McQ has a few pertinent thoughts about Al-Qaida. eight points to an article on the strategy page about how kind as possible problems, their leadership, and their future. Perhaps it would be worth going and reading the article [1], before reading my comments. This, because as usual, my comments take things in a slightly different direction from the way they were originally intended.
I wondered, how sound the tactics being suggested were. I figure that one measure of how sounds that tactics are, is to see if they apply someplace else without much modification. Turns out they do.
I am struck by the similarities between the Democrat party, and al-Qaida, at least insofar as how we should be dealing with each. As an example, let’s try a passage from these suggestions from McQ:
That sort of purging and internal struggle for leadership is obviously destructive and something we’d want to encourage. Keeping them on the defensive in their self-declared “central front” is a good way of doing that. We’ve also seen polls which say that the Muslim world is less and less enamored of AQ and their tactics. That’s a good thing and indicates that somehow they’re seeing the side of AQ we want seen and have come to understand that they aren’t a group, regardless of their proclaimed religious affiliation, with which they wish to be associated.
Let’s try an edit, just for laughs, and see how well it fits:
That sort of purging and internal struggle for leadership is obviously destructive and something we’d want to encourage. Keeping them on the defensive in their self-declared “central front” is a good way of doing that. We’ve also seen polls which say that the Mainstream Democrat is less and less enamored of the far left and their tactics. That’s a good thing and indicates that somehow they’re seeing the side of the far left we want seen and have come to understand that they aren’t a group, regardless of their proclaimed religious affiliation, with which they wish to be associated.
Hmm.
Let’s try again and see if it holds up:
When things begin to go badly all organizations suffer from internal friction and fractures. And when the organization is mostly built on the cult of personality, it is especially problematic. Anyone who tries to argue that AQ is “winning” just hasn’t been paying attention. It was AQ that declared Iraq the central front in their war against the West (and specifically the US). That means, given their declaration, that they have to deliver a victory there. At the moment, they’re hard pressed to even pull off a decent ambush or car bombing. And it is public knowledge that the vast majority of Iraqis reject them explicitly and are working specifically for their defeat there.
and the edit:
When things begin to go badly all organizations suffer from internal friction and fractures. And when the organization is mostly built on the cult of personality, it is especially problematic. Anyone who tries to argue that the Democrats are “winning” just hasn’t been paying attention. It was the Democrats that declared Iraq the central front in their war against Bushy McHitler. That means, given their declaration, that they have to deliver a victory there. At the moment, they’re hard pressed to even pull off a decent ambush in COngress… and their polls are slipping badly as a result of those failures.. And it is public knowledge that the vast majority of Americans reject them explicitly and are working specifically for their defeat there.
Guess it still works.
Observation; Apparently, the tactics are sound, regardless of which situation they are applied to.
(Snicker)