| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|
In "Pay attention to jihad," Diana West skewers the breathtaking ignorance of Lt. Col. David Kilcullen and others in positions of authority:
"If I were a Muslim, I'd probably be a jihadist. The thing that drives these guys -- a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the moment, wanting to be in the big movement of history that's happening now -- that's the same thing that drives me, you know?" No. I don't know. And I sorely wish I could tell him so -- "him" being David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, senior commander in Iraq.With this bizarro depiction of jihadists-as-swashbucklers, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an Australian Army officer "on loan" to the U.S. government, should probably have been sent back with: "And I suppose if you had been a German during a certain world war, you would have been a Nazi, eh? Who more than those Third Reich 'guys' wanted to be in 'the big movement of history'? Grr. Thanks, mate, but no thanks. Go play Abu Robin al-Hood down under."
Of course, Col. Kilcullen made his outrageous comment almost six months ago to the New Yorker's George Packer and is still on the job. But when a key counterinsurgency advisor in Iraq identifies with jihadists, it's not just a matter of surrealism -- hallucinations -- at the top. As they say at NASA when things are about to fall out of the sky: Houston, we've got a problem.
Why? Such remarks convey either non-comprehension or indifference to the evil nature of jihad. Or both. Such neutrality, if that's the word for it, also marks Col. Kilcullen's discussion of his big, formative idea: lessons drawn from what he refers to as "an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian-separatist insurgency in East Timor." In the latter case, the language is jarring for what Serge Trifkovic has described this way: "In the motivation, patterns, and perceptions of the actors on the ground -- killers and victims alike -- East Timor was an Islamic jihad against Christian infidels" that left as many as 200,000 East Timorese dead.
In Col. Kilcullen's Islam-blind view of the world, such events become plain-vanilla conflicts without moral distinction, differentiated only by the advent of global media coverage -- a large obstacle, he maintains, to winning counterinsurgencies. Indeed, he compares Indonesia's role in East Timor (where Indonesia ultimately failed, he says, due to global media) with the U.S. role in Iraq. This is a weirdly shocking way to see the American struggle against varyingly jihadist factions -- particularly for someone advising the U.S. military.
It's hard to say what's worse: ignorance of jihad, for which there's no excuse at this advanced stage of war, or indifference to it, for which there's never an excuse. Both attitudes deeply imbue U.S. war policy. As Col. Kilcullen would (and has) put it, "the Islamic bit is secondary." Far more important to this Australian anthropologist are what he calls "social networks." Mr. Packer writes: "He noted that all fifteen Saudi [September 11] hijackers had trouble with their fathers." Oh, brother -- as if half the people in the world don't have trouble with their fathers (but don't hijack airplanes for Allah).
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at June 2, 2007 5:46 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
|
Souinds like there needs to be a SERIOUSE investigation on this putz!!!
Posted by: ooddballz![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 2, 2007 6:02 AM
Gen. Petraeus is the last word in counterinsugency? Time to leave a lost cause. Please, no more throwing good troops into a losing fight! Not with the "new" military leadership Bush put in there for his "surge."
Oh, that "surge" has barely begun yet, has it? Right.
Our troops deserve better than that. Better military leaders, better Rules of Engagement. But then how can a mentally challenged top leadership be expected to do better than it is doing?
Posted by: unicorns62000 at June 2, 2007 6:02 AM
either way what ever this Lt. Col. David Kilcullen
has to say, the results of what islamics do on the ground is to kill all non-muslims and muslims not muslim enough. sooner or later they will connect the dots with terrorism equals islam.
at June 2, 2007 6:25 AM
Definitely one for the "you couldn't make it up" files.
From the article:"Of course, Col. Kilcullen made his outrageous comment almost six months ago to the New Yorker's George Packer and is still on the job"
So, the top brass obviously think this lemon is talking sense.
An update's in order:
We're lead by a guy whose idea of foreign policy is to
a) swagger
b) say blowhard things like "Bring it on"
and
c) thinks that "demAAAAcracy will transform the islamists into Lutherans from Wisconsin
Our intelligence , meanwhile , have come to the conclusion that the islamists are , in fact , just a bunch of idle yooofs who've had a falling out with their dear daddy.
Someone turn the lights out , I'll get the white flag.
It's over folks.
Posted by: ewha1 at June 2, 2007 6:50 AM
Sack that Aussie Buffoon immediately! No...wait.
He can join others in Custer's Last Stand &
be captured alive by these merry,swashbuckling
Jihadis...
at June 2, 2007 7:21 AM
If only there were some way we could steer the jihadists such that they make those ignorant of Islam their first victims.
Posted by: venividivici at June 2, 2007 7:59 AM
Good editorial again by West. While I'm not necessarily against the use of 50-cent words to explain complex phenomena, jihad actually isn't that complex (much like the entire edifice of Islam, which is, with apologies to Geico, truly "so simple a caveman could do it"). It boils down to "find the infidel and, if he doesn't convert to Islam, try to force him to pay a tax. If he doesn't do that either, kill him." What Lt. Col. Kilcullen doesn't seem to understand is that this command is given to both the father AND the son, if both are born into Islam, and sits outside of family dynamics, deriving its power from the broader Islamic society.
If only there were some way we could steer the jihadists such that they make those ignorant of Islam their first victims.
But, in a way, since we can't, we who are not ignorant of Islam need to put a guilt trip on the people who are (assuming that person is someone close enough to you to be reachable by such means), by reminding them that they are putting us in danger with their appeasing ways.
Posted by: venividivici at June 2, 2007 8:08 AM
Among conservatives in Australia there is still a hell of a lot of willful ignorance about Islam and the global jihad...very much like some of the commentary on LGF.
They just don't, or can't, get it.
Even Australia's Prime Minister Howard believes that Islam has been hijacked by a small minority of extremists.
It's amazing and depressing to see so many blinkered people, otherwise incredibly smart and talented people, blindly leading the world to disaster.
at June 2, 2007 8:09 AM
"Why? Such remarks convey either non-comprehension or indifference to the evil nature of jihad".
Absolutely. Only the utter devastation of Germany brought home the unglamorous nature of Nazism. That is one of the reasons why the Allies insisted on "Unconditional Surrender". There were those who said (to FDR and Churchill) that that the ruthless bombing of German cities prolonged the war. But it was necessary to prolong the war in order to destroy Nazi ideology so that its meaning would be seen in its consequences.
In like manner we must deal with Jihad. Long term covert operations should be put in place to plant nuclear weapons over their supremacist territories. They often threaten the West with such a fate (nuclear weapons). The answer is to give them that exactly, to pay them in their own coin. Let them feel terror and more terror until they feel terror everywhere and know what Islam means.
Posted by: Frank at June 2, 2007 8:39 AM
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2007/06/02/ap/international/d8pgkmb00.txt
Don't expect the disease to cure anytime soon , The Admin will continue to waste time and money .like Gates explaining to a room full of muslims the danger Iran poses to them if it get WMDs ot the source of terrorism.
Posted by: KAOSKTRL at June 2, 2007 9:32 AM
More of the futile effort to figure these people out.
The fact is that understanding the nature of mass movements, particularly the violent kind, and especially on such a grand scale as the jihad, is a difficult task for the brightest and best geniuses of the world.
And it is worth noting that amazing minds have been banging away at this problem for at least a century or two. And to this day there is no general sense among the informed-but-not-brilliant as to who has the right answer.
To see middle-brow politicians and soldiers and magazine writers pursuing this problem is pathetic.
The best, most easily understood material I've seen has come from Eric Hoffer.
The True Believer
The Passionate State of Mind
The Ordeal of Change
There is also some harder to understand but equally brilliant material, such as:
Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff
Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti
All of these are available from Amazon.
Now THESE people had/have ideas about the causes of mass movements and such that are really worth knowing about.
I dare say that the world would be a better and safer place if these books were required reading for the upper eschelons of America's political, military and intelligence organs.
(Along with RS's, need I say?).
=========================
All that said. Why bother spilling so much ink about the why's and wherefore's?
Especially while the battle is on!
The priority is winning.
Posted by: joeblough at June 2, 2007 3:19 PM
I have to disagree with the sentiment expressed in this thread. The world is full of sheep; and the sheep in that part of the world are not imbibed with the same sense of civility that most of us in the West possess. They are mind numbingly told about the so-called evils of the West and of their own superiority. Mix all of that and more with the energy of youth and the romanticized, adventurous struggle they might take, and the sheep's mind can rationalize anything as a justifiable path. It is a very sick thing and needs to be extinguished preferably before it reaches the tipping point in the individual, but if already past that point, but whatever means necessary. I hope and think what this Lt. Col. meant was that he might be intrigued by this romanticism himself had he been young, moslem and brought up in this part of the world, but as one who is not merely a sheep, he would not have gone past that tipping point and remained civil.
Posted by: macdaddy at June 2, 2007 4:19 PM
This man ,in the Australian vernacular, is a dickhead. Why is America using him ?
Posted by: marilyn at June 3, 2007 12:35 AM
Comments are turned off and archived for this entry.
(Note: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.)