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RE: To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:26:45 GMT

[quote]Taunt Islamofascists, huh? Since nobody contests your right to define the word as you like, I suppose you could count me as one if you really want to . [/quote]

You saw my definition! ;)

RE: To Islamofascism

Konrad von Richtmark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:53:03 GMT

Well, Scipio, "Team Sunni" did score a major victory in 1988 when the Mujahideen managed to get the USSR out of Afghanistan and shortly afterwards establish a theocracy of their own. They had defeated one of the two greatest military powers of its day, you can hardly get huger than that. Still, that didn't unify the different Islamofascist groups behind them in a drive for the Caliphate, and there's no evidence of them even trying.

As I said, while the different Islamofascist groups would probably symphatize with each other, their causes are widely different. Al Qaeda might have ambitions of being a transnational jihad syndicate (as proven by recent evidence suggesting that they were even active in Bosnia 1992-95), but all others fight very localized fights for very specific causes.

If you'd gather all Islamofascist groups at one table in an attempt to foster cooperation, chances are that the meeting would fail due to bickering about whose cause is the most important one and should get highest priority.

If you'd poll the members of any Islamofascist faction on whether a Caliphate would be a cool thing to have, most would probably answer yes. But so would most ordinary Muslims probably do too. I know I would.

Taunt Islamofascists, huh? Since nobody contests your right to define the word as you like, I suppose you could count me as one if you really want to ;). I doubt very many of those 6411 active users have been granted entrance to the P&R forum by Mongoose :P

RE: To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:01:33 GMT

Let us put it this way KvR: IF Team Sunni were to win some HUGE victory, say kicking U.S. out of Afghanistan, or getting a new nation taken over by a Taliban-esque regime, that would constitute steps toward their long-term goal of a pan-ME Caliphate. Yes, I know plenty of Shia who might fight it, but also plenty of Shia who might figure "heck, we're not that different" and calculate that a more similar adversary makes a better ally than an enemy, esp. when they have just landed a big win against a far less similar adversary (The West).

In short, the more "they" lose, the less propensity there is for unity, and for moderates to become sympathetic or complicit. The more they "win" the more the reverse processes are prone to be true.

As far as my conclusion of them "losing big" vis a vis that year old post.

I seem to very rarely encounter any cyber post who expresses thoughts similar to me re: the Islamofascist Wars. I tend to bristle at a lot of the semi-racist, semi-nationalist, rhetoric of the typical right-wingers who might be prone to use the term Islamofascist. Finding this was just a bit of *WOOT!* for me, and it reaffirms my own sense (aggregated from myriad sources over the years) that IF is "losing big."

Plus, I suspect some of those "6411 Active Users" are Islamofascists, and I just can't resist the opportunity to taunt a bit :D

RE: To Islamofascism

Konrad von Richtmark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:19:58 GMT

If you're talking about Iraq solely, Team America is probably winning, and (though I'm a bit embarrassed to say so while you're listening :blush: ) I'd actually prefer if Team America won. Assuming, of course, that the Iraqi nation-building project goes on as it has, without trying to impose the "Western social order" on it.

I just wondered how you got the idea that Islamofascism is "losing big" from the original article, since it did not present any news at all, good or bad. Or does the presence of one guy on the Internjets with opinions like that prove something :P

I concede that the label "Islamofascist", and the way you define it, may be appropriate to Al Qaeda, but the rest? Nah. If Hamas would succeed in driving Israel into the sea, I doubt they would pack their bags and travel to the Afghan front to help out the Taliban. While both organizations self-identify as Islamic holy warriors, their causes are wholly different. Just as there is no way I could see the Chechen liberation movement join the Janjaweed in the Darfur genocide upon the completion of their Chechnyan mission.

RE: To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:52:15 GMT

[quote]I still wonder what Scipio meant by saying that Islamofascism is "losing big".[/quote]

Okay, even if you are skeptical of anything like a unitary pan-denominational, pan-ethnic, pan-national "Islamofascism," perhaps we can agree that Al Qaeda, its supporters/sympathizers, and its splinters are reasonable regarded as "Islamofascists?" Perhaps we can also agree that, there were fragments of this 'group' spread around the globe, though perhaps concentrated in Afghan, etc.

Restricting our nomenclature in this way: whose winning?

Team America or Team Sunni?

Given the relative growth and progress and peace in the U.S. (and her allies, and her overseas posessions, and her military bases, and her satellites, and her space ships, and her ships sailing in the night, etc.) compared to the relative harassment and state of war which any Islamofascists lurking in Afghan face, how can possibly question this answer.

Except for a mass-media machine that thinks that a couple thousand coalition casualties versuch a couple HUNDRED THOUSAND enemy casualties constitutes "defeat" or "stalemate," I can't see much basis to argue that the current state of the contest is anything except "Islamofascism losing big."

I know, Mao's red book has them convinced that time is on their side. But Mao never heard of CNN or the internet. Time is now on the Good Guy's side! :D

Heck! Even Mr. Uppity Obama has already started to flip-flop now that he's fleeced the far left peacenik segment of their support!

No, there is ZERO risk of anything like a Vietnam outcome for this contest. The West is far too smug, far too moderate, far too middle-class, and far too apathetic for that to happen, and we have far too many big corporations with Senators, Presidents, Democratic Presidential Candidates, etc. on their leashes for this war to end any time before utter destruction of whatever social breeding ground Islamofascism might have once enjoyed. Endless war is a win-win for the corporate God-Kings. They profit from the decades of war both by selling the commodities, selling the machines, selling the contractors, selling the health care, etc., and then they also profit from the post-war buildup by selling they myriad products and services involved in the reconstruction. One need look no farther at the incredibly intertwined trade systems of Japan-West, and U.S.-Europe to see that WWII turned out in the long-run to be a very profitable thing to win. I think there are too many smart and powerful people who realize this is the impending global order for any upstart fundamentalist religious zealots to have a snowballs chance in hell of actually prevailing.

RE: To Islamofascism

Nuclearcow — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:11:22 GMT

I'm really teasing. Not trying to stir up controversy. Yet. :D

RE: To Islamofascism

Konrad von Richtmark — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:39:40 GMT

Because, by quoting the article like that, he implicitly signaled agreement with it. It was such a load of BS that I felt like I had to refute it. That's the kind of discussion this forum exists for, no? And I still wonder what Scipio meant by saying that Islamofascism is "losing big".

RE: To Islamofascism

Nuclearcow — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:31:44 GMT

In fact, if you disagree with Scip at all, why bother to post? ;)

RE: To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:51:51 GMT

Well if there is no such thing as a unitary "Islamofascism" then why did you bother to post?

[quote]Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, religious attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: patriotism, nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, autocracy and opposition to political and economic liberalism.

An Islamofascists is an Islamic supremacist who believes that the political ideological interests of furthering his/her interpretation of Islam subordinates all other interests. Such people seek to forge pan-national Islamic unity based on their interpretation of Islam as mutually exclusive with and superior to any other worldview, particularly non-Islamic worldviews, and especially secular, liberal democratic, or humanistic worldviews. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to Islamofascism, but the following elements are common integral parts: advocacy of Islamic theocracy and (often) clerical oligarchism as the only legitimate form of government and society; moral absolutism; xenophobic legitimation of terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and/or other human rights abuses; advocacy of such political violence as a necessary means to achieve the desired ends of Islamic supremacy; militarism; totalitarianism; anti-Westernism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism.

The term Islamofascists is applied to a variety of sectarian Islamic worldviews which are otherwise, de facto at odds with one another and often engage in ruthless conflict with one another (e.g., Sunni vs Shia sects). While such sectarian conflict might seem to belie the application of the common term to such rivalrous sects, in fact this sectarianism demonstrates the generality of the Islamofascist agenda to a variety of discrete worldviews which each claim to be the one-true version of Islam. The basis for such Islamic sectarianisms depends on perceived conflict between specific interpretations of Islam by two or more such sects which nonetheless share the structural and thematic characteristics described above. It is the common sharing of the characteristics defining Islamofascism (e.g., supemacism, moral absolutism, xenophobia, ethnic hatred) which transforms the relatively insignificant sectarian differences into the basis for sectarian conflict.

[/quote]

RE: To Islamofascism

Konrad von Richtmark — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:28:18 GMT

o rly? :w00t:

Did I miss something? The Countervailing Force didn't seem to include any news at all of progress in the War on Terror, only an idea of "how to win". An idea which I seriously doubt would work out quite like the guy predicts, and which I doubt any US administration would put into practice, especially as US politics seem to be shifting heavily towards the left at the time.

Team Sunni? When he said that, my expectations for finding any real insight from the article dropped quite sharply. He seems to think of them as a transnational block of co-ideologues who do what they do simply because of a common ideology.

Bollocks. The Chechnyan jihad is the result of a national liberation movement morphed into holy war as a consequence of Russian cruelty. The Palestinian jihad is a reaction to what is perceived as an invasion by an oppressor. The Taliban fight the fight against anyone (foreign or domestic) who oppose theocratic military dictatorship in their country of operation. The Janjaweed don't count as jihadists by any measure, carrying out ethnically-motivated genocide regardless of the religious affiliation of those who get in their way.

These groups don't exist because some people decided to follow an "Islamofascist" ideology and then started looking for ways to act upon it. Well, maybe Al Qaeda did, but the others have been born as a reaction to very specific events and circumstances.

The War on Terror is a war of ideas, not one which can simply be won by finding the bad guys, lining them up, and shooting them.

There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. Most reside in middle-income countries, well able to afford the $300 needed to buy a pirated AK-47 should they feel like it. As long as the will to fight the Islamofascistic fight exists, the war will go on, with government support or without.

In Iraq and Afghanistan prior to the US invasions, the ruling powers were hated by large segments of the population: The marginalized Shia majority and Kurd minority in Iraq, and pretty much everyone who wasn't an Islamic ultra-puritan in Afghanistan. Iran and Syria don't, to my knowledge, have loyalty problems of that magnitude. Invasions of these countries would be met with insurgencies several orders of magnitude greater than those encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Be as you are, keep on doing what you are doing. Keep winning hearts and minds, and know what actions breed more terrorists than they kill. I'm sure Bush & co would like nothing better than bringing a smackdown on Iran and Syria, but fortunately they seem to realize that doing so would be counterproductive, as there's no way they could gain political support to muster the resources necessary for another two nation-building projects. That is, unless something really drastic happens (like a suitcase nuke erasing NYC from the map).

RE: To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:36:01 GMT

[quote][b]jerm (7/8/2008)[/b][hr]That "article" is like a year and a half old :w00t:.[/quote]

Gee your right. That was just about the time all the naysayers were claiming it was hopeless and the surge would never work eh?

I think it is fun to look back at what people who knew what they were talking about said, and see how much of what they predicted has come to pass.

ADDIT: [url=http://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2006/12/this-is-victory-in-modern-warfare.html]This is what victory looks like[/url].

[quote]Allow me to suggest that in a campaign where your enemy is decentralized, does not discriminate between civilians and soldiers and is happy to die for their cause, this is what winning looks like. As long as your nation is growing economically and your infrastructure is getting better rather than worse, you're winning. It's a battle of order against entropy. Expecting the bombings and shootings to stop doesn't give credit to the enemy. [/quote]

RE: To Islamofascism

jerm — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:28:04 GMT

That "article" is like a year and a half old :w00t:.

To Islamofascism

Scipio Africanus — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:28:20 GMT

Steady whot?!?

Kinda looks like you losin BIG

[url=http://pcrevolt.blogspot.com/2006/12/what-would-victory-against-islam.html]Countervailing Force[/url]

[quote]

...We are fighting fundamentalist Islam of both Sunni and Shia varieties. The Shia "brand" arguably started this conflict against us decades ago, but with the rise of al Qaeda and affiliated groups during the 1990s, Sunni extremists are what we are more familiar with, even as Shia terrorism is undeniably the growing, larger and more dangerous threat facing the world today.

This war, which we cannot win without an explicit recognition of what it is, is a war against all variations of fundamentalist Islam.

Presently, there are two many branches of this fundamentalist Islam, Shia and Sunni, and each has their own terror groups and their own state sponsors (though sponsors can and do cross sectarian lines). The "marquee players" are presently al Qaeda, the Taliban, Baathist insurgents, various Palestinian groups, Chechens, and the janjaweed for "Team Sunni," backed to varying degrees by Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, and other Arab, African, and Asian players. The Shiite "marquee players" in this drama are the various Shiite militias in Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, backed by Lebanese Shiite civilians, Syria, and Iran.

There are of course non-government actors supporting terror groups around the world, but the vast majority of terrorism on a scale that we should be dealing with as a foreign policy/military issue is state-sponsored or state-tolerated.

Who we need to beat to win is deceptively simple; we knock off the governments that sponsor terrorism, and make it quite clear that to support terrorism is suicide. Terrorists don't care about dying, but the cynical old men than send them out to die generally do.

If we are going to give an honest effort towards winning this war on fundamentalist Islam, we first have to find a way to depose governments in Iran and Syria, while simultaneously undercutting the terrorist group Hezbollah and the Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq.

This may not be easy, but it is easier than it appears, due in no small part to rapidly developing situations on the ground today.

Iran's real powerbroker, Ayatollah ali Khamenei (President Ahmadinejad is a mouthpiece) is dying, at a time when Iranian students are clamoring for freedom from an oppressive regime. Can you say, "unstable?" I think any student of the current Middle East conflict will agree that as Iran's mullacracy goes, so goes Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

I've written in the recent past of how U.S military air strikes can cripple Iran's ability to threaten Persian Gulf shipping, and how other air strikes can cripple Iran's very limited capability to refine their oil reserves into usable fuel. Combine those strikes with blockade of oil inbound to Iran via a U.S Naval blockade in the Gulf of Oman would literally bring Iran to a grinding halt within weeks. At the same time, Saudi Arabia (Iran's greatest regional enemy, a nominal U.S. ally, and the single nation most threatened by Iran’s involvement in Iraq) could increase production, so that the price of oil (and Iran's income) drops.

Concurrent to these destabilizing military air strikes, the blockade and the forced collapse of the Iranian economy, U.S. forces in Iraq could be concentrated on telegraphed head-on assaults on Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades to crush the Shia militias. I just recently completed We Were One, a book chronicling the U.S. assault on Fallujah, and think the lessons learned would enable us to win what would be a very bloody, but very necessary campaign. The Baker Commission and the in-coming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Silvestre Reyes, thinks we need an additional 20,000-30,000 troops deployed to Iraq. Make them combat troops tasked with the singular goal of crushing the Shiite militias. I'd also make sure that our friends the Saudis were making strong, under-the-table diplomatic overtures to the Sunni insurgency during this time, letting them know this is their last, best chance to emerge from this war without a genocide coming down on their heads. Considering the movement towards that direction from many Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders right now (self-preservation is a wonderful motivator), and together with success in pounding out the Shiite militias that will then no longer be able to rely on a waning Iran for support, and Iraq might just have a chance of making it.

Of course, with Iran's mullacracy faltering of failing, Syria also easily folds. Through a combination of economic sanctions and perhaps a short air assault along the lines of Operation El Dorado Canyon, we can "remind" Assad that he can be easily toppled through military force if he continues to provide a conduit of men and material to Hezbollah. Frankly, the weak-jawed dentist strikes me as someone who would prefer to remain alive and in power rather than die a martyr’s death. Roll Iran and Syria, and Hezbollah's influence in Lebanon starts to crumble, and when they inevitably clash with Israel again, they will be unable to rearm with heavy weapons. They will have no ability or replenish lost supplies or make payments (bribes, really) to the Shia that suffer in Lebanon because of their militancy.

Iran's mullahs will be stripped of their greatest threats and assets, and will likely fall in an internal revolt that could only bring forth a more moderate regime, whatever it would be. These new leaders (or even the current ones, if they survive), would know a simple bomb and blockade campaign could once again shut their nation down. Iran's leaders quit terrorism, because they could no longer afford to support it.

Syria, without the backing of Iran and against the threat of direct military and/or economic regime change, would also stop supporting terrorism, which would weaken their grip in Lebanon, and given democracy a chance to re-establish itself over a weakened Hezbollah. Iraq, no longer beholden to militias, would have a chance to forge nationalist ties, or form regional partitions, but at least it would have a chance, with U.S forces on hand to help train and stamp out terrorist brush fires as needed.

Other, smaller terror supporting nations such as Sudan, Yemen, etc, would likely change their ways as a result of the deposition of much more powerful regimes Syria and Iran. Incentives could be provided to promote more secularized, moderate forms of governments in all of these nations, and those that will not moderate, will die by force of arms.

This is all just speculation of course. You asked what victory might look like, and this is one vision of how it might be won. The simple fact of the matter is that we are in a cultural war between liberal western civilizations and those fundamentalist Muslims that would reestablish a bloody, oppressive caliphate and destroy our way of life. Which would you prefer?

I sincerely hope that this war can be confined to fundamentalist Islam. If not, I fear that we will have a conflict that will see their cultural ultimately eradicated. I'd much rather that Islam morph into a less violent, more enlightened and moderate religion through an Islamic Reformation, but the choice is ultimately in their hands.

I strongly suspect, however, that defeating those nations that sponsor terrorism, undercutting the terrorist groups themselves, and hoping to reform Islam by purging its radical elements, isn’t "reasonable" in your eyes, Doc.

I somehow suspect that any kind of victory isn't.

Posted by Confederate Yankee at December 7, 2006 01:04 PM

Do you think his approach might work?

Labels: GWOT, Iran, Iraq

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This is Victory in Modern Warfare Looks Like: Listening to some of the questions from the Gates confirmation hearing last week, all I heard about was casualty figures, both ours and Iraq's. This many people died in this month and that many died in that month. ...
<$I18NPostedByBacklinkAuthor$> @ 8:13 AM [/quote]