Quote:
Originally Posted by afchic
If you were "king for a day" and could solve our problems with Islam, how would you go about doing it?
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Great question. If it were easy, we would have figured it out by now.
Your own public profile cites one of my favorite quotes from John Stuart Mill:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
It may one day come to that. I hope not. But hope is not a method.
For now, I continue to study and learn - about ourselves and the enemy.
It's Sun Tsu ...
know yourself and know your enemy.
Wish more people would do the same...spend some time studying the challges we face...especially more of our National Security "professionals."
Just this weekend, I finished Norman Podhoersts WW IV (his metaphor for the War on Terror) and re-read parts of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. I frequently re-read the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
I'm currently reading "Defeating Political Islam" by Moorthy S. Muthuswamy.
http://www.amazon.com/Defeating-Poli.../dp/1591027047
Dr. Sebastian Gorka pointed out that historically,
militant islam has only been beaten back militarily.
Why? It is the aggressive, totalitarian doctrine of islam.
What happens
when islamists lose militarily? It causes them to question their faith and their actions.
You see allah doesn't lose battles or wars. So they must be doing something against the will of allah.
Or they have to fall back on the much weaker argument that they were doing the will of allah, just the "timing" was wrong.
This is why handing over Afghanistan would be such a disaster. It reinforces their story that they can defeat super powers.
As a short digression, Dr Gorka had an interesting article in Foreign Policy not long ago worth reading:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...efeat_al_qaeda
Obviously I don't agree with everything in it, but I respect him and his assessment enough to share it with you.
You decide for yourself where you are on the Afghan surge and the war of ideas...
I wish there was an easy solution.
For now I will learn as much as I can to know ourselves and the enemy (which I will define as islamists).
I would encourage as many others as possible to learn about islam as well.
But not just the "Early Revelations" as is frequently used in our classrooms:
http://www.amazon.com/Approaching-Qu...4190727&sr=1-1
Because knowing about
Progressive Revelation,
Abrogation and
Scholarly Consensus, for example, you'll understand that there's more to the story...so many of those "early revelations" (Mecca) have been abrogated by the later, aggressive militant ones...the ones "revealed" in Medina.
America created the internet as a form of communication to survive a nuclear holocaust. I hope that we can use this as a way to spread the full story...and ultimately let people decide for themselves. For now, I remain realistic, but hopeful.
I believe GEN Petraeus said it best
"Hard is not hopeless."