Ali Soufan on strategy & tactics
[ by Charles Cameron — short and sweet ]
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Everyone here knows that we are in a conflict with Islamic extremism. Everyone here knows that strategic outweighs tactical success. And most everyone here knows that Ali Soufan is one of the key voices on that topic — lead FBI agent investigating the Cole bombing, author of The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, and outspoken interrogator-spokesman against the use of torture.
Hear him on strategy & tactics:
September 8th, 2015 at 3:54 am
“Everyone here knows that we are in a conflict with Islamic extremism.”
I don’t know that.
With IS arriving on the scene it looks to me like we are actually fighting Islamic Fundamentalists. Which, historically, seem to act very similar to Jewish and Christian fundamentalists.
I mean I don’t know that much about Jewish history, but “nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition”, right?
At least until it happens, and it seems to be happening in the Middle East.
And, to me at least, a religious fundamentalist is nothing more than a right-wing Liberal, willing to change how things are going into something different.
In other words, Islamic Fundamentalist see a different “end” (end, way and means) that conservative practitioners of the religion see, and they have or are creating resources that are needed to bring that end to the present.
As it stands in the US, it is our fundamentalist against their fundamentalists.
So, no, I don’t believe we are fighting Islamic extremists.
What is it that make you feel we are? Is it the headlines you are reading?
September 8th, 2015 at 8:48 pm
A key component of a strategy is to recognize who comprises the enemy. The jihadi killers make their status as an enemy known in a spectacular way. That makes it easy, even for dopes like us. The others who make up the ranks of the enemy, the House of Saud, various rich Gulf Arabs who try to buy piety by giving money to jihadi killers and the Pak Army/ISI, they don’t announce themselves as the enemy. They just effectively act the part and fool us quite handily.
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Until we are willing to recognize those who act the part of the enemy as the enemy, we cannot make a strategy.