Spying and willful blindness don't mix. This story would be comical if the stakes weren't so high: the analysts realize there has to be "some kind of guide," some "missing" link in the "radicalization" of Muslims, but what? This is because their work proceeds according to the politically correct dogma that there is nothing problematic about Islam's core texts and teachings. And until they take their blinders off and have a good look around, what follows below will have to pass for "analysis."
You may want to read this one sitting down. "Spy Agencies' Quest: What Makes A Terrorist?" by Kevin Whitelaw for NPR (go figure), November 18:
Investigators are still trying to determine whether Maj. Nidal Hasan's alleged deadly rampage at Fort Hood was a calculated act of radical Islamist ideology or the deranged act of an alienated loner.
But even as military and law enforcement officials continue their probe, the incident has sparked a renewed focus on how Islamic extremists and al-Qaida sympathizers become radicalized in the first place.
The U.S. government has focused significant intelligence resources on the question of radicalization in recent years, but they admit the dynamics are still not well understood.
"We haven't completely figured out why some people are susceptible to that and some aren't," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "There are people who argue it's cultural or economic or political or psychological, but it depends."
The al-Qaida terrorist network has worked hard to build and maintain an active media arm, which pumps out propaganda videos, training materials and other exhortations across the Internet. Much of it is aimed at inspiring extremists across the globe to join the cause, but it remains unclear how effective the messages are.
'Some Kind Of Guide'
"Generally speaking, there needs to be an intermediary -- someone who helps you along the path to radicalization," says the senior intelligence official. "For the actual embrace of the global jihad, you can be launched on that path by your own research on the Internet, but in most cases, you do need some kind of a guide." [...]
"My ability to understand the people I'm dealing with today is far different and far more difficult," Philip Mudd, the assistant director for national security at the FBI and a veteran CIA analyst, said at a conference last month. "The revolution has meant the people we're facing are al-Qaida central, they're affiliates, they're like-mindeds, [and] they're a kid in a garage, each of whom poses a unique threat."
Beyond the core members of al-Qaida, the U.S. intelligence community is trying to track affiliated groups, including offshoots like al-Qaida in Iraq; sympathetic groups, such as al-Shabaab, a Somali extremist group; and all kinds of homegrown radicals....
The U.S. government has focused significant intelligence resources on the question of radicalization in recent years, but they admit the dynamics are still not well understood.
That's because of PC'ness. Now, put someone like ME (and others here) in charge, drop the threat of losing my job over "profiling" and problem solved. Instead of looking at it as the old "innocent until proven guilty", try turning that around.
I know, it'll never happen.
"My ability to understand the people I'm dealing with today is far different and far more difficult," Philip Mudd, the assistant director for national security at the FBI and a veteran CIA analyst, said at a conference last month. "The revolution has meant the people we're facing are al-Qaida central, they're affiliates, they're like-mindeds, [and] they're a kid in a garage, each of whom poses a unique threat."
Well, "difficult" in the sense that if one refuses to acknowledge the simple truth that is based on the easily available evidence, one finds it very hard to "see" the elephant. After all, once one has inserted one's head deep into one's own rectum, one cannot see ANYTHING, can one?
I have long believed in the saying: "The corrupt seek power, the absolutely corrupt seek absolute power."
The most corrupt minds are those who have a lust for power and are, at the same time clinically insane. They are the kind of people who have the dedication to seek and successfully gain control of nearly every significant lever of power, including the mass media, in just about every elective junta on this planet.
Fanatics like that would refuse to even consider the possibility that the teachings of Islam might be a factor. They would even go the length of refusing, on principle, to read the Koran and hadiths to find out what sort of things it might contain.
Within fifty years there will be dozens of Lebanons in Europe and America.
The situation is quite hopeless.
(Yes, I know I've turned Lord Acton's dictum on its head. It looks more truthful that way).
"Generally speaking, there needs to be an intermediary -- someone who helps you along the path to radicalization," says the senior intelligence official. "For the actual embrace of the global jihad, you can be launched on that path by your own research on the Internet, but in most cases, you do need some kind of a guide."
Um. Like, say, the Koran?
"We haven't completely figured out why some people are susceptible to that and some aren't," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "There are people who argue it's cultural or economic or political or psychological, but it depends."
WTF????
Howabout:
"We haven't completely figured out why some Muslims are susceptible to terrorism and some, apparently, are not.
How dumb must one now be to rise high in the American intelligence agencies?
"Investigators are still trying to determine whether Maj. Nidal Hasan's alleged deadly rampage at Fort Hood was a calculated act of radical Islamist ideology or the deranged act of an alienated loner."
The answer lies between these two counterparts: deranged and calculating. Which means Hasan was both a deranged and calculating Islamist terrorist, who just happened to be a loner as well. Hmm, Prophet Mo was also deranged and calculating. Connection? Yes!
Oh, and Hasan shouting, "Allah akbar", before his bloody massacre is a ginormous clue, too.
Investigators better acquainted with the Qur'an, et al, should be front & center on this case, not a group of PC mediabots.
Philip Mudd's "ability to understand" is as clear as Mudd.
Ahem,
I'm very much in agreement with your comments but please, PLEASE don't ever indicate hopelessness in the face of the enemy. Never, never NEVER give up. We ain't even started the butt-whoopin' yet. The best of this little contest of wills is yet to come! Stick around! You'll get your share and you'll be glad you decided to keep on swingin'! :D
Still blind as a bat. It would be comical if it weren't going to be so lethal down the line again and again. It's the Islam, stupid.
This was posted recently but sadly apropos (yet again): What do they have in common?.
The CIA has been appeasing and aiding Palestinian terrorists for 40 years now, it created al-Qaida, and now that it is backfiring on the US, they profess "puzzlement" over jihad. Ask them why haven't they defeated Islamic terrorists, their response is: "Hey, we are still ANALYZING them!". The only thing our US so-called "intelligence" can do about terrorists is aiding them. Without competent intelligence, a nation, no matter how powerful, cannot defeat terrorists or guerillas. But instead of intellinegce, we have a mixture of human waste and toxic waste, waste we waste $40,000,000,000 of our tax dollars every year on. No wonder we are losing in Afghanistan and failed in Iraq, ready to award it as a grand prize on a silver platter to Iran, by far the most rabid, implacable and genocidal enemy of the United States in the world, which is about to go nuclear due to the US cowardice and total CIA ineptitude. But even worse than ineptitude is the CIA servitude, the pathological CIA cowards' servitude to the enemy terrorist thugs, and the worse the thug, the lower do the CIA cowards cower before him. On Nov. 18, 2007, exactly 70 years to the day after England's cowardly Lord Halifax gave Hitler the green light to invade Austria and Czechoslovakia, the CIA and the US State Department sociopaths issued the evil NIE alleging that Iran had stopped its nuclear program in 2003 (!!!). It was absurd on its face, for Iran itself keeps bragging about its nuclear progress. But it gave Baby Bush and all those cowardly US government elites an excuse for their total inaction in the face of intolerable Iranian nuclear terrorism threat. Baby Bush kicked the can down the road to Obamus Carterus who has no intention of doing anything either. As a result, the Iranians are given all the time they want for their nuclear terrorism project. The clock is ticking out for Western civilization. This is what is called committing suicide out of fear of death.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
Dumb leaders hiring dumb spys, that figures. Something tells me that we haven't seen "bad" yet.
Ruslan --something not completely different:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mt0--JSe88
"dynamics"..."not well understood"
I want to cry...but I guess I'll pop a brew instead.
Islamic war fighting is the essence of 4th generation warfare. It is how the American colonists defeated the British and how the Vietnamese communists defeated the French and Americans.
The fundamental problem is that the American leadership does not recognize the adherents of the Islamic ideology as enemies of the people of the United States. Until that happens, the war will be prosecuted in directions that are orthogonal to the trajectory of the perpetrators of violent jihad. And that will not happen until the people of the United States, i.e., the American median voter, informs its leaders through the ballot box that the enemy is finally identified.
Smart enough to figure out the square root of a pickle jar, but not smart enough to know how to open it.
"... cultural or economic or political or psychological ..."
one category is always left out of consideration, i.e. spiritual. it's hard for PC officialdom to speak of spirituality as offering anything genuine or measurable beyond mere obedience. these miss more than an elephant in the room.
i think the "radicalization" the experts talk of is submission to the spiritual power: DEATH. a giving up, as it were, of any recognition of the notion that life and living - meaning as ordained by the Creator - is possible to attain in the present. once submitted, adherents are driven by this power.
Wondering1
I like your faith. We're going to win this!
Here's an elephant: It turns out that Major Hasan participated in the HOMELAND SECURITY POLICY INSTITUTE PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION TASK FORCE that advised President Obama on security priorities for his incoming administration.
See page 27 of the proceedings (pg 32 of the pdf).
Talk about fox in the henhouse, or dare I say, White House.
Thanks, Hugh!
This is an interesting one.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, Temporarily amused and entertained, not enraged.
They might want to start with SURA 9:5 in the Koran.
Frikkin' morons.
Hey, lets not jump to conclusions, folks!
Remember: "the stakes are too high..."
Hussein Obama, America's first (and hopefully last) Muslim POTUS.....
Sometimes, Hugh, there are VERY smart people following VERY STUPID people
Just as individual saints and holy people along with new groups dedicated to prayer and contemplation, to healing, to preaching and teaching and charitable acts of every imaginable kind (or old groups dusted off and revitalised) continually emerge and re-emerge from the living gestalt that is the historic Christian community plus its texts (thus, for example, in the present day, one has bodies such as L'Abri, or the community of Taize, or Jackie Pullinger's Society of St Stephen, and in the past one had 'lone wolves' such as St Francis or Gladys Aylward or William Wilberforce 'recruiting themselves' and then going out to *do* what they [guided by their reading of their religious texts] perceived needed doing...)
so, out of the very different human gestalt that is the Ummah plus its texts, there emerge continually both groups (old groups dusted off, such as the Sufi orders, and new groups invented) and 'lone wolves' dedicated to...JIHAD. To the worship and service of the Arab god of blood and war.
For those who may not yet have read the formidable French sociologist Jacques Ellul's brief but trenchant discussion of 'Jihad' as an institution within Islam, which discussion may be found in the foreword to Bat Yeor's 'The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam', published in 1991, just three years before his death, I will reproduce here some of the more telling passages.
"But a major, twofold fact transforms the jihad into something quite different from traditional wars, waged for ambition and self-interest, with limited objectives, where the "normal" situation is peace between peoples - war, in itself, constituting a dramatic event which must end in a return to peace.
"This twofold fact is, first, the religious nature [of the jihad]; then, secondly, the fact that war has become an institution (and no longer an "event").
"Jihad is generally translated as "holy war" (this term is not satisfactory); and this suggests both that this war is provoked by strong religious feeling, and then that its first object is not so much to conquer land as to Islamize the populations.
"This war is a religious duty.
"It will probably be said that every religion in its expanding phase carries the risks of war; that history records hundreds of religious wars and it is now a commonplace to make this connection. So, religious passion is thus sometimes expressed in this manner. But it is, in fact, "passion" - it concerns mainly a fact which it would be easy to demonstrate does not correspond to the fundamental message of the religion. That disjuncture is obvious for Christianity.
"In Islam, on the contrary, jihad is a religious obligation.
"It forms part of the duties that the believer must fulfil;
"it is Islam's *normal* {Ellul's emphasis} path to expansion .
"And this is found repeatedly, dozens of times in the Koran.
"Therefore, the believer is not denying the religious message. Quite the reverse, jihad is the way he best obeys it.
"And the facts - which are meticulously recorded and clearly analyzed [by Bat Ye’or] - show that the jihad is not a "spiritual war" but a real military war of conquest.
"It expresses the agreement between the "founding text" and the believers' practical strivings.
"But Bat Ye'or shows that things are not so simple. S
"ince the jihad is not solely an external war, it can break out within the Muslim world itself - and wars among Muslims have been numerous, but always with the same features.
"Hence, the second important specific characteristic is that the jihad is an institution and not an event; that is to say, that it is part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world....
"it is most essential to grasp that the jihad is an institution in itself; that is to say, an organic piece of Muslim society.
"As a religious duty it fits into the religious organization, like pilgrimages and so on.
"However, this is not the essential factor, which derives from the division of the world in the (religious) thought of Islam.
"The world [for Muslims], as Bat Ye'or brilliantly shows, is divided into two regions: the dar al-Islam and the dar al-harb - in other words, the "domain of Islam" and "the domain of war".
"The world is no longer divided into nations, peoples, or tribes.
"Rather, they are all located en bloc in the world of war, where war is the only possible relationship with the outside world.
"The earth belongs to Allah and all its inhabitants must acknowledge this reality; to achieve this goal there is but one method: war.
"War, then, is clearly an institution, not just an incidental or fortuitous institution, but a constituent part of the thought, the organization and the structures of this world.
"Peace with this world of war is impossible. Of course it is sometimes necessary to call a halt; there are circumstances where it is better not to make war. The Koran allows for this.
"But this changes nothing: war remains an institution, which means that it must resume as soon as circumstances permit.
"I have greatly stressed the characteristics of this war, because there is so much talk nowadays of the tolerance and fundamental pacifism {a better translation of this word 'pacifism' might be 'peacefulness' - dda} of Islam that it is necessary to recall its nature, which is fundamentally warlike! " END EXCERPT.
If all the world's non-Muslim politicians, pundits, journalists and diplomats simply read, learned, marked and inwardly digested these lapidary passages from M. Ellul - who speaks as a sociologist of immense learning and experience, and as a French Reformed Christian with extensive contact with both Jews and Muslims through the 1970s onward - then we would not be in the mess that we are now in.
The investigator's problem is they are trying to view the puzzle of Maj. Hasan in black & white. They are not sifting through all that grey matter in between where the shadows of stealth jihadists thrive in their element.
The people who are susceptible to radicalization are... muslims! Those who are not... are NOT!
As far as being innocent until proven guilty, our imam-in-chief boldly stated today that the world will watch the terrorism trial in NY to see the terrorists found guilty and given the death sentence. He really does know something we don't... !
Hugh Asks ||| November 18, 2009 1:25 PM |
"How dumb must one now be to rise high in the American intelligence agencies?"
###
Extremely, Hugh. One must be an "Extremely Dumb Bunny."
Enragedsince1999
While I agree with the vast majority of your post above...a couple of points, if you please:
The CIA did NOT "create" AQ - The Taliban and the fighters with them were partially FUNDED by the CIA in order to stop the spread of Soviet Communism (and to give them a piece of what they did to us in VN)
The NIE in 2007 was a political paper designed to go AGAINST Bush's designs of hitting Iran, probably in conjunction with, or as a backup to, Israel.
Again, agree with all else.
Heidi2027,
All of this might lead one to wonder if the career agency people are still playing "career ladder polkas" without realizing there's a full-on shooting war breaking out. However, but for the intercession of folks like Robert, Hugh, Marisol and precious little Pam Geller, I might still be among those clinging to the air-head notion that Islam is "a religion of peace". Only relatively recently have my own eyes been opened.
So, all of that leads me to the question "what have I been doing - that was more important than the future of democratic freedom - that kept me from waking up to smell the coffee?" Maybe that same something has affected the judgement of our intel folks. We need to help them get over it - fast. Thanks!
Wonderin1
Thanks for the Jaques Ellul quote Dumbledoresarmy. It's insightful and thought provoking. War as the normal state, "an institution", does seem a significant point that is quite missed by security and law enforcement people, and by the parts of the British army who want to follow the script for pacifying unruly tribes in Afghanistan - it doesn't work if the tribes seek war as the norm.
Yet the majority of self identified muslims do not engage in violent jihad against the rest of the world. Three contributors to this that I can think of are:
- apathy/nominalism.
- re-interpretations of islam into sufism and other variants.
- syncretism
All three are vulnerable to radicalisation by preachers who refer people back to the Islamic source texts, but radicalisation to early Islamic standards means war. Some re-interpretations and syncretisms seem less vulnerable to this radicalisation than others, e.g. Indonesians as a whole don't seem to go in for this unless they are part of the wahabbist community already, but pull the people out of their community (e.g. move to America) and they seem to all become vulnerable to wahabbist radicalisation.
Referring Maj. Hasan to Islamic studies classes may have backfired because he then looked at the Koran and Haddith, not the descriptions of softened, syncretised Islam apparently preferred in Islamic studies university departments. Eek! I'm starting to sound like an al-Quaeda recruiter.
The issue of Islam seems to expose the stupidity of so many people. Otherwise very intelligent people exhibit frightening stupidity on the subject of Islam. Those who rise to the top in the intelligence agencies or other places where the subject of Islam must be dealt with are not so much stupid as they are intelligent, intelligent enough to keep straight in their head what they party line on Islam is and to work within that construct no matter how absurd it is. So yes, they are technically speaking stupid but there is no doubt that it takes a certain amount of intelligence to play along and keep within the lines of the politically correct notions that drive so much of what goes on today in so many corners of the West. They also must do this whilst keeping a straight face. It is not clear however how they can look at themselves in the mirror. What truly vile creatures they are.
My ability to understand the people I'm dealing with today is far different and far more difficult
His ability to understand is different and... difficult?
What kind of intelligence analyst thinks in such a garbled manner? It's sooo reassuring to know that minds like that belong to "senior intelligence officials" keeping track of jihadis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iuEfjWfAcI
44 ways to support Jihad
http://www.amazon.com/Global-Jihadism-Practice-Political-Violence/dp/0415452422/ref=sr_1_1/176-4310345-0636200?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258597650&sr=1-1
Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice (Political Violence) (Paperback)
~ Jarret M. Brachman (Author)
Jarrett Brachman monitors the internet and catalogs Jihadist sites and what is conveyed. Moreover he has written articles for the CTC Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He has some very interesting ideas about how jihadists use the internet and what it takes to get jihad-hobbists to become operational. He is quite interesting in his views
DDA, thanks for the very prescient quote from J. Ellul.
davidp: "Yet the majority of self identified muslims do not engage in violent jihad against the rest of the world. Three contributors to this that I can think of are:
- apathy/nominalism.
- re-interpretations of islam into sufism and other variants.
- syncretism"
You have missed out the most important reason: the perceived strength of the non-Muslims by the Muslims in a given context. History is full of accounts of slaughter and exodus of non-Muslims, as soon as the Muslims gain a position of strength. Even the most Sufi of Muslims is unhinged and unsheathes his sword, as soon as he perceives an opportunity to grab something from non-Muslims without risk.
That's because this cult of violence caters to the most basic greed and rapaciousness in its followers, urging them to loot, pillage, rape and kill the non-Muslims without compunction, in the garb of religious obligation, promising them Heaven if they strive for this.
Other religions guarantee Hell and punishment for such crimes. Non-Muslims have a built-in Blind Spot, because of this fundamental dichotomy: they cannot imagine, let alone grasp the tenets of a belief system with such perversions, even more so, if it has more than a billion followers.
As a result, we have the shameful spectacle of Non-Muslims trying to "understand" and in a manner "justify" the murder of unarmed Americans on American soil, without for a moment bothering about the victims or their families. Or, about the future victims of such ignorance, which is now nothing short of criminal negligence.
"Yup, but we're not gonna give up. We'll figure it out eventually. Pass me another hit of LSD, will you. And let's get back to work."
Hint you MORONS. Read the KORAN.
They're afraid to, Rick. They might see things like this, and then they'd have to deal with it. Which they don't want to do.
"Kill non-Muslims wherever you find them. Lie in wait and ambush them, seize and capture them using every stratagem of war." - Qur'an 9:5
Very right of you to point 'davidp' to what is probably the single most important factor in determining whether Muslims wage open war or not...whether they think they can get away with it, or not. That is: their perception of their *own* strength, and their perception of the strength of the other side.
Ellul, in the material I cited, notes this 'situational' aspect of Islamic warmaking: "Of course it is sometimes necessary to call a halt; *there are circumstances where it is better not to make war. The Koran allows for this* {my emphasis - dda}
"But this changes nothing: war remains an institution [that is, for Muslims], which means that it must resume *as soon as circumstances permit* {- my emphasis - dda}". END QUOTE
Note to all Spies.
Before trying to open your eyes, you must remove your head from the sand first.
Islam = enemy, check it out, read the Qur'an.
""We haven't completely figured out why some people are susceptible to that and some aren't," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "There are people who argue it's cultural or economic or political or psychological, but it depends.""
Well Jefferson and Addams figured it out after having contact with the Barbary Pirates. It is time to take the Muslims at their word. They tell us constantly why they wage Jihad on us.
Unlike our forefathers, the Quran translated in English is available everywhere, the Hadith and Sunna are also translated and free on the web.
"The revolution has meant the people we're facing are al-Qaida central, they're affiliates, they're like-mindeds, [and] they're a kid in a garage, each of whom poses a unique threat.""
It is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that Islam is the source of this "like mindedness". Again know your enemy, Sun Tsu was right.
I am so sick of Muslims condemning singular acts, it is time they refute, reject,condemn and purge all texts of the lesser Jihad. Tell OBL to stop hijacking Islam, not just condemn 9/11.
There is logic to the way these idiots think.
Let's unpack it:
1. Putting Islam on the table as the source of the problem inevitably opens up a problem of hundreds of millions of Muslims, spread out all over the world.
This in turn opens a Pandora's box of other problems:
a. Concretely: Most of those hundreds of millions of Muslims seem to be doing nothing sufficiently bad as to warrant our hostility against them. The proof we JWers have about the larger pool of global Muslims becomes more statistically amorphous and easily dissolves into complicated arguments that more often than not lose their traction in a welter of radiating sub-issues. There is no way around the fact that we have to treat Muslims as guilty until proven innocent, but the mountain of facts that leads us rational enlightened JWers to that position is a matter of an intellectual threshhold that has been reached from having digested a complex ocean of facts over years that cannot be succinctly packaged for presentation. Nevertheless, PC MCs can intuit this growing realization about Muslims. And this fact -- that we have to treat Muslims as guilty until proven innocent -- is terrifying to them, for it goes against all their values of tolerance, particularly when the objects of the tolerance seem "ethnic". To be intolerant of non-whites has become, over the past 50 years, the worst crime of all -- worse than murder. Look at what General McChrystal said about prosecuting the war in Afghanistan: he said in effect that the value of protecting precious Afghanis is more important than protecting the lives of our soldiers. Then look at what General Casey said about Major Hasan's slaughter of American military personnel on American soil: he said that the loss of "diversity" would be a worse crime than the slaughter itself!
b. Theoretically: We have no template in our history of regarding such a large mass of people as our enemies -- even the Communists could reasonably be subdivided into masses of people we had good reason to believe were victims (one significant evidence of this were the many trying to escape the Iron Curtain); similarly for Germans: as many Germans as were fanatically Nazi, many more could arguably be said to be victims, if not actual resistance fighters against Hitler. And even if the majority of Germans were our enemies and untold numbers of them had to be bombed to death, Germans globally were not a threat, and the threat only prevailed for a couple of decades. Indeed, there's the worse flip side: the main purveyors in recent Western history of a mass identification of an enemy turn out to be people like Hitler, Mao and Stalin. We don't want to be like them, do we?
c. Further complicating the issue is the fact that most Muslims have a non-white ethnic appearance, and this immediately pushes hot buttons with PC MCs: this makes it even worse that we might have to open that Pandora's box and start criticizing, if not condemning, so many millions of Brown People. To do so, in the PC MC mind, is automatically and inexorably racist. It doesn't matter if Islam is an ideology and not a race. All that matters for them is that most of the objects of our criticism, suspicion, condemnation -- and then actions to protect ourselves -- will look ethnic. This trumps everything. This, finally, is the reason why that Pandora's box must be kept firmly closed. In order to keep it firmly closed, all manner of peripheral and even irrelevant explanations will be put forth to explain why so many Muslims keep popping up all over the world perpetrating violence in the name of Islam.
"We haven't completely figured out why some people are susceptible to that (Islamic radicalization) and some aren't," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "There are people who argue it's cultural or economic or political or psychological, but it depends."
Well, let me take a stab at it...looks pretty easy! What do all these things have in common?
Islam controls all the cultural aspects of Muslim societies.
Islam controls all economic activity in Muslim societies.
Islam controls all political activity in Muslim societies.
Islam controls the minds and emotions of all Muslims.
Islam controls all daily activity of all Muslims to the tiniest and most personal detail.
Muslims are told by their God to violently kill and enslave all non-believers of Islam.
Gee! This is a hard one...Muslim means submitted...Islam means submission...I guess that senior U.S. intelligence official is right!
I can't figure it out either! Exactly how do these guys become radicalized?
Hesperado,
Respectfully, Screw Pandora's Box!
Everything you've said it true. It is also true that the solution is relatively simple, although politically difficult.
Declare that Islam is an imperial ideology, the interests of which run counter to those of the USA and all non-Islamic nations. From there, only a simple act of Congress or Executive Order would start the containment and defeat of this ideology against all humankind.
The next step is to cease issuing and renewing visas for those from any of the 57 countries belonging to the OIC. Exceptions to this rule should be only when the issuance of such visas would be a definite benefit to the interests of the US, or because of prior commitments such as entry to the US for UN personnel.
Then round up all illegals of any nationality or race and deport them forthwith. Presence on US Soil without proper permission is a crime and should be punished as such with no excuses for any reason. If someone needs political asylum, let them try some other country.
The Muslims (and others) left in this country will then be limited to citizens. With no new immigrations for the next 20 to 40 years, it will give this country time to absorb and acculturate those already here.
I know that this sounds harsh and would probably mean some loss of personal freedoms for Americans, but this is an undeclared "slow" war, similar in character to the first few hours after December 7, 1941. Americans stood ready to accept great sacrifice then, and they do now also, if only they are shown the way.
"The U.S. government has focused significant intelligence resources on the question of radicalization in recent years, but they admit the dynamics are still not well understood."
they should go visit a mosque and just listen...
The two best scholars I've heard give the most rational explanation for this thus far is Bernard Lewis and jacob Thomas.
"This state of 'alienation’ is followed by a powerful conviction that the Muslim world has become the ‘victim’ of imperialism. [The terrorist] imagines that colonialism had simply targeted the Household of Islam and has not touched other lands. It is as if partitions [of lands or countries] occurred only in Muslim parts of the world, and nowhere else. Most likely, the terrorist knows nothing about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan , or the spread of opium in China , or the partition of India , or of the Soviet Union, and all of Europe. He certainly has no knowledge about the leveling of the German city of Dresden in WWII, or the killing of 300,000 people in Nanking [during the Japanese occupation of China .]”
“Such a lonely and alienated individual is ready to take the next step, that of killing. So he engages in his murderous activities based on the hope of a coming salvation. This [strong feeling] is coupled with a firm belief in his own spiritual, moral, and intellectual superiority over a corrupt, oppressive, and dissolute world. [However] this outlook reveals a wrong reading of Islamic history as well as [of a sound] religious knowledge. Furthermore, his warped view of reality transforms our man [who is suffering] from a state of utter humiliation into a ‘superman.’ He dreams of the possibility of changing the whole world, by upsetting its sinful values. And this will be achieved when a small group succeeds in terrorising the enemy and scaring [those within the Muslim community] that have gone astray. This lonely person [believes] he is carrying the right message to mankind by his supreme sacrifice that ends in mass killings. By resorting to terrorism, he does not only change history by putting it on the right course, but points out the way for the mujahideen to reach Paradise. Thus a suicide bomber leaves behind him an alien world, and [goes to a place of bliss] that no eye has ever seen, nor ear has ever heard of, nor entered into the mind of man. If this is the right answer [to the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism,] what is then the solution?”
“Islam is in its origin an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert’s worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of the converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil. Muslim intellectuals must face up to the fact that there was such a thing as an Arab-Islamic imperialism, and that it was uniquely different from other types of colonial regimes. Until that happens, there can be no peaceful co-existence between Islam and the rest of the world.”
http://faithfreedom.org/oped/JacobThomas50820p2.htm
Read it all in context.
It's Two pages.
"The Fine Art of being Stupid" could be a title of a new book currently in need of a writer.
In this book, we would find all the nuances between the meaning of Stupid, Dumb, Idiotic, Dense, ignorant, etc., etc, etc. In our political/governmental/educational system of today, we have so many great examples of this phenomena, all of which have big titles and degrees from prominent universities.
A dumb spy should be an oxymoron since a dumb spy is a dead spy in the real world. A dumb spy could only exist in the bowels of government, where reality is uncommon.
In the end, common sense rules and dumb spies are dead spies.
The fundamental problem is that the American leadership does not recognize the adherents of the Islamic ideology as enemies of the people of the United States. Until that happens, the war will be prosecuted in directions that are orthogonal to the trajectory of the perpetrators of violent jihad.
SaracensAtTheGates,
With all respect that is not THE fundamental problem.
I think that the fundamental problem is that the American leadership refuses to recognize that there IS the people of the United States. In fact, they don’t recognize the reality of the United States either. For the “leadership” these are only logos referring to things from the benighted past still lingering in mind of unsophisticated common folks from which they need to be weaned off either by education-(leftist wada), or deception-(leftist taqyiah). The left “leadership” is busy ushering the humanity into the next stage of human development – a new world run by one enlightened government - and they are splendidly successful. Acknowledging that Islam is indeed waging war against America and American people would be acknowledging reality of the two thus introducing lethal inconsistency to the strategy of pursuing their utopia. It would be the end of it.
And that will not happen until the people of the United States, i.e., the American median voter, informs its leaders through the ballot box that the enemy is finally identified.
Unfortunately, the hideous vision of world without borders is shared in various degree and variety of forms with different mostly meaningless qualifications by the American median voter. How else can one explain electing Obama for president?
Jacob Thomas's claim, quoted by proxywar, is incorrect.
"[The terrorist] imagines that colonialism had simply targeted the Household of Islam and has not touched other lands. It is as if partitions [of lands or countries] occurred only in Muslim parts of the world, and nowhere else. Most likely, the terrorist knows nothing about the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan , or the spread of opium in China , or the partition of India , or of the Soviet Union, and all of Europe. He certainly has no knowledge about the leveling of the German city of Dresden in WWII, or the killing of 300,000 people in Nanking [during the Japanese occupation of China .]”
In fact, Muslim apologists for terrorists frequently cite all these alleged "crimes" of Western Imperialism. Indeed, bin Laden in one of his formal communiques specifically cited Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The purported evil of the West has become a standard propaganda template among Muslims -- which, incidentally, they seem to have lifted lock, stock and barrel from the template of anti-Western Westerners who are self-hatefully ashamed of their own Western history. I don't think there's a lone "alienated" Muslim terrorist anywhere left in the world, whether in the caves of Peshawar or the self-created ghettoes of "Palestine" who hasn't learned this List of Western Crimes -- from the Crusades to Vietnam and from Vietnam to Iraq -- as part of their catechism of terrorism. This theory of Jacob Thomas seems to be yet another example of trying to paint the Muslim terrorist as a pitiful dupe being manipulated by a small minority of clerics exploiting his "desperation", "poverty", "alienation", etc. It doesn't occur to analysts like Jacob Thomas that the Muslim terrorist is in full possession of his faculties and that his fanaticism is clear-eyed, conscious and fully willing, and needs no provocations and stimuli which seem necessary to the middle-class comfortable imagination of Western professors.
Very good comment, Hesperado.
Reminds me of my discussions with educated folks who insisted terrorism is fueled by dispair. They couldn't see it was an expression of hope, even if carried out by a suicide bomber.
The real reason the U.S. govt. can't find that Maj. Hasan's treasonous actions were caused by Islam is that it might lead to the conclusion that the Quran is a terrorist textbook that should be banned along with child porno :)
http://go.to/islamhistory
What's so bloody hard to understand? If they truly wish to understand why Muslims act that way. A quick, easy, and inexpensive way to do that is to read their vile book of hate
aka Koran. These savages haven't had a new idea since the 7th century.