attachments, not inline. Let me try that again.
jh
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: David Ignatius cracks the code on the Big Bang strategy
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 04:04:25 GMT
From: <Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog>
"Are the Terrorists Failing? Rather than bringing Islamic regimes
to power, the holy warriors are creating internal strife and
discord, says a French Arabist,"* op-ed by David Ignatius,
/Washington Post/, 28 September 2004, p. A27.
Ignatius' op-ed is mostly a recounting of a recent speech by a French
Arabist, Gilles Kepel, in a book-promotion tour (for /The War for Muslim
Minds/). Here's the key section:
Kepel believes that the United States has stumbled badly in Iraq,
and he's sharply critical of U.S. policies there. But that doesn't
mean the jihadists are winning. Quite the contrary, their movement
has backfired. Rather than bringing Islamic regimes to power, the
holy warriors are creating internal strife and discord. Their
actions are killing far more Muslims than nonbelievers.
"The principal goal of terrorism?to seize power in Muslim countries
through mobilization of populations galvanized by jihad's sheer
audacity?has not been realized," Kepel writes. In fact, bin Laden's
followers are losing ground: The Taliban regime in Afghanistan has
been toppled; the fence-sitting semi-Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia
has taken sides more strongly with the West; Islamists in Sudan and
Libya are in retreat; and the plight of the Palestinians has never
been more dire. And Baghdad, the traditional seat of Muslim caliphs,
is under foreign occupation. Not what you would call a successful
jihad.
Kepel argues that the insurgents' brutal tactics in Iraq?the
kidnappings and beheadings, and the car-bombing massacres of young
Iraqi police recruits?are increasingly alienating the Muslim masses.
No sensible Muslim would want to live in Fallujah, which is now
controlled by Taliban-style fanatics. Similarly, the Muslim masses
can see that most of the dead from post-Sept. 11 al Qaeda bombings
in Turkey and Morocco were fellow Muslims.
A perfect example of how the jihadists' efforts have backfired,
argues Kepel, was last month's kidnapping of two French journalists
in Iraq. The kidnappers announced that they would release their
hostages only if the French government reversed its new policy
banning Muslim women from wearing headscarves in French public
schools. "They imagined that they would mobilize Muslims with this
demand, but French Muslims were aghast and denounced the
kidnappers," Kepel explained to a Washington audience. He noted that
French Muslims took to the streets to protest against the kidnappers
and to proclaim their French citizenship.
I think this sort of analysis only underscores my point that radical
Islam is not our enemy, but the enemy of moderate, modernizing Islam.
Yes, we get associated with that process, and sometimes we get targeted
as a result. But radical Islam's identifying the U.S. as the Great Devil
only highlights the projection going on here. We need to be about
growing broadband economic connectivity between the Middle East and the
outside world, and letting this intra-Islamic struggle work itself out.
Yes, we'll kill bad guys as they stick their heads out of holes, but
this is not a war of ideas we can win. Because, in the end, it's not our
ideas that threaten radical Islam so much as moderate Islam's
willingness to accept them. If the civilization apartheid that Osama
dreams of really did exist, there would be no issues between Islam and
the West. His problem is that this dream remains just that, and it's
disappearing by the day as globalization increasingly penetrates the
still largely disconnected Middle East.
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