selenite0

soldiergrrl is more important to winning this war than all the guys in tanks.

"The terrorists won First Fallujah. And for six months thereafter Fallujah was the world capital of terror – a terrorist city-state."

That's the power of the media, the arm of decision in action. Using little more than video cameras, terrorists convinced The Most Powerful Man on Earth™ to back down and grant them a victory they hadn't earned on the battlefield.

John McCain seems to agree:

Win the homefront. While we make improvements in our political-military strategy, the latest polls and protests at home show that we need a renewed effort to win the homefront. If we can’t retain the support of the American people, we will have lost this war as soundly as if our forces were defeated on the battlefield. A renewed effort at home starts with explaining precisely what is at stake in this war – not to alarm Americans, but so that they see the nature of this struggle for what it is. The President cannot do this alone. The media, so efficient in portraying the difficulties in Iraq, need to convey the consequences of success or failure there.

By "this war" I'm referring to the global struggle against Islamofascism, of which Iraq is only a part. I don't have that much hope in the media establishment becoming a useful part of the war effort. Not until someone else is in the White House at least. But the information side of the war is one place where the "militia" can try to make some contribution.

Current Mood: determined

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From:

dbroussa.livejournal.com

Wont happen...until they have their PResident in the White House and then they will bend over backwards to make any FP decision she makes look like the ONLY logical choice.,

From:

selenite.livejournal.com

FP?

From:

dbroussa.livejournal.com

Foreign Policy

From:

noumignon.livejournal.com

Very nice link. Very slowly, conservatives are finding the words to explain to me how they feel about the "war on terrorism," such as Captain Ed on 9/11. Their brains seemed to make the connections instantly (too fast, it seemed to me) and they have had to go back and explain their state of mind several times, without using the word "Islamofascist" too much because that just puts my guard up. Now someone's explained why they want media coverage to change without seeming to want an uncritical or conservative press. That's a good step.

From:

selenite.livejournal.com

I'm glad you liked it. I'm very glad to see communications improve between our domestic factions, the failures there worry me a lot.

without using the word "Islamofascist" too much because that just puts my guard up

You're not alone in that. So here's a question for you--what's a word that carries the meaning "someone fighting to impose sharia law and a dictatorial caliphate upon the unwilling" instead of "someone fighting to defend his home who happens to be Muslim"? "Insurgent" and "militant" connote the latter. "Terrorist" refers to tactics instead of the goal. This isn't a casual question. I'm trying to get at the basic dispute over whether we're in a global war, which is the underlying clash of postulates that drives most of the arguments over Iraq, Gitmo, etc.

From:

noumignon.livejournal.com

what's a word that carries the meaning "someone fighting to impose sharia law and a dictatorial caliphate upon the unwilling"

Maybe I am just on the wrong side of history here since I probably wouldn't have believed "capitalism" was a real thing if I grew up at the time people were making up its definition. "Islamofascism" won't sound weird at all to kids learning about it in their history books.

It was much handier in the other wars where the enemies themselves proposed names for their ideologies like communism or fascism. In this one things aren't that organized. It would be very advantageous for us if we could draw clear battle lines, which is why I mistrusted the effort to label. Maybe in a war fought in the media it's kind of a guerrilla tactic not to give yourself a label so people know who they're fighting?

If it were Arab leaders coming out and saying, "We're Islamofascists, give us a caliphate," then I could choose sides. But it seems to be mostly their opponents trying to tell me how they think, and that has to be distorted. I even read a guy saying that Osama's translated statements don't support the "sharia + caliphate" program:

...no alternative conception of the ideal society is ever offered. The absence of any social program separates Al Qaeda not just from the Red Army Faction or the Red Brigades, with which it has sometimes mistakenly been compared, but -- more significantly -- from the earlier wave of radical Islamism in the mid-20th century. Both Sayyid Qutb in Egypt and Abu'l Ala Mawdudi in Pakistan tried to transform their societies into a just Islamic order (nizam-i mustafa, the model order of the Prophet, in Mawdudi's elegant phrase). In place of social objectives, bin Laden accentuates the need for personal sacrifice. He is far more concerned with the glories of martyrdom than with the spoils of victory. Rewards belong essentially to the hereafter....

The future evoked by bin Laden does not portend a return to the past, either the distant glories of 7th-century Arab caliphs or the 20th-century pan-Islamism of the beleaguered Ottoman caliphate. Despite references to the glories of the Ottoman Empire, bin Laden does not clamor to restore a caliphate today. He seems at some level to recognize the futility of a quest for restitution. He sets no positive political horizon for his struggle. Instead, he vows that jihad will continue until "we meet God and get his blessing!" (source, emphasis mine)

From:

selenite.livejournal.com

I think that essay does contain a summary of Osama's program:
he creates his own image of an Islamic supernation that replaces all current Muslim nation-states
Unlike Marxists and their academic successors, the jihadis think sharia law is all that's needed to achieve their goal, so there's no need to spell out constitutions, land reforms, tax structures, etc. Osama's fatwa stresses the need to get rid of "man-made" law. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1996.html) That's his program.

You wrote:
It was much handier in the other wars where the enemies themselves proposed names for their ideologies like communism or fascism.

"Salafist" and "Wahabi" are labels used by our enemies, but there's two problems with them. One, hardly any Americans recognize them and the ones who do have already chosen up sides. Second, they effectively translate as "us real Muslims, as opposed to all you fallen sinners." Not a a concession we want to make to the enemy. Imagine FDR saying "We must keep up our struggle against the White People until victory!" Wouldn't have the same ring to it.

So we need to come up with something. "Islamofascist" is the best one I've found yet. The alternatives seem to either ignore the enemy agenda or define *ALL* Muslims as our enemies. Suggestions?

From:

noumignon.livejournal.com

I think that essay does contain a summary of Osama's program:
he creates his own image of an Islamic supernation that replaces all current Muslim nation-states

The article contradicts itself, doesn't it? I went to find the Zawahiri letter and it talks about a caliphate too.

I spent some time pondering a name or what group it might be and didn't get much. Surprised some skilled rhetorician or propagandist hasn't figured it out yet. It would be OK if the term offended Muslims, because there's not much cross-communication: it would be dumb for Karen Hughes to run attack ads on Al-Jazeera against Wahhabis, but if she did it on Fox News very few people in the Middle East would hear about it. The problem is the "fascist" part of it; if there's no economic program (constitutions, land reform, tax structures), there's no fascism, and all you're left with is the pejorative feeling. How about "Islamic supremacists"? Or "jihadists" seems to work.

From:

selenite.livejournal.com

It would be OK if the term offended Muslims, because there's not much cross-communication: it would be dumb for Karen Hughes to run attack ads on Al-Jazeera against Wahhabis, but if she did it on Fox News very few people in the Middle East would hear about it.

Apparently you missed how many people died in the riots after Newsweek reported a bogus Koran-desecration story. Everybody watches the US media.

The problem is the "fascist" part of it; if there's no economic program (constitutions, land reform, tax structures), there's no fascism, and all you're left with is the pejorative feeling.

Sharia law does contain a set of economic rules. (http://www.dawodu.com/aluko1.htm) But the caliphate seems more fascist to me in its autocracy and control of all aspects of life--social and family arrangements are tightly controlled, culture is sharply restricted (no images of people), and political freedom is almost completely eliminated.

"Islamic supremacists" could work. "Jihadists" is another I've used, but it does have the problem of all Muslims considering jihad (under one or another definition) to be an obligation.

From:

noumcomments.livejournal.com

Apparently you missed how many people died in the riots after Newsweek reported a bogus Koran-desecration story. Everybody watches the US media.

Yah, ultimate liberal spin success there; the story failed to even cross my mind because I have it filed under "Bush attempts to force media to stop criticizing his war." Kos types also found a general (http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2005/May/12-273892.html?chanlid=washfile) to say the riots were not related to the Koran handling, which I was only too happy to believe was true since I wasn't paying much attention anyway. So uh, I maybe underestimate foreign exposure to U.S. media because it seems so many fellow Americans don't even watch it. During the French riots people were complaining all the Muslims just had their satellite dishes tuned to African channels all night instead of assimilating to French TV. Don't know if that's true.

So long as the Islamic community remained small and its expansion was limited to the Arabian peninsular, and when economic activities were limited to the subsistence level, it was possible to control the entire behaviour of the Muslims along the lines laid down by Prophet Muhammead in the Koran, the Sunna and the Sharia.

"The" Sharia? Sigh, it's like you're trying to explain to me that there's this book called Mein Kampf, isn't it? I'm not even familiar with the terms. Hey, is it true that the idea of the caliphate was the whole reason behind the big Shia/Sunni split in 632? I was just reading this open letter from an Iranian (http://www.watchingamerica.com/tehrantimes000018.shtml) that said that and said the U.S. should pick Iran instead of Saudi Arabia if it doesn't like caliphates.