Mariner
Active Member
terrorism. I am personally against the use of terrorism even in situations where it may have sped up or created a peace process, e.g. South Africa or Northern Ireland, and always have been.
In this case, understanding the enemy seems crucial to me. If we treat them as the Indians, and we're the cowboys, or if we pretend that they are like our enemies in WW2, then we misunderstand them, and our techniques are likely to backfire, just as they did in Vietnam.
For example, few things could more effectively incite this enemy to violence than sexual humiliations such as those used at Abu Ghraib. If we properly understood the enemy, we would have properly staffed and supervised that prison, doing so in a manner so transparent that it proved our higher moral values than the beheaders and suicide bombers. The same goes for torture, rendition, and secret prison camps. All these things make us more hated by this enemy. With a different type of enemy, that might not have been true, but with this enemy, it is. We'd do better to advertise our respect for the Geneva conventions than to toss them aside (particularly since many military interrogation experts have said that coerced information is very rarely useful, and no cases have so far been presented where coercion resulted in uncovering a terrorist plot that otherwise was unknown).
As I've written here before, my model of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is that perhaps 1 in a million Muslims is vulnerable to becoming a terrorist. What will stop that person is a generally positive view of America in the surrounding community, so that relatives and friends will dissuade the person from acting against us. Since new terrorists are being made, not born, we're not going to stop them by purely military means. We got a big push in our positive regard when we helped after the tsunami. Helping equally in Pakistan following the earthquake would be a good idea, though we haven't so far.
That's why I define the "hearts and minds" war as the percentage of positive view of the U.S. in the Muslim world, and that's why I believe this is the real war. Battles on the ground are proxies for the real war. We need to keep our eyes on the ball.
Mariner.
In this case, understanding the enemy seems crucial to me. If we treat them as the Indians, and we're the cowboys, or if we pretend that they are like our enemies in WW2, then we misunderstand them, and our techniques are likely to backfire, just as they did in Vietnam.
For example, few things could more effectively incite this enemy to violence than sexual humiliations such as those used at Abu Ghraib. If we properly understood the enemy, we would have properly staffed and supervised that prison, doing so in a manner so transparent that it proved our higher moral values than the beheaders and suicide bombers. The same goes for torture, rendition, and secret prison camps. All these things make us more hated by this enemy. With a different type of enemy, that might not have been true, but with this enemy, it is. We'd do better to advertise our respect for the Geneva conventions than to toss them aside (particularly since many military interrogation experts have said that coerced information is very rarely useful, and no cases have so far been presented where coercion resulted in uncovering a terrorist plot that otherwise was unknown).
As I've written here before, my model of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is that perhaps 1 in a million Muslims is vulnerable to becoming a terrorist. What will stop that person is a generally positive view of America in the surrounding community, so that relatives and friends will dissuade the person from acting against us. Since new terrorists are being made, not born, we're not going to stop them by purely military means. We got a big push in our positive regard when we helped after the tsunami. Helping equally in Pakistan following the earthquake would be a good idea, though we haven't so far.
That's why I define the "hearts and minds" war as the percentage of positive view of the U.S. in the Muslim world, and that's why I believe this is the real war. Battles on the ground are proxies for the real war. We need to keep our eyes on the ball.
Mariner.
