www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/10/01247/557
Pericles Tue Nov 9th, 2004 at 22:57:00 PST (From the diaries -- kos) Instructions. For Questions 1 and 2, assume you are a violent extremist. In other words, there is some issue (it doesn't really matter what) for which you are willing to take up arms and kill people, even innocent peo ple. Question 1: What is the first and biggest obstacle between you and victor y? If you answered "People on the other side of my issue," go sit in the cor ner. If you assume terrorists think tha t way, everything they do will seem like total insanity. The first and biggest obstacle to your victory is that the vast majority of the people who sympathize with your issue are not violent extremists. They may even sound like violent extremists late at night over their beverage of choice. There are weeds in the garden and f inal exams coming up and deadlines at the office.
Pericles's diary :: Most people, most of the time, just want to get along. They'll accept a l ittle inconvenience, ignore a few insults, and smile at people they hate if it allows them to get on with their lives. Most people on both sides of your issue just wish the issue would go away. If you're not careful, those apathetic majorities will get together and craft a compromise. So your first goal as a violent extremist is not to kill your enemies, bu t to radicalize the apathetic majority on your side of the issue. If eve ryone becomes a violent extremist, then you (as one of the early violent extremists) are a leader of consequence. Conversely, if a reasonable co mpromise is worked out, you are a nuisance. Question 2: In radicalizing your sympathizers, who is your best ally? No points awarded for "the media" or "sympathetic foreign governments". I n radicalizing your apathetic sympathizers, you have no better ally than the violent extremists on the other side . Only they can convince your people that compromise is impossible. Only they can raise your countryme n's level of fear and despair to the point that large numbers are willin g to take up arms and follow your lead. A few blown up apartment buildin gs and dead schoolchildren will get you more recruits than the best revo lutionary tracts ever written. Perversely, this means that you are the best ally of the extremists on th e other side. That doesn't mean you love or even talk to each other -- t hey are, after all, vile and despicable demons. Both of you want to invert the bell curve , to flatten out that big hump in the middle and drive people to the edg es. That's why extremists come in pairs: Caesar and Pompey, the Nazis an d the Communists, Sharon and Arafat, Bush and Bin Laden. Each side needs a demonic opposite in order to galvanize its supporters. Naive observers frequently decry the apparent counter-productivity of ext remist attacks. Don't the leaders of Hamas understand that every suicide bombing makes the Israelis that much more determined not to give the Pa lestinians a state? Don't they realize that the Israeli government will strike back even harder, and inflict even more suffering on the Palestin ian people? The Israeli response is exactly what they're counting on. More airstrikes, more repression, m ore poverty -- fewer opportunities for normal life to get in the way of the Great Struggle. The cycle of violence may be vicious, but it is not pointless. Each round of strike-and-counterstrike makes the political center less tenable. Th e surviving radical leaders on each side energize their respective bases and cement their respective holds on power. The first round of the play offs is always the two extremes against the center. Only after the cente r is vanquished will you meet your radical counterparts in the champions hip round. Bin Laden has been very explicit: He wants a return of the Caliphate. In other words, he wants a re-unified Islamic nation s tretching from Indonesia to Morocco, governed by leaders faithful to the Koran. The Muslim man-in-the-st reet knows his history: When the Dar al-Islam was unified, it was the mo st feared empire in the world. Baghdad, the home of the Caliph, was the center of civilization, leading the world in learning and artistry as we ll as power. Jus t about any English word beginning with al refers to an Islamic inventio n: algebra, algorithm, alchemy, and even alcohol -- which was an Arabian process for distilling perfumes long before the West started using it t o make hard liquor). Well, for starters, the current rulers of the two dozen or so nations of the Dar al-Islam wouldn't want the Caliphate back. They've got a cushy d eal and they know it: They run a very profitable gas station for the Wes t Keep the people in check, keep the price of oil low enough not to wre ck the Western economies, don't piss off the United States badly enough to bring the troops in, and they're set. If you've been paying attention, you should get this one right: His immed iate goal is to radicalize the hundreds of millions of Muslims who sympa thize with the vision of a restored Caliphate, but have better things to do with their lives than join the jihad. A particular problem for Bin L aden are all the Muslims who think that they can find an acceptable plac e for themselves in a world order dominated by the United States. I won't insult your intelligence by asking you who his best allies are in reaching this goal: President Bush, obviously, and all of the neo-conse rvatives in the Pentagon who push for the most aggressive response to th e terrorist threat. Also the Christian leaders like Franklin (son of Bil ly) Graham, who regularly denounce Islam in terms that look fabulous on Al Qaeda's equivalent of the locker-room bulletin board. John Ashcroft - - and anyone else who mistreats assimilating Arabs and thereby convinces them that they will never really be welcome in America -- is also an al ly. It doesn't matter how much they hate him or denounce his deeds; anyone wh o radicalizes Muslims is doing Bin Laden's work for him. President Bush may as well have been reading from an Al Qaeda script when he referred t o the War on Terror as a "crusade". Muslims know their history and know exactly what a crusade is: Christians invade and steal your land. People who didn't believe this when they heard it from Bin Laden have now hear d it from the Crusader-in-Chief. No points for "To intimidate the United States into retreating from the M iddle East." If the US had immediately decided to wash its hands of the Middle East, a variety of secular gangsters like Mubarak and Musharraf a nd Hussein would have started fighting it out amongst themselves. The od ds were small that an Allah-fearing Caliph would arise from such a strug gle. Whether the eventual outcome would have been good or bad for the Un ited States is debatable, but it would have been terrible for Bin Laden. Like all attacks in the bell-curve-inverting stage, the purpose of 9/11 w as to provoke a military response. Prior to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, most Muslims had never seen a direct victim of the United Sta tes. Many have claimed that the Israelis are really American proxies, an d so the Palestinians are victims of America. And despite the occasional bombing of Lebanon or Syria or even Iraq, it is hard to paint the Israelis as anything more than a regional threat. Pakistanis and Indonesians may sympathize with the Palestinians in a distant sort of way, but they can't raise a credible fear of Jewis h tanks rolling down the streets of Islamabad or Jakarta. Now, thanks to President Bush and the magic of al-Jazeera, every Muslim w ith working eyesight has seen Muslim women and children killed or horrib ly disfigured by Americans. American troops and ships and aircraft h ave a global reach. No matter where in the Dar al-Islam you may be, you could be under American attack in a matter of hours. Those screaming peo ple on TV could be you and your family. The point of the Madrid bombing was exactly as it appeare d: to intimidate the Spanish into taking their troops out of Iraq. And, by extension, to intimidate all the other members of Bush's coalition. Bin Laden wants to fight Americans, because America scares his sympathize rs and energizes his b...
|
http://csua.com/feed/