Kick in the Doors
Al-Qaeda, and its “franchisees” and copycats have been active for some fifteen years, since the first attack on the World Trade Center. All they have shown is they are cunning, unprincipled and stupid. Mostly stupid.
OK, they have managed to knock down the Two Towers, raise holy hell in Mumbai (killing almost 200 people), and do a bunch of other terror. But it gets them nowhere politically.
Even if the objective were to impose a kind of political hostage situation, they would still have to publish demands. Demands that can be met. They don't
Instead, they just kick in doors. They kill a lot of people, and get a lot of people really pissed. And they show they are bad people whose example of how to live is not worth following. Who, even a Muslim, is going to turn over government to a bunch of thugs like these who claim to want to impose “Sharia.”
Sharia is a system of behavior, and both ethical and commercial law based in part on the Quran. From both the implementations of Sharia now in parts of Nigeria and in Afghanistan in the late 90s, it is more about goons imposing their personal fiefdom than a code of behavior. People don’t kick down the door to improve your legal code. They do it to rob and kill.
But they need to recruit thugs, the ones at the top do, so they dazzle prospective recruits with promises to make their lives better. Leaving aside the misogynistic bull about dozens of virgins, many of the prospectives do lead lousy lives or come from places where most people do.
We, the U.S. have not helped end this economic oppression. We kiss the butts of the Saudis who suck treasure out of the backs of their non-royals. We abandoned the Afghanis after they kicked out our enemies, the Russians. And we invaded Iraq. Decades earlier we imposed (thank you, CIA) secret-police government on the Iranians (who are Shiite Muslims, albeit not Arabs). We acted like the bloody Great Satans they called us, kicking in their doors.
So these people, most recently in Mumbai, are hoodlums, but we help their leadership recruit, by our own thuggish behavior. We need to straighten out our own act By that we will make recruitment so much more difficult their AK-47s will turn to rust.
OK, they have managed to knock down the Two Towers, raise holy hell in Mumbai (killing almost 200 people), and do a bunch of other terror. But it gets them nowhere politically.
Even if the objective were to impose a kind of political hostage situation, they would still have to publish demands. Demands that can be met. They don't
Instead, they just kick in doors. They kill a lot of people, and get a lot of people really pissed. And they show they are bad people whose example of how to live is not worth following. Who, even a Muslim, is going to turn over government to a bunch of thugs like these who claim to want to impose “Sharia.”
Sharia is a system of behavior, and both ethical and commercial law based in part on the Quran. From both the implementations of Sharia now in parts of Nigeria and in Afghanistan in the late 90s, it is more about goons imposing their personal fiefdom than a code of behavior. People don’t kick down the door to improve your legal code. They do it to rob and kill.
But they need to recruit thugs, the ones at the top do, so they dazzle prospective recruits with promises to make their lives better. Leaving aside the misogynistic bull about dozens of virgins, many of the prospectives do lead lousy lives or come from places where most people do.
We, the U.S. have not helped end this economic oppression. We kiss the butts of the Saudis who suck treasure out of the backs of their non-royals. We abandoned the Afghanis after they kicked out our enemies, the Russians. And we invaded Iraq. Decades earlier we imposed (thank you, CIA) secret-police government on the Iranians (who are Shiite Muslims, albeit not Arabs). We acted like the bloody Great Satans they called us, kicking in their doors.
So these people, most recently in Mumbai, are hoodlums, but we help their leadership recruit, by our own thuggish behavior. We need to straighten out our own act By that we will make recruitment so much more difficult their AK-47s will turn to rust.
posted by Phil Marcus-the Negotiation Pro at 5:05 PM
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