Rand declares new strategy to defeat al-Qaeda!

How much money, how big was the contract, that allowed a group at the Rand Corporation to come up with this kind of thing? A million? Ten? Were bound copies of the solemn report, distributed to the press and members of the government, on the heaviest-weight bond, the best that Crane produces, and bound, possibly, by Sangorski and Sutcliffe?

Please explain, Rand Corporation (and all you armies of consultants feeding so greedily at the trough of the "war on terrorism") what exactly you did, how many man-hours were involved, and who participated in, the report that includes such things as this?

We'd all like to know.

Al-Qaeda can be defeated if the US relies less on force and more on intelligence and policing to find its leaders, a leading US think-tank says.

We are using inteligence to try to find Al-Qaeda leaders.

But we're also using force, the only language these scumbags understand.

There are no battlefield solutions when we let them place most of the critical battlefields off limits and allow them to control our most important institutions. It obviously never occurred to anyone in power that 1968 isn't the defining year in world history everyone in the Worthless Generation seems to think it is. Try 732, 1453, or 1683 for more insight.

After a second sighting, during which an unfortunate cat is trampled to death, a heated argument develops over the particular breed of the rhino (Asiatic or African) and whether the second sighting was actually a second rhinoceros or just a reappearance of the original.

Or, maybe this one?

At first, everyone is horrified by the violent beasts, but once other people, especially authority figures, collapse in the play, those remaining find it easier and easier to justify the metamorphosis. By the play’s end, even the violence and atrocity of the rhinos is being praised for its simplicity and beauty.

As in, "jihad" is really a beautiful thing. Never mind the giant stack of dead bodies created for nearly 1,400 years.

Now here we have a stellar example of how you can prove anything by statistics.

It is also a prime example of the stupidity of Barry's assertion that it was not the US that is defeating Al Qaida in Iraq, it is the bringing in of the Sunnis into the political settlement.

Bunk bunk bunk bunk.

It is at the time of such assertions that one understands the Beatles song line that "happiness is a warm gun".

Statistics proves that the Nazis were defeated at Stalingrad, not by the Russians, but by the desire of most German soldiers for a hot meal back at home in Germany.

History has shown that muslims only respect force. Just look at the examples from the British Raj.

Patton and Sherman understood better than others that they not only needed to win a war, they needed to completely destroy an evil ideology.

Sherman destroyed the belief held by many of the Confederate elite that blacks were inferior and in fact deserved to be slaves. His Army of the West purposefully destroyed the property of these elite, but Sherman allowed thousands of armed confederate soldiers to simply go home.

Patton knew that only by crushing the Nazis would Europe be saved and safe. To do so, he dashed around enemy troop concentrations to either attack their exposed flanks and kill them, or to encircle and capture them. Eisenhower and Bradley chose a slow, plodding, political "war", which resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths from the autumn of '44 to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We are at war with an evil ideology that must be destroyed, at whatever cost.

Time to man up.

Wakademic crock.

WTF went wrong in the universities?

"The researchers at Rand, which is funded by the US government, studied 648 militant groups which existed between 1968 and 2006"

These researchers missed the bus. They should have studied the history of Islamic jihad instead, or the doctrine of Islamic warfare, along with the Koran and the accompanying scriptures along with Maududi adn Sayid Qutb.

Another 'research' program gone wrong. What a waste of time and resources!

The Washington Post gave this report front-page coverage...touting Rand's "non-partisan" status...and repeating its assertions verbatim.

If we ever plan to rid ourselves of Al Qaeda and the likes of them, we had better not listen to any think tanks. They don't have a clue as to what real war is all about...and we are in a real war.

"Counter-terrorism". Brilliant! I bet Al-Qaeda is in full retreat! Militant mullahs have gone into hiding! Women are exchanging burqas for mini-skirts! The Saudis have allowed the building of churches, Buddhist monasteries and Hindu shrines!

Hell has frozen over and pigs where just seen flying over Washington, DC!

As long as we never suggest their is anything wrong with the fundementals of Islam and never offer any compeating ideologies for them to go to, we wll lose the hearts and minds war , and the culture and world.

Which is clearly the plan.

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism," said Seth Jones, political scientist and lead author of the study.

Been there, done that. This author must have slept through the 1990s. The Clinton administration was just a few months along when the WTC was bombed the FIRST time. The people were treated as criminals and duly prosecuted. It's testament to how lucky the Clintons were that there WERE people to prosecute. Most of the subsequent attacks have been of the suicidal variety, making it harder to bring a live body into court.

Even accepting that these people belong in prison, how do you put them there before they do something violent? Must we wait for the dead bodies before we act? Those who haven't done anything yet are just innocent Muslims, are they not?

The researchers at Rand, which is funded by the US government, studied 648 militant groups which existed between 1968 and 2006 and, based on their findings, the report concluded that only 7% were defeated militarily.

Most of those were political disputes, usually within the borders of a single country. What political settlement will be acceptable to al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah or any other Islamist group?

It's victory or death.

Yea, what PMK said.

You don't "defeat" those who are already True Believers of the Al Qaeda sort. But you can make Islam far less attractive to weak-minded or alienated Infidels, limiting the efficacy of well-financed and incessant campaigns of Da'wa. You can make Islam far less attractive -- make it an embarrassment, really -- for many Muslims now living in the West. You can make Believers, in the Lands of the Infidels, more likely to question Islam -- for example, cause the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arabs to begin to see that Islam is, and what's more always has been and will be, a vehicle for Arab supremacism, expressed sometimes in linguistic and cultural imperialism, and sometimes, as welll, in the form of economic and political imperialism. You can make all Muslims see, or at least be forced to listen to, or eavesdrop upon, the proposition -- repeated endlessly and loudly -- that the failures of Muslim states and societies, political and economic and social, moral and intellectual, are the result of Islam itself. This has been discussed by me, and in detail, dozens of times before. Since I was the first to do so, and even now have yet to hear a detectable echo where it should have been picked up and endlessly repeated, I want the American government to send my check, care of this website, and to make it at least equal to the sums spent on assorted Rand Corporation reports such as this one, over the past seven years.

I need the money. And you, Dear American Government, need the advice that is worth its weight in...gold, diamonds, titanium -- well, a hell of a lot.

So, we're back to it all being a police action rather than a war. Well, we're in a war like no other in American history, with entire nations (e.g., Iran), trans-national organizations (e.g., al-Qaeda) and fifth columnists (e.g., many Muslim immigrants). Seems the Rand Corporation is determined to help fulfil Winston Churchill's analysis that America always does the right thing after exhausting every other possibility.

Churchill had tremendous affection for America, which he often referred to as The Great Republic, but he was not above criticizing it when he thought such criticism was warranted. Seems it's warranted again. And just as we were in a war to the death with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, so are we now in such a war with radical Islam. Either we prevail or our enemy does. When the stakes are this high, it's always war.

I believe the consistent, predictable use of deadly force against "true believers" would serve to diminish their ranks to the point that they become mere pests, like the KKK and neo-Nazis.

Peace through superior firepower.

" History has shown that muslims only respect force."
above

I think muslims only respect the USE of force..there is a huge difference.

Have the academia intellectual giants at Rand scratched beneath the surface of Al Qaeda to understand “counter-terrorism” in any depth? Perhaps if they had, they would have discovered that “Al Qaeda” is now not much more than a loose amalgam of Islamic organizations collectively subscribing to the same Jihad of world domination for their god Allah, with tactics that range from steath Jihad, including legal manipulations of our laws, to terrorist violence; and that the real impetus behind this aggressive movement is not Bin Laden, nor Al Qaeda, but the philosophy of world domination of a Muslim Caliphate revived by the Muslim Brotherhood some eight decades ago.

Who is really calling the shots for “Al Qaeda”, where is the funding coming from, me thinks oil, what are the philosophical foundations for their aggression against the West, against its freedoms, against our cherished human rights? Not Al Qaeda, but something deeper and more sinister, at times hidden from view with various forms of deceit and takkiya, while at other times in full view with their proxy armies of suicidal militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, or Hezbollah, or Hamas; or imams and mullahs with their vitriolic raised finger calling for destruction of the West’s governments, that evil West of the devil, since we live by only man-made Constitutional laws; while in their philosophical views our laws are to be replaced with Sharia laws and governance, which they think is from their god Allah, so immutable and irreducible to human reason, but to be accepted in full submission, or surrender of the soul, to the irrational vagaries of a primitive god devoid of any human conscience, or love for humanity. They worship death, while we love life!

The Islamic philosophy is one of total obedience, the same kind of obedience demanded by any tyrannical potentate or dictator, a total belief system against which no one may question, something the Soviet era or Nazi era knew well, both defeated, but without 1400 years of jihadic history to fall back upon; as if their ‘laws of the universe’ spelled out in their Qu’ran were some ‘uncreated’ word of their god, to be obeyed blindly, even suicidally, to kill the infidels until all submit, or feel themselves subdued to Sharia, their slavery to Allah. Has Rand dug down a little deeper on this issue, of what is the impetus for all the Al Qaeda wanabes? Surely as an academic non-partisan institutional ‘think tank’ they stand on the shoulders of intellectual giants. Or are they Liliputians looking up in wonder and amazement at a world they really do not understand? Is war too fearful an intellectual exercise to contemplate in their comfortable offices over warm cups of coffee, or fancy bottled water? I fear the latter.

But we are at war, a war of the minds and hearts of millions of individuals who are forbidden freedom, freedom of thought, or of conscience, but must surrender their bodies and souls to a total belief system invented by Mohammad and his Caliphs to dominate all humanity for their all consuming rapacious god Allah. Has Rand thought about these things? What does “counter-terrorism” really mean to these academics?

Wellington,

I had an old friend email me the other day with the assertion - based on something he recently read - that the Soviets were a paper-tiger all along and that the Cold War was just an American-made manufactured sop to the military-industrial complex. The guy is a Lib...and he was fertile soil for just such Leftist propaganda designed to negate the historical relevance of our triumph over communism.

I was an amateur Kremlinologist for 20 years...was as obsessed about Soviet communism then as I am about Islam now. I had to explain to this guy, point by point, how Soviet failures in agriculture and light industry in no way mitigated the threat posed by Soviet heavy industry, its gigantic military, its pervasive intelligence apparatus, its remarkably effective agit-prop efforts, etc.

It never fails: The Liberal/Left attack paradigm consistently attempts to de-legitimize every chapter of American history, even those recognized as unqualified successes, in order to destroy any vestige of national pride. My buddy, God bless him, bought it lock-stock-and barrel. One can only imagine how many other impressionable Libs could be similarly brain-washed by a single article?

Cornelius: Your example illustrates very well the difference between old liberals and new ones. Senator Patrick Moynihan, an old-fashioned liberal, put it best when he observed that the signle greatest failing of modern liberalism is its inability to recognize and deal with evil.

Modern liberalism invokes a morally relativistic paradigm. Therefore it is quite hesitant to call anything evil. This fight between relativists and absolutists has been going on at least from the time when Socrates took on the Sophists. One can look for absolutes, as Socrates did, via the philosophical route (Socrates' approach; mine too) or the religious avenue (favored by most-----and that's fine with me as long as it isn't Islamically centered). Either way absolutes need to be found, otherwise we'll exist in an ethical muddle which will prove inimical to civilization, traditions and stability. And even on the chance that no absolutes exist, we should follow Voltaire's prescription that if God doesn't exist we'll have to invent Him. Ditto for absolutes. Take care.

We can't afford to pay one or two million per year for Ayaan Hirsi Ali's security, but we have tens of millions to spend on a Rand study.

This is the equivalent of digging in the inland dirt looking for a person who was drowning 100 miles out at sea.

We also waste hundreds of millions in "outreach" and broadcasts aimed at convincing Muslims that the US isn't their enemy, but those programs fail because they are too heavily guarded by Muslims and Muslim apologists.

We are also throwing away billions in foreign aid each year to Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinians. Then we convince ourselves that their leaders are moderate, pro-Western, even allies in the "War on Terror." Why? Because they accept American money and weapons???

And the US is throwing away billions each month trying to democratize and pacify Afghanistan and Iraq, though as Hugh has explained here many times, despite the improbability of accomplishing those goals, and the failure to grasp that even if accomplished, those goals don't serve US interests.

You're right, Hugh, as usual. You analyses alone are worth at least as much as the price tag of this Rand study--spot on, in today's world, to demand payment in precious commodities! (Perhaps our government should pay the Rand Corporation in Zimbabwean Dollars.)

It goes without saying, that this study should be titled, The Conventional Wisdom on Unconventional Conflict.

"The United States has the necessary instruments to defeat al-Qaeda, it just needs to shift its strategy."

I agree completely. Shifting strategy to eliminate al-Qaeda and the "civilian" population areas supporting al-Qaeda would be a good start. The various necessary instruments are designed W-83, W-87, W-88, and the oldie but goodie MK-41 crowd pleaser.

As for the Rand Corporation, apparently they've been absorbed by the Frankfurt School.

"designated" not "designed"

There seems to be little in the way of "Terror" for them to "Counter" anything with.

The use of Pig Skin Body Bags would go a long long way in screwing up their thought process in how to seek Paradise. Even those teeny tiny peaces of DNA they are known to spread around.

Action speaks louder than words.

When you must husband resources for a war, because the war in question goes on forever, and when the main instruments of the enemy are not qitaal or terrorism, but am assault on the West, through the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest (though in some places, where the Infidels are deemed militarily not as powerful as that West, as in the Philippines and Thailand and Sudan and Nigeria during the Biafra War, qitaal or combat, and its handmaiden terrorism, are used), then you try to identify weaknesses in the enemy camp, and to exploit those weaknesses, to play on them, and certainly not to do anything to minimize or decrease the effect of those internal weaknesses.

The Bush Administration has not done that in its ill-named "war on terror" that includes large sums of money, and all sorts of other things as well -- men's lives, for example, and military equipment used up at a fantastic rate -- being squandered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There are other ways. It takes a real effort to fail to see the sectarian and ethnic divides in Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Pakistan too). It takes a real effort not to see the resentment of poor Muslims at the largely-unshared and undeserved riches of the Gulf Arabs and others who have received the trillions, and who do almost nothing to relieve the poverty of other Muslims, save for a few well-chosen, publicity-stunt "donations" here and there.

But what is curious is that the critics of the Bush Administration also have failed to identify, to put their finger, on what is wrong with the policy. Perhaps those most exercised by Iraq are people who, often described as "on the left," who while they want the Americans out of Iraq, are not about even to hint at the very best, the very most convincing argument, in favor of an American withdrawal: that such a withdrawal will not only end the colossal squandering of resources, but also lead to a situation of permanent low-level hostilities between Shi'a and Sunni, as the latter do not acquiesce in, and the former refuse to surrender, the new power acquired by the majority Shi'a, the inevitable consequence of the removal of Saddam Hussein and his disguised Sunni despotism. So deep is the desire, by those critics "on the left" of the Administration, never to call Islam itself into quesetion, never to hint that perhaps the reason the Bush Administration's policy is so maddeningly wrong is that it is based on sentimental messianism, the desire to "bring freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" without noticing that these "ordinary moms and dads" are Muslim, and therefore, even if this or that American officer may have allowed himself to be tremendously impressed with some Iraqi counterpart, whose interests temporarily coincide with those of the Americans and so he is regarded as a true-blue ally, when in fact he is a true-blue ally only for this or that purpose, and in the end will turn on the Americans the minute they either stop being useful (as in fighting those he regardsa s the enemies of his sect or ethnic group or tribe) or refuse to come through with more money and, especially, more military equipment.

Watch out for the more innocent American officers returning from Iraq who, knowing little of Islam, and seeing only this or that liquid-brown-eyed Iraqi who they see fighting beside them, and mistake these people for permanent friends, a motley crew -- Shia or Sunni Arab or Kurd -- of mesopotamian gunga dins whom the Americans can count on. In fact, the person who is raised up in a Total Belief-System that inculcates the notion that the only division of humanity that counts is that between Believer and Infidel is unlikely to be someone you can count on, unless he needs you, right then, or is hoping to inveigle out of you something in the near future.

No, the Left in America won't use the one argument that could prove successful in persuading the government -- of Obama or McCain -to withdraw troops from Iraq, and not to put more troops, or give still more aid, to the meretricious government of Karzai in hopeless, but manageable (mostly through ruthless manipulation of local proxies) Afghanistan. They would rather keep the troops there, then make an argument based on telling the truth about the meaning, and menace, of Islam.

As for the Right, there what comes into play is simply blind, dumb loyalty to Bush and to those who, calling themselves "conservatives" (whatever that now means) and "Republians" do not dare to recognize the folly of the venture that will enter history as Tarbaby Iraq -- or at least should. No, they won't reason why.

Programmatic Left, hating Bush but not wanting to suggest there might be a problem with Islam, and Programmatic Right, wishing not to suggest that there might be a problem with the tactics and strategy in this "war on terror," deserve each other. And they have each other.

The problem is that we who wish to be counted out of both camps, and simply would like threats identified, opportunites recognized and exploited, and nimbler wits to be employed, also must pay for the continued idiocy of others. As the wise man dieth, so dieth the fool, or expressed otherwise, alas, As the fool dieth (because of his foolishness), so alas -- when the fools are ruling the roost, because there are so many of them -- so dieth the wise man.

It's happened so often before. See, for example, the last unappetizing century.

"the Rand Corporation suggests the US replace the term "war on terror" with "counter-terrorism".

Personally, I wouldn't care if they changed the name or not, so long as they are honest in explaining that the whole terrorist movement is rooted in Islamic theology.

It's my guess that's exactly what they're trying to avoid doing by their changes. it's all part of the 'Islam has been hyjacked by a small radical" minority of misuberstandng Muslims ideology.

The problem is that we who wish to be counted out of both camps, and simply would like threats identified, opportunites recognized and exploited, and nimbler wits to be employed, also must pay for the continued idiocy of others. As the wise man dieth, so dieth the fool, or expressed otherwise, alas, As the fool dieth (because of his foolishness), so alas -- when the fools are ruling the roost, because there are so many of them -- so dieth the wise man.

It's happened so often before. See, for example, the last unappetizing century. - Hugh

Right you are Hugh, and the millions and tens of millions who died in the last century, from both World Wars to our other misadventures to 'police the world', the tragedy is more died at the hands of fools than justified in war. How many would have been saved had Hitler been stopped a decade earlier? We face the same stupidity once again, in this new century and millennium.
That 'unappetizing century' stays on like a fetid unwanted guest. Open the windows.

"Al-Qaeda can be defeated if the US relies less on force and more on intelligence and policing to find its leaders"

Unfortunately for the RAND study, Mohammed is the leader of Al-Qaeda, and he continues to "lead" from the fires of hell.

'...unless he needs you, right then, or is hoping to inveigle out of you something in the near future.'

And what those Iraqi's are wheedling for are one-way tickets to the US.

Unfair censorship

"...the Rand Corporation suggests the US replace the term "war on terror" with "counter-terrorism".
From the article.

When will these guys get it that merely rearranging the verbal furniture is a waste of time? Do they really think that such pitifully ineffectual gestures make any difference whatsoever? The educated segment of the West who understands Islam is well beyond being taken in by what is little more than policy-maker masturbation (sorry, I couldn't think of a nice way to put it), and the Muslim supremacists simply laugh at it.

People mistakenly talk about "diplomacy" vs "military action" as if they are two mutually exclusive things. Diplomacy is backed up by the possiblity (or reality) of military action. This report mentions that 93% of militant groups were disbanded by some kind of diplomacy or compromise etc? Well, of that 93% how much of that diplomacy was conducted by toothless governments with no military capabilty?