The newly released NIE is being used by both sides of the Iraq War debate to support their positions. The anti-war side latches on to the conclusion that al Qaeda is stronger today than yesterday to "prove" that the war has been a mistake. The supporters of the war use the NIE to show that al Qaeda is on the run and repeat the time worn meme that we need to fight them there or we will have to fight them here. This debate, or argument, or shouting match, is filled with sound and fury but signifies very little. In point of fact, al Qaeda was always going to grow stronger in the long run no matter how we responded to 9/11.
There are several points that must be kept in mind when debating whether our responses to 9/11 have worsened the terror threat or lessened the threat. The worst point is that, again, almost nothing we have done or could do will meaningfully lessen the terror threat long term, until we decide to treat the threat as an existential threat, a point I will return to.
Jihadi extremism is a growing ideology. Sunni extremism and Shia extremism are merely different manifestations of an underlying supremacist ideology which has grown in response to the failures of the Muslim world in the face of modernity. Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda in Iraq are all different franchises and brand names. Franchises are successful when there are markets for their products, consumers, and workers to support the enterprise. Financial support, an eager population ready to consume the product, and an army of willing workers are all required for a franchise to thrive. Al Qaeda, the McDonald's of Islamism, and Hezbollah, the Burger King of Islamism, have been growing their franchises for years. It is only post-9/11 that the West has begun to offer alternatives. Unfortunately, the alternatives the West offers are completely incompatible with the cultures in which we are attempting to gain market share. We offer Sushi (democracy backed by the US military) and Tofu burgers (Western "soft" power) and as a result find few takers.
The Muslim world contains a combustible mix that is amenable to Jihad and inimical to modern liberal capitalist democracy. There is an extremely large cohort of young men with very little opportunity to achieve status, huge sums of money that have been generated by their parasitic perch on the primary source of the world's energy supplies, a culture that supports a supremacist ideology, and an information environment that facilitates the spread of Jihad propaganda.
Richard Fernandez links to an important analysis of Jihad information startegy:
Analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo do a book-length analysis of the media efforts of Sunni insurgents and conclude they fill an actual demand in the Arab world for certain messages, of which "anti-Shi'ite hate speech is an increasingly prominent part" -- and that leaves their narrative open to certain vulnerabilities.
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[Their] findings coincide with those of a counterterrorism expert I recently heard speak who concluded that the messages emanating from Iraq were radicalizing Muslims in Western countries to a dangerous degree. It was this radicalizing message, with its theme of Muslim victimization and the duty to Jihad repeated time and again, which motivated cells to act in general concert with other cells of which they often had no explicit knowledge.
He is was completely right in characterizing the current world crisis as being primarily an information war, and only secondarily a kinetic contest.
Richard's conclusion is dispiriting:
In general -- and I was sorry not to have the opportunity to debate this fully with the counterterrorism expert -- the two least explored areas of counterterrorism are the art of counternarrative and counterorganizing. The US military in Iraq has belatedly discovered counterorganizing in the Anbar and Diyala Salvation councils, but there is still much to be done in the area of the counternarrative. My own guess is that the private new media sector in the West will wage the most effective counternarrative operations, either directly or by empowering the debate within Islam -- and even within the Jihad by providing grants to dissident Muslim intellectuals, and by supporting bloggers doing straight news gathering within Muslim countries. The enemy of the simple, convenient narrative is complexity and fact. The enemy of cant and obscurantism is debate. [Empahisis mine-SW] And those elements cannot be kept out of the stream in which the Jihadi tale-tellers swim. Amplifying the "weaknesses" in the Jihadi narrative machine means mobilizing content providers to tell the counter-narrative. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Live on the Internet, die on the Internet.
Richard is more optimistic than I that we will be able to use the internet to attack the Jihadi narrative with a counter-narrative and he offers what I see as a primary reason for pessimism. Complexity and fact have almost no chance in the short and medium term against a simple, convenient narrative. For example, the Nazi narrative was simple and convenient: Jews and other inferior peoples kept the Aryans from achieving their natural dominance. No amount of counter-narrative made much of a dent in it within the native German population. It required unconditionally defeating the Nazis in the kinetic war in order to discredit their ideology. We are facing a similar situation with radical Islam.
It should be clear to anyone who spends time in the blogosphere that reasoned debate based on complexity and fact has very little persuasive power. One of our great blind spots in the West is that we imagine ourselves to be so firmly wedded to our rationality that we do not realize how often we use our rationality to support emotionally charged and irrational ideas. Complexity and nuance are poor allies in the fight against a powerful ideology.
[For any who doubt this, just consider that every four years we spend untold amounts of money in Presidential campaigns that concentrate most of their attention on the quality of sound bites they produce, sound bites that often have only the most superficial relationship to the policies being supported by the candidates. Simple beats complex every time.]
The West has lagged terribly in this aspect of the war. Six years after we realized we are in a war with a determined and amoral enemy we still have not even begun to engage him in the information war. We have no easily understandable counter-narrative to use against the allure of Jihad with its promises of glorious martyrdom and blissful, eternal sex.
Until we can find a way to discredit the Jihadis with a more powerful counter-narrative or find a way to destroy their ability to organize and survive (ie, via the kinetic battle and the financial struggle), the war will continue no matter what we do. Since there appears no where on the horizon any evidence that we are ready, willing, and able to mobilize our forces (since our intellectual elites, MSM, Hollywood do not see themselves as being stake holders) for engagement in the information war, the long war seems aptly named.
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