re: #110 J.S.

I am not saying they didn’t publish it. I am saying that there are likely to be all sorts of different points of view and hers is only one of them. The fact that the work is published there sort of belies the reporter’s picture of bias.

Also, I don’t think it is all that important to have a “deep” ideological understanding of radical Islam by the officer corps or troops in the field than it was required for the US troops to have a “deep understanding” of Shinto to fight the Japanese in WWII. In fact, very few of the hardcore are really in it for deep ideological reasons. Most are in it out of fear or for personal advancement. They know which side of the bread has the butter on it.

These same people would have been telling us that we would need some deep understanding of radical Islam in order to defeat the Iraqi insurgency too. You don’t because most of the people are not radical Islamists. You need to know about Islam enough to understand the basic culture and to know what is and is not going to be tolerated by the locals. Having men searching women, for example, might turn the population against you, etc. But you don’t need to sit down and read every screed by every “Radical Islamist” in order to build a winning strategy and you don’t need to engage them in debates of theology or doctrine. You need to kill them before they kill you for the most radical elements and for the rank-and-file population you simply show them that life is better without the radicals than with them. The radicals themselves tend to do that part for you.

Who eats better tonight, the Palestinians of Gaza or the Palestinians of the West Bank? Whose children are healthier. Which population has more jobs, better jobs? We don’t need to “understand” Hamas’ doctrine at a deeper level. You need to understand how they are organized, what their political doctrine. They are mostly a political organization that USES Islam to appear “good” and gain a following. Their practices are quite counter to their own religion of which they would hold themselves to be some sacred protectors. There is no need to indoctrinate yourself in their ideology and once you begin to engage them in debate, you have automatically lost because you are an outsider and will never win, even if you are right.

I have been reading material out out of the War College for several years concerning Islamic thought. They have published all kinds of stuff for years. This notion that there isn’t any material on Islam is just fantasy. The notion that we should be using the term hirabah rather than jihad because jihad to a Muslim means something good (sort of like calling a Christian “righteous” as an insult or saying “we shall defeat the righteous” and see the reaction that would bring in Western culture) while hirabah is what those terrorists are actually doing and is basically their word for “terrorist”. That came out of the War College back in 2002, I think.

The article is crap.