) effort to repel or undercut the jihad, it does not matter, they would *oppose* you. because the purpose of their criticism is not to correct policy but to attack and weaken the united states.
bush’s main problem – and obama will have the same problem – was that he could not say “these people are really screwed up, islam really is just as churchill described it, this is the only way.” instead he must engage in a strategy of isolating the jihadis as perverters of islam. instead *he* is isolated, his government is isolated, and ipso facto the USA is isolated. the result is this bizarre mishmash where we kill jihadis and try to prop up countries of mostly unreconstructable barbarians whose mental vocabulary just does not *include* the sentiments required to set up and maintain a reasonably modern government. while this goes on, the whole of the media is anti-bush/USA/democracy-in-Mussulmanland.
this is intentional. its purpose is to isolate the USA. and it’s working.
Dec 1, 2008 - 2:16 pm 8. ADE:fred
Nobody believes that Islam is a Religion of Peace anymore. Do you seriously think that the “West’s policy elites” don’t know about the Jihad imperative?
There are two ways to fix the Islam problem –
(1) move all Muslims into a place and then kill them, a sort of Holocaust for the 1.5 billion;
(2) change the mindset of Islamics.
We have to give 2 a go; so we all play along with the fiction that Islam is a Religion of Peace, just “misunderstood”. There was an interesting thread over at Samizdat on thte same theme. One commenter (Perry DeHaviland?) made the point that Religious Dialog will achieve nothing, that direct warfare will achieve nothing but that he was sure Islam would disintegrate because Dolly Magazine (a trash magazine for pre-pubescent girls) was the best enemy of Islam.
He was right, and that is what Islam fears most.
The West just needs the balls to mount the effort that Wrechard alludes to, and about 25 years.
In the meantime, let’s all mouth the Religion of Peace meme, after all, war is deception.
ADE
Dec 1, 2008 - 2:21 pm 9. nilsonian:The best approach to discrediting violent jihad might be televison or internet productions that show the reality of madrassa and jihadi sex lives: sad, male-on-male, and shame-driven ‘behavior’.
Dec 1, 2008 - 2:23 pm 10. steveaz:“In order to deliver its subversive messages, PWE also disseminated reliable news and information on events in Germany and the occupied countries [...] and on occasion [mocked-}up faked “real time” reports of actual {…}”
Why, this sounds exactly like something we already have: CBS’s “edgy” political pulp-fiction, Boston Legal, and MSNBC’s pundit, Keith Olberman combined, well-funded, and reflected nightly over multiple channels.
I mean, what Whitton and Harrison are recommending we build is the same mis-informative subversive media-array that is currently up and running, and arrayed against us.
Hmmm. Maybe these two guys are onto something…
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:15 pm 11. twobyfour:Knock out the main pillar, the Sauron ring–the silver vagina studded by the Kaaba meteorite, and it all folds like a house of cards. No nukes necessary. A dozen of Rod from God and no one would even comprehend what happened. It would look rather biblical, as if YHWH got finally pissed off.
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:26 pm 12. Peter Boston:My suggestion is that we first propagandize ourselves by learning, or relearning as the case may be, the thinking and ideas that have formed Western Civilization.
Just as Dante needed Virgil to guide him on his journey through the unknown so to do we need our guides to steer us through the morass of ignorance and misinformation we face every day.
The Canon of Western Thought
Listen to the audio.
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:27 pm 13. Ruby:W: Radical Islam itself engages in information operations by supporting the Wests’s own internal critics.
Suppose the West had no internal critics. Suppose they were all whisked away to Guantanamo Bay never to be heard from again. What would happen? The same thing that always happens when you shoot the messenger, you end up surrounding yourself with nothing but docile mirror-minds. When you put away those that speak freely, you surround yourself with those that speak only that which you want to hear. And there is nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflection. If you justify it by saying our fellow citizens are easily led around by their nose by Islamist propaganda, you insult our ability to use our own intelligence and judgment.
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:37 pm 14. Huan:maybe we should first rid from ourselves in the west of our fixation with political correctness and our enamored feelings for moral equivalency.
the islamofascist are being true to themselves in the quest for global domination
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:50 pm 15. Captain Ramen:and too many of us are just stupid enough to let them do it
Conjecture 3: The War on Terror is the ‘Golden Hour’ — the final chance
exhelodrvr: You are right, but only as long as Islam is salvageable. I believe the Left will succeeded in crippling the GWOT.
See what Obama has done? Turned out he lied to the lefties about hope and change, at least as far as his national security team in concerned. At the very least he crapped his pants after getting daily intel briefings. ‘You mean Iraq really was the central front of the GWOT? Whodathunk it?!’
If the left can succeed in getting the press to side with them on this (which I think they will this time), Obama will have no choice but to cave in, and ultimately Islam’s ‘last chance’ will fail.
Thus we won’t need any Islamic allies – our Trident sub commanders and B2 bomber pilots can find out where they live on google maps.
Dec 1, 2008 - 3:59 pm 16. Lifeofthemind:Insofar as our enemies believe the bilge pumped out by Western media, and they appear to take it as an article of faith that any nonsense printed in the New York Times is true even if they had themselves given the same nonsense out the day before knowing it was false, then our enemies weaken themselves. We need to strengthen the mechanisms that keep our grip on reality strong despite the corrosive effects of the media. A tradition of independent small businesses, as fostered by programs like Junior Achievement, and a culture of self reliance and responsibility, as in the Scouting and gun culture, are our best hope.
Dec 1, 2008 - 4:01 pm 17. DB:Speaking of propaganda efforts, this coming January there will be a conference in Washington DC on the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. In the 1970’s, instead of promoting international engagement through information, cultural and educational exchanges, this law was distorted into a barrier of engagement. From its propaganda and counter-propaganda intentions, it transformed into an anti-propaganda law for reasons that had little to nothing to do with concerns over domestic influence and far removed from the original intent of the law.
“Welcome to the Smith-Mundt Symposium’s community of interest, the gateway to information and registration for the 2009 Smith-Mundt Symposium that will take place January 13, 2009, in Washington, D.C. This is also the place to discuss the subject of Smith-Mundt, including its effects, from the good to the bad.”
http://mountainrunner.us/symposium/
DB2
Dec 1, 2008 - 4:03 pm 18. ricpic:After the next horrific attack on American soil the Obama administration will have a choice: to “explain” American idealism to the muslim world; to be the strong horse, in other words to kick the living shit out of the muslim world.
The only hope lies with option number two.
Obama will go with option number one.
Dec 1, 2008 - 4:18 pm 19. twobyfour:@ 18. ricpic
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Dec 1, 2008 - 5:09 pm 20. twobyfour:@ 13. Ruby
Semantics. Of course a society that is an echo chamber is doomed. You know well that what was meant is “disloyal opposition bordering on 5th column, or outright in its territory”.
Dec 1, 2008 - 5:14 pm 21. twobyfour:@ 16. Lifeofthemind
Nice but impractical. You’d need to have some sort of a secret code to inform you constituency that a great psy-op is going on and “don’t let yourself get demoralized”.
Dec 1, 2008 - 5:20 pm 22. Gary Ogletree:Put me down as a radical but I say we have a moral obligation to the excellent people we send into harm’s way that we actually identify the enemy accurately. But that would require courage from our politicians.
Dec 1, 2008 - 6:03 pm 23. Kirk Parker:A Forlorn Hope.
twobyfour,
I hope you didn’t just reveal some highly classified information.
Dec 1, 2008 - 6:52 pm 24. Ruby:Captain Ramen: ‘You mean Iraq really was the central front of the GWOT? Whodathunk it?!’
It looks like we need to find a new central front of the GWOT. Unless US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker is acting as a rogue agent, the Bush Administration accepted a “surrender date” whereby US forces will be out of Iraq by the end of 2011. Thirty-six months. A battalion a month. I wonder why Bush hates our troops so much that he’s willing to roll over for al-Qaeda and accept a timetable for withdrawal.
Dec 1, 2008 - 7:04 pm 25. cjm:buy up all the surplus opium world wide and flood the muslim countries with it. it’s not like they produce anything anyway.
Dec 1, 2008 - 7:15 pm 26. twobyfour:@ 16. Lifeofthemind
Like what? The secret code?
Dec 1, 2008 - 7:39 pm 27. Papa Ray:Itsa speshul handshake.
Before we can implement any plan against Islam, we have to fight the U.N. and the democrats. They will not allow anything to be said against Islam.
And they plan on making it stick.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80797
Papa Ray
Dec 1, 2008 - 8:03 pm 28. fred:West Texas
USA
Papa Ray,
In effect the sponsors of that excrement of legislation are obeying one of the stipulations of the Dhimma: the dhimmi is never allowed to study the Qur’an or any Islamic writings, or to use them to criticize Islam. It means closing the circle and imposing a very anti-modern device on free people. It’s tyrannical and any elected U.S. representative and government that consents to it VIOLATES THE U.S. CONSTITUTION. A very serious violation and nullification of the 1st Amendment that would trigger the exercise of the 2nd Amendment as it was intended by the Founders.
Now, I am about to utter the two words that I have been warned not to use on this forum: civil war. I throw my lot in with the rebels. If it means my life, then so be it. Better to die a free man than live as a slave.
Dec 1, 2008 - 8:52 pm 29. James:I tried to describe some of the opportunities and problems surrounding this sort of program several years ago.
There’s a sampling bias problem here that makes domestic support for these programs very hard: successful programs have to be secret. A good plan might involve a mix of things: some sort of silly PC radio stations that everybody knows are American and laughs at, together with secret negotiations with influential scholars to slowly change the tenor of the education programs in Al-Azhar.
Obviously we have to do something. Anything useful is going to have to change the way Islam is practiced. Anything we infidels suggest is suspect. That constrains our options somewhat.
Dec 1, 2008 - 9:45 pm 30. Mike Sylwester:Fundamentalist Islam cannot prevail among people who can read English and have access to the Internet. Too many of them will study the websites that criticize Islam.
Adolescents and young adults like to read forbidden writings and like to challenge the religious indoctrination they received as children. They like to read novels and watch films with sexual situations, with honest cops exposing corrupt politicians, with supernatural creatures and imaginary worlds. They like to dance to loud music with heavy percussion.
We here in the USA notice only the few wierd Moslem youth who become religious fanatics and mindlessly obey stupid mullahs.
George W. Bush publicly praised Islam as a respectable religion of peace as he sent huge shipments of weapons into Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq for eight straight years. Now those countries’ military and police forces now will be able to fight back against the Moslem fanatics forever. Bush never said a single negative word about Moslems, but during his eight years fundamentalist Moslem organizations have been pushed rolling down a steep slope. When they hit bottom and try to get back up, they will get kicked and mocked by the many people in their own societies who are fed up with them.
Dec 1, 2008 - 9:53 pm 31. fred:Wretchard,
Could I make a very sound suggestion for your blog and for PJM in general? I think you should invite Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald, over at JihadWatch.org, to come on this forum from time to time and engage the people here in discussions about Islam and the nature of its theology and writings.
To everyone here: I think all of you would benefit from a dialog with either of these two gentlemen. They are exceedingly steeped in knowledge about these topics. I think your eyes would be opened by what they have to explain. Fire away at them and ask them any question about Islam or the ramifications of policy of the kind that is being discussed here.
Both Robert and Hugh are simply great guys. Honestly, I think many members here would have their eyes opened.
Dec 1, 2008 - 9:57 pm 32. whiskey:The problem is not ideas or communication. The problem is Islam, or more precisely the polygamy. In a Big Man society, most men have no hope of wives, other than some cast off sex-slave. The Big Men hold all the power as well.
This is why Islamic societies are shot through with example after example of would-be Big Men forming exile armies and assassination bands and internal supporters and making themselves the ruler: Reza Khan, Nasser, Saddam, Assad, Arafat, and so on. Bin Laden and Zawahari have no intention of overthrowing the West, they have EVERY intention of overthrowing Mubarak and the House of Saud. To make themselves rulers in their stead.
So they mount raid after raid, to kill lots of non-Muslims, and gain followers, money, and support. Every other would be ruler does the same.
This is how Islam works. It is the central aspect of Islamic society. You can’t change it, unless by great shock, by killing about half the society. As Japanese and German militarism were killed. By most of the followers of such dead, or so demoralized by losses that the IDEA of fighting was a horror.
You’ll stop having guys like Nasser or Saddam or Osama being thrown up again, and again, and again, only when every Muslim men would think of fighting as a sure-fire way to get himself, his family, his city, his people, all dead or in ruins, starving, and mutilated.
The great terror of the West is that it does indeed have the power to change peoples. Japan of today is nothing like that of seventy years ago, or Germany, or Italy, or Spain.
Eventually it will come to that, the transformation will be total, but the cost will be terrible. Islam cannot change any other way … because of the polygamy. It’s set itself with a collision course with the West (and China) and communications efforts are useless. There is nothing to communicate.
Dec 2, 2008 - 2:09 am 33. Lifeofthemind:@whiskey,
Dec 2, 2008 - 6:08 am 34. RWE:Good comment, and an interesting blog on the media business.
Take a look at this headline:
“RAYMONDVILLE, Texas – A judge dismissed indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and told the south Texas prosecutor who brought the case to exercise caution as his term in office ends.”
It’s awful damn hard to get a propaganda anti-jihad going when you have clowns like that one conducting legal theater for fun, profit, and partisan politics.
Unfortunately, such a PWE would have to take down some of “ours” as well.
Dec 2, 2008 - 6:22 am 35. fred:whiskey,
I’ve generally been in agreement with your anthropological/psychological analysis of Islam. Except that my investigations of Islam have convinced me that there is no spiritual core whatsoever to it that can be a fallback position after you lay low the banditry and misogynistic aspects of it. There are those who want to see in it a monotheism that is in somehow a branch of of Judaism and Christianity. But it was never intended as that. I agree with Ali Sina’s psychological profile of Muhammad and that “Allah” is a sock puppet for Muhammad’s narcissistic needs. How do you “reform” something that is rotten to its core? I agree with Sina (who was at one time a cleric and scholar in Islam)that from its foundations Islam was a cult that took off because it invoked a deity to sanction criminal conduct. And it dressed up the naked egoism of a monster.
Dec 2, 2008 - 7:44 am 36. Captain Ramen:fred, have you taken a look at Sufi Islam? For example, >a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallaj”>Mansur Al-Hallaj?
The problems of Islam aren’t unique to them, at least not historically – namely, a view that religion is simply ‘do this and don’t do that.’ This is how Islam came to be a totalitarian political ideology. It is just another list of dos and don’ts and nothing more.
Jews were this way too – following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Hence the need for Jesus Christ. And even though they are not followers of Christ in the strictest sense, you can tell that his teachings have rubbed off on them. Only a few do something as utterly retarded as to stone an ambulance trying to save someone’s life on the Sabbath.
I think the only way to save them is to get the teachings of Christ to rub off on them too – that the real struggle, the real Jihad, is the one against your (lower) self.
it’s too bad that significant number of people in the west are chipping away at that Judeo-Christian metaphysic. The entire world needs it so desperately.
Dec 2, 2008 - 9:58 am 37. Cannoneer No. 4:US to use Web 2.0 to win “war of ideas”: US image-maker
Glassman said the State Department’s Farsi blogger had recently engaged in “an extended series of posts” on the blog of the media adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Farsi blogger. Singular. One. In the whole Department of State.
“Government” propaganda will be regarded as such. Civilian Irregular Information Operators acting together in People’s Information Support Teams could do this, if they were so politically incorrect and culturally insensitive as to openly express confidence that Western Civilization actually deserves to survive and is really worth defending from Islamic subjugation.
There is a great opportunity for Christian women to proselytize online among the beardless, sexually-frustrated, homosexual rape victims that crowd the internet cafes of the Middle East.
Dec 2, 2008 - 11:17 am 38. Cannoneer No. 4:People’s Information Support Team
Dec 2, 2008 - 11:21 am 39. fred:Cannoneer#4,
Most of what Muhammad babbled about Jesus Christ and Christianity was impressionistic scraps he gathered from mainly heretical sects within the Christian world. I think he used whatever he could gather about Jesus Christ in order to function as b.s. in his conversations with non-Muslims to make whatever points he wanted to make about the elevated status of his own designation as prophet of Allah. Clearly, I am in the camp of those who see nothing redeeming or worthy in Islam. The more exposure to Christianity that apostate Muslims get, the better off they’ll be. The “good” Muslims are the ones who are the jihadis. We want the “bad” (as in backsliding or not in possession of the whole deal)Muslims on our side. But proselytizing in Muslim lands is downright dangerous for Christian missionaries.
I have to laugh at that French cardinal in the Vatican, I believe his name is Tauran, who praises Islam in Europe for putting the God question in the public sphere. He’s clueless: Allah is not the same Father of Jesus or Yahweh. Allah is Satan. Pure evil.
Dec 2, 2008 - 12:34 pm 40. Fletcher Christian:Regarding twobyfour #11, I found a picture that sums up what you said, rather nicely I think:
<a href=”http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/9947/kaabahcroppedpluseyefk1.jpg” The Real Islam
Dec 2, 2008 - 12:48 pm 41. Fletcher Christian:Sorry, I’m not very good at HTML. Someone please clean it up? In any case, the URL there is quite interesting.
Dec 2, 2008 - 12:51 pm 42. Cannoneer No. 4:Subtly proselytizing impressionable adolescents on the internet should not be particularly dangerous.
Dec 2, 2008 - 2:26 pm 43. Austin:While it would be a fine thing to discredit Islam or its radical elements directly on a theological level, you are all right that this is not something that the West can actually achieve for profound internal reasons on both sides.
That is not to say that Jihadism cannot be propogandized against. Rather than focus on its theological roots, would it not make more sense for the West to broadcast its real life failures. The Surge dried up the Jihadi element of the war in Iraq partially, according to Wretchard if memory serves, because we became so good at killing the Jihadi’s. It is all well and good to go die in a glorious battle but even nut jobs will think twice about joining up for the war if it brings no chance of success and a certainty of death. We won not by killing all the Jihadi’s but rather by discrediting the cause.
Could not the same logic be applied to undermining the results of Jihad where it is tried? Gaza, Iran, the tribal regions, all huge failures by all metrics but ideological purity. Those maddrassas in Pakistan are not exactly training people to be self sufficient. If we could show that whatever the ideological roots of the movements are the institutions practicing it fail, it reduces the appeal of the ideology. The fall of the Soviet Union was aided in part because at some point even the Communists had to admit it did not work.
The message would not be “Join the West” or “Our Islam is better than your Islam”. Rather it would be “Jihad kills not only the Infidel but your Tribe.” The West is far more likely to be capable of this kind of propaganda than to attack the ideological underpinning of Jihad.
Dec 2, 2008 - 2:43 pm 44. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Austin,
Very good post!
Fred,
You are only fantisizing and you are wrong.
Folks,
As I have said on this blog several times in the past, THERE IS A WAR WITHIN ISLAM. This war is similar to the wars between the European Christians during the Dark and Middle Ages.
As I have said on this blog several times in the past, THERE IS A RENAISSANCE GOING ON. During the Renaissance of the Middle Ages there was war and economic turmoil. This Renaissance is enabled by the internet, like the printing press enabled the Renaissance of yore.
Historians have said St Francis of Assisi was one who stimulated the Renaissance of yore. I guess Bill Gates stimulated this one, heh heh.
Wretchard,
Good post and very good food for thought. I think the proposed department is well named but a more appropriate name for those who study the theory/concept of 4GW (4th Generation Warfare, war faught with means other than military).
Folks,
As a former Christian who answered the Call of Islam, I believe Muslims should seek higher understanding of the great prophet Jesus Son of Mary (PBUH).
There has to be a greater understanding by all believers of our Creator and the promise of life after death that all Hebrew, Christian, Muslim and other prophets (PHUT) lived under differing circumstances/cultures and had different issues to deal with. Heck, study any culture and you see a common thread, a BELIEF in a higher power or creator. Another common thread is how the leadership of the believers can be judged by their works because of the power and control they acquired.
Salaam eleikum to all Y’all!
Dec 3, 2008 - 8:45 am 45. fred:Marzouq at #44,
You are a delusional nutjob.
Dec 3, 2008 - 10:30 am 46. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Y’know Fred, what makes Americans so dangerously effective? Noone knows what we look like and… we are freekin crazy!
This war can not be won with B-52’s and Trident submarines. They only provide a threat, “big stick”, if you will.
Marzouq, Lover of Love, Hater of Hate, Seeker of Truth, out!
Oh yeah, Salaam eleikum!
Dec 3, 2008 - 12:16 pm 47. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Peter Boston #12,
Thanks for the list!
Salaam!
Dec 3, 2008 - 12:31 pm 48. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Cannoneer #4,
Interesting site! Ahead of curve!
I salute you.
Salaam eleikum Sir!
Dec 3, 2008 - 12:44 pm 49. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:Cannoneer #4, RE: Single Farsi Blogger.
The U.S. Govt has less Arabic, Farsi, Pashtoon speakers than it has BAND MEMBERS! Yeah we have a long way to go. Enemy elements are inside our OODA Loop on that one!
Salaam again.
Dec 3, 2008 - 12:49 pm 50. December 2 « clearance on patio furniture cushions:[...] Rabbit – Richard Fernandez, Belmont Club: “Christian Whitton and Kristopher Harrison of the State Department make a private argument [...]
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