Monday, March 3, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Irwin J. Mansdorf and Mordechai Kedar: The Psychological Asymmetry of Islamist Warfare - '...How to balance military needs, international humanitarian law, and the reality of facing an enemy whose tactics are not restrained by accepted conventions are challenges to which Israel and other Western nations need to devote serious thought. The asymmetry of battle that Israel faces requires a rethinking of strategy to deal with threats from forces whose ideologies allow them not just to frustrate many Western military advantages but to use the openness of Western societies—especially their print and image media, and the organizations through which the Western penchant for self-criticism is expressed—to their own advantage. Ideology, including the perception of right versus wrong, becomes part of the discussion. Ultimately, non-Islamists, such as Israel, need to win the ideological war as well as the military one...'
A solid read that serves to dispel some of the fog of this particular war. Too, the final graph reflects the proper context:
"In the long term, though, defeating an ideologically-based movement may not be possible without defeating the ideology itself. For Islamists, any move toward moderation will be a political tactic or a forced concession rather than an actual political or ideological reform or accommodation. What should Western societies do when fighting Islamist groups? In order to defeat the political ideology behind Islamism, Muslim civilians must develop a viable and practical alternative to the Islamist organizations that claim to represent the broader Muslim community.[56] While the ideology is immutable, if the civilian population withdraws its support, Islamist movements will be rendered impotent."