Machiavellian Terrorism 101

[barking_iguana]

This is the best exposition I've seen yet on bin-Laden's goals and how the neo-cons are serving his purpose.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/10/01247/557

The original style is more conversational in tone. My snippage of sentences from the first several paragraphs makes it shorter, but less engaging. Go read the original.

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 people.

Question 1: What is the first and biggest obstacle between you and victory?

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 agree with you in principle. They may even sound like violent extremists late at night over their beverage of choice. But when the hammer comes down, they won't be there.

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. And where's your revolution then?

So your first goal as a violent extremist is not to kill your enemies, but to radicalize the apathetic majority on your side of the issue. If everyone becomes a violent extremist, then you (as one of the early violent extremists) are a leader of consequence. Conversely, if a reasonable compromise is worked out, you are a nuisance.

Question 2: In radicalizing your sympathizers, who is your best ally?

In radicalizing your apathetic sympathizers, you have no better ally than the violent extremists on the other side. A few blown up apartment buildings and dead schoolchildren will get you more recruits than the best revolutionary tracts ever written.

Perversely, this means that you are the best ally of the extremists on the other side. That doesn't mean you love or even talk to each other -- they are, after all, vile and despicable demons. But at this stage in the process your interests align. Both of you want to invert the bell curve, to flatten out that big hump in the middle and drive people to the edges. That's why extremists come in pairs: Caesar and Pompey, the Nazis and 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 extremist attacks. Don't the leaders of Hamas understand that every suicide bombing makes the Israelis that much more determined not to give the Palestinians a state? Don't they realize that the Israeli government will strike back even harder, and inflict even more suffering on the Palestinian people? Of course they do; they're not idiots. The Israeli response is exactly what they're counting on. More airstrikes, more repression, more 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. The surviving radical leaders on each side energize their respective bases and cement their respective holds on power. The first round of the playoffs is always the two extremes against the center. Only after the center is vanquished will you meet your radical counterparts in the championship round.

Question 3: What is Bin Laden's ultimate goal?

This is an easy one. Bin Laden has been very explicit: He wants a return of the Caliphate. In other words, he wants a re-unified Islamic nation stretching from Indonesia to Morocco, governed by leaders faithful to the Koran.

This goal is quite popular in the Islamic world. The Muslim man-in-the-street knows his history: When the Dar al-Islam was unified, it was the most feared empire in the world. Baghdad, the home of the Caliph, was the center of civilization, leading the world in learning and artistry as well as power. Who wouldn't want that back?

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 deal and they know it: They run a very profitable gas station for the West. Keep the people in check, keep the price of oil low enough not to wreck the Western economies, don't piss off the United States badly enough to bring the troops in, and they're set.

These leaders are Bin Laden's near enemies. (That list of near enemies included Saddam Hussein when he was in power.) The far enemy is the power that backs them all up: the United States. (You may look askance at the assertion that the US was backing up Saddam's Iraq. But Saddam became our enemy only when he began to unite other nations (i.e., Kuwait) under his rule. In the Reagan years, when Iran was threatening to extend its boundaries at Iraq's expense, Saddam was our friend.)

Comments

Not too shabby

[1cmf.livejournal.com]

Not too shabby tho he fails to follow things through to thier logical conclusion.

Question 1: What is the first and biggest obstacle between you and victory?
Question 2: In radicalizing your sympathizers, who is your best ally?

Here, he's pretty much right on the mark. AQ needs to fire up the vast majority of indifferent people, and we can be the best group to do that.

Question 3: What is Bin Laden's ultimate goal?

Here, we must follow this to it's extent however, such a caliphate will not be tollerant of our secular state as it is: thus while a secular state is how he wants to win, it's our destruction that is what this is about.

This is why this is more than merely a law enforcement situation. This is why this is a war.

Question 4: What is Bin Laden's immediate goal?

He misses an important point, and that is that Bin Laden must do that while remiaining credible on the street. Sympathy and radicalism is fine so long as the sympathetic people can belive that there is a credible chance at success: otheriwse all he's offering is a fancier way to commit suicide. Thus, Osama bin Laden must remain a credible fighter with victories to show for his efforts. We foolishly gave him exactly what he wanted in Somalia when we allowed ourselves to be manipulated into defeat by pulling out when we saw that things got ugly for our soliders. We're now reaping the consequences of that weakness in leadership as our opponents are working the same tactic hard: trying to cow the US by making things ugly in the hopes that we'll show the same weakness.

Obviously, if we cave into such things, we're only going to see ever more of the same, as it will become the established tactic of choice, just as wwe're seeing more and more people attacking what the auther terms is our "center of gravity" since that was successful in defeating the US in Vietnam. However, if we resist such shenanigans long enough, our enemies will be forced to correctly concede that such shenanigans only work when our leadership is weak.

Question 5: What was the purpose of 9/11?

Here he misses out on the mark: while provoking a military response was certanly something that he could benefit from, 9-11 was about noteriety of al Qaeda and bin Laden in particular. He needs to establish himself as the pre-eminent anti-american force so that adherents will flock to his cuase and not to any rival factions. Factionalizatioon is the biggest problem in the overall islamic movement, and unity is his solution. This is why he formed "The Base (al Qaeda translated literally) to become the backbone of all anti-americanism. It serves his cause poorly if the various forces fall to infighting, which is frequently what happens.

For our part, this creates the best case for our future security: ensure that what islamic forces oppose us, that they spend thier time infighting where ever possible. A shallow evaluation of our policies would indicate that we've failed at that miserably, as the author concludes, but that's an innacurate assesment as I'll document later.

Question 6: What was the point of the Madrid bombing?

Here the author returns to solid ground: Isolate the US. He forgot about keeping up appearances as a potent force to be reconed with, but he missed that one earlier.

The pont about allies relieveing the US of casualties and expense is silly: these folks are along for moral support primarilly and not material support: the loss of Spain was a political blow only.

Question 7: What is Bin Laden's long-term strategy to defeat the United States?

Yes, exactly, he's hoping to pull off a combined victory that he got in Afganistan against the Soviets and the defeat of the US in Viet Nam or Somalia. Money and will: hoping that we'll run out of one or the other soon.

continued in the next comment

Continued from previous comment

[1cmf.livejournal.com]

Question 8. Why didn't Al Qaeda attack the United States before the election?

The author drops the ball here, prefering to attack a weak straw man argument of a poltiical sign waver rather than the real deal: Two primary reasons:
1) An attack on US soil was too chancy: such an attack could fail, as we're hyper aware of such a thing since Madrid, lending a victory to Bush that would help him get re-elected, also Americans demonstrated a strong tendancy to rally around the leaders in a time of crissis, and that too would be counter productive to gettting Kerry elected.
2) He's adequately keeping himself as a credible opponent, and the US is still responding, so he can keep fighting where it's politically most beneficial for him: in Iraq and Afganistan.

Side issue: some people seem to think that since bin Laden cmae out before the election and basically echoed Micheal Moore, that he wanted us to do the opposite of what he was apparently asking and re-elect Bush. This fails as there's so much more he could have done if he really wanted Bush to win over Kerry: Just laid low and allowed Iraq to calm down for example, or sent a few suicide bombers in and then phoned in an anonymous tip to allow the Bush administration a high profile win. But he didn't do either of these, he instead delivered a speech, working hard to give the appearance that he was not in hiding or on the run to attempt to discredit Bush, while attempting to back the very arguments that some of our most influential people have used against Bush.

Question 9. What can we expect Bin Laden to do next?

A Kerry victory would have meant that the US had had a crissis in will: To that extent, we would have reutned to being primarilly concerned about orselves rather than al Qaeda and thus we would need another set of attacks on our soil, to show that we cannot get back to "normal". This would be doubly true when we pulled out of Iraq, as Kerry would have almost certanly had to do sooner or later. The problem with attacking the US directly is that it generates sympathy for the US. Al Qaeda would much rather attack us in Iraq, which is not only a popular fight amoung his sympatizers, but also divisive amoung the American population. With Bush still in power, he can rest assured that the US is not going to turn away from the war on terror any time soon, and thus he can confine his attacks to Iraq.

Thus, the noise that Bush has prevented attacks on our soil is accurate, tho this is by providing another fight that is more profitable to our enemy.

Where our strategy lies is in building a democracy in Iraq and Afganistan. So long as that has a glimmer of a chance, al Qaeda must oppose it, thus they must eresort to the very infighting, muslim faction against muslim faction that tey sought to avoid. This is becuase a democratic state in the middle east offers another solution to the people: they can win, establishing a fundamentally islamic goverment that also takes the best parts of the west and avoid all this pointless suicide bombings.

Question 10. What can we do?
We can avoid the mistakes of the past: If we show weakness, we invite attacks. So resoluteness is certanly called for. We can continue to support the Iraqis to see if they will make good thier bid for democracy, becuase as long as they're trying, the fight will stay over there. The only exception to that would be if bin Laden felt he was becoming irrelevant, or there was another power player: then he's need another dramatic attack to show that he's still on top. We continue the hunt for al Qaeda memebers, to show that they offer nothing but a chance to get captured or killed.

In the face of the next attack, be slow to embrace radical, violent, or angry solutions. The center must hold. This is good advice, it just needs to realize that the next attacks are happening in Iraq, and that's where we need to be slow to embrace radical, violent or angry solutions.

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Sure, Osama can work with what's happened. Why not? It's all good stuff for an old Mujahid. But focusing on the Neocons is misleading. The Neocons are merely the Wernher von Brauns of this operation. The American Fuhrer and his Jesus freak followers are the "real" show, and they are a mirror image of Osama and friends.

Bush was going to invade Iraq even without 9/11. The attacks of 9/11/01 provided to Bush and his lunatic Christian followers the same kind of advantage they've provided to Osama and his lunatic Muslims. Both sides want this showdown.

What most people do not realize, most likely, because they are not lunatic religious extremists, is that Bush speaks in code. It isn't just "Dred Scott" as code for "Roe v. Wade." Try Matthew 12:30: "He who is not with me is against me ...." Onward Christian soldiers.

Bush has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and glorifies himself as Jesus's little brother. Welcome to his Crusade.