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2009-08-09 Terror Networks

Why Al Qaeda Is Losing the War on Terror

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Posted by Steve White 2009-08-09 00:09|| || Front Page|| [11130 views ] Top
File under: al-Qaeda

#1 It is true.

And to end Saddam told the worlds moslems that no, you may not have global conquest.

Posted by newc">newc 2009-08-09 00:36|| 2009-08-09 00:36|| Front Page Top

#2 Unfortunately, globalization isn't always a win-win situation. While a better lifestyle and "middle class" accessories beckon for the middle east, India, and China, the prospects for many in the United States and Europe look bleak. My parents and grandparents enjoyed more opportunities and a better lifestyle than I'm likely to ever achieve. And in places like Africa or South America, for most folks things don't exactly look rosy in the near future either.

But at least Coca-cola and Pepsi can expand their markets into Vanuatu and Tonga - YAY!

I'm more in favor of a Star-Trek style "prime directive". Just because you have warp drive doesn't mean you're obligated to share it with every alien race you encounter. A better plan is to just observe and don't meddle. Let the barbarians be barbaric to each other, and eventually find their own way forward when they're good and ready. And if they become a threat, just nuke 'em from orbit.

Posted by Scooter McGruder 2009-08-09 03:01|| 2009-08-09 03:01|| Front Page Top

#3 Gosh this guy is insufferably trite, glib, and wrong. AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded. The fundamentals were always tipped against AQ - and this "movement" is not just a simple by-product of globalization, but a result of several cultural and religious trends that have produced extremism and violence many many times before in completely different eras.

And globalization is not fueled by newish middle classes somewhere - it is simple market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures. The middle class demands elsewhere are just the result of these larger and more efficient markets creating more purchasing power in "new" places. Effect, not cause.

I was about to lump this lightweight with Friedman when I noticed that he quotes the great writer. Sheesh. And it gets worse - the bumbling and pointless marketing by the catastrophe of an empty suit president has in fact increased the appeal of the US! AQ was not devastated by defeat, an enemy on relentless offense, and its consequent inability to score any "wins". No. It was a few embarrassing speeches, which had no impact on the target audience, that somehow has weakened this international criminal group.

The cretinization of the public square in the US, esp. as concerns political-military affairs and foreign policy, continues to amaze. Every time this Barnett guy puts pen to paper or opens his mouth, he makes a fool of himself. What passes for conventional wisdom in the Beltway would earn humiliating and derisive deconstruction in a decent undergraduate course.

Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that Barnett could actually be paid by the Pentagon for his insights. It's astonishing, depressing, sickening, ridiculous - but not surprising. He'd be just the sort of shallow doofus to appeal to the "no military solutions to military problems" set.

Posted by Verlaine">Verlaine 2009-08-09 03:29|| 2009-08-09 03:29|| Front Page Top

#4 AQ is doomed because it has been squished, hunted, defeated, defunded.

Add in humiliated in the 'Battle of Iraq' which they declared to be key and abjectly failed. Big horse and all that social behavior in their culture. What's more is that AQ was just one of many such organizations which was focused upon the removal of tyrannical regimes throughout the Muslim world. They not only took down a number of those organizations with them as we cut them all off from the financial system, creating animosity from other quarters, it gave George Bush and others the ability to show right in the heart of their region the ability to institute an alternative to removal of tyrants, thus taking away their ownership of 'change and hope' with the Caliphate alternative. They're no longer 'the way'.

Posted by Procopius2k 2009-08-09 08:11|| 2009-08-09 08:11|| Front Page Top

#5 The idea that AQ is just one of the tools of Jihad---and a least important one at that, just doesn't seem to penetrate.

Posted by g(r)omgoru 2009-08-09 10:46|| 2009-08-09 10:46|| Front Page Top

#6 > Career opportunities and a better life, after all, means fewer young people driven to extremism.

Just
Not
True

Poverty doesn't cause terrorism, Islam does.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2009-08-09 12:33|| 2009-08-09 12:33|| Front Page Top

#7 Verlaine,

I follow Dr. Barnett's writing semi-closely. In his defense, his articles (especially the esquire ones) are focused on medium and long term grand strategy. His article here should be seen as such.

He has argued that not only must AlQ and it's imitators must be defeated ("squished, hunted, defeated, defunded") but that the US must have special dispensation for doing so (describing the US as not the world's policeman, but as globalization's 'Dirty Harry.')

I also think he would approve strongly of your description of globalization ("market dynamics (cost-efficiency) applied to larger and larger factor markets (labor and capital) thanks to modern transportation, communications, and more open trade structures.") His point is that AlQ wants to put an end to these dynamics in favor of its fever-dream of a caliphate holding the world hostage via energy while it destroys Israel. But time (not just the US) is against them.

Posted by Free Radical">Free Radical 2009-08-09 12:52|| 2009-08-09 12:52|| Front Page Top

#8 Don't worry. Now that Bambi's in charge, they can always make a comeback.

Posted by Frozen Al 2009-08-09 13:35|| 2009-08-09 13:35|| Front Page Top

#9 Free Radical - uh, ok, whatever.

My dismissal of Barnett's stuff stands - he's a lightweight who can't go two sentences without uttering something ridiculous. As just one jaw-dropping example see his hallucinogenic claim above that Bambi's bizarre outreach effort has borne fruit of any consequence (based on the astonishingly naive and ignorant assumption that the umma or the Arab world likes us or doesn't like us depending on the thinnest of atmospherics, not on action and reality). Where was Barnett when Bush couldn't be found outside a mosque in the first several months after 9/11, or when the WH wasn't the site of some outreach meeting - often as not including some slimy terror-symp outfits that the staff didn't vet properly?

Sorry, Barnett's the poster child for the sub-mediocrity that reigns in the Beltway. As I said, the cretinization of the public square. He's hardly the worst case, but he's in the middle of the pack.

Posted by Verlaine">Verlaine 2009-08-09 14:46|| 2009-08-09 14:46|| Front Page Top

#10 I don't really care about how tough he is on Al Qaeda if he's not paying attention to the third world (and more frequently, second and first world) elites playing "Let's You And Him Fight While I Stand Here And Watch You Bleeding and Tut-Tut About Your Cruelty."

Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-08-09 16:00|| 2009-08-09 16:00|| Front Page Top

#11 Right or wrong, the gentleman is willing to be published in a liberal magazine claiming that we're winning and Al Qaeda is losing... even if he waited until George W. Bush would not be given credit for the win.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2009-08-09 23:28|| 2009-08-09 23:28|| Front Page Top

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