AnyOldIron
Atheist Missionary
Solutions.
With extremism being voted out by the American people, and Bliar on his last few months, we have an opportunity to resolve the problems that these fuck-wits have caused. Here's how...
Stop acting like our enemies.
Kidnapping people away to secret torture prisons, running concentration camps and dubious interrogation techniques must stop. This isn't being nicey-nicey, this is called maintaining the moral high ground. This is essential to succeeding in any campaign, something recognised as long ago as the time of Sun Tsu.
The Iraq problem.
This is a Pandora's box. SH might have been an ugly, brutal dictator but he was the sticking plaster that held the superating wound that is sectarian Iraq together. Now that plaster has been removed, the sectarian wound is open and festering.
Coalition troops might be exasperating the situation, but the main brunt of the violence is now on sectarian lines. We have ethnic cleansing, death squads and the brink of a civil war. At the minute, Iraq isn't a single country, but three ethnic groups. The only option is to seperate these groups, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. Creating three autonomous, yet federal states, with there own internal policies and police forces, will not just create seperation, but will give the sectarian groups something to concentrate on aside from killing each other. The federal Iraqi government will still maintain responsibility for national security and maintain a federal military to help provide a degree of seperation between the sectarian groups. This will allow coalition troops to gradually withdraw and remove the exasperation factor they create. It will also make it difficult for international elements of the insurgency to operate, they won't have the mask of sectarian violence to cover them. We will, obviously, need to maintain excellent intelligence in all the sectarian area, to monitor and counter infiltration from subversive agents from Iraq's neighbours.
In many ways we have to just bite the bullet with Iraq. We have fucked up, and we are left with a mess. We can only make the best of it.
The Afghanistan problem.
The Taliban is resurgent, reconstruction is pitiful, opium production is back to full speed, the President is little more than the Mayor of Kabul and we are massively overstretched. We need to deal with Afghanistan now. We need to reinforce the troops we have there (troops from Iraq) and put down the Taliban. We need to concentrate our efforts on reconstruction, something that has drifted because of the Iraq debacle. We need to alter our international trade efforts to allow Afghanis a market for products other than opium (I know the free-market extremists won't like this...tough)
Reconstructing and creating a viable Afghanistan must be our primary concern.
Undermining Jihadism.
If we want to find a resolution to the problem of Islamic extremism, we need to undermine the messages they use to garner recruits and support. The obvious spike we can put into their plans is to remove the Israel / Palestine problem from the equation. To do this, we need to force a two-state solution on both sides.
Many might think this is an impossibility, but it isn't. Before Israel's recent 'actions', senior members of Hamas were discussing in positive terms the possibility of a two-state solution, though this was undermined by Israeli actions. The US/EU is in a unique position to resolve this problem insomuch as we economically uphold both economies. The threat of essentially cutting the funding and sinking the two economies is easily enough to bring them both to the table, no excuses from either side. The summit will have one single goal, creating a border solution that creates two viable states (ie not a Palestine dictated by Israel).
Once this is achieved (and if it requires it, we lock both groups in a room til the solution is achieved) we deploy troops to ensure the sovereignty of both borders, US troops to protect Israel, EU (ie British) to protect Palestine. Troops retreating from Iraq can be used, to greater effect on the battle against extremism. We then pump cash into both states, we need to improve the living standards in Palestine to cease disillusionment amongst the people.
This will remove the prima factor in Islamic extremist recruitment, and start choking them of the oxygen they require. Pressuring Putin over Chechnya and using our considerable influence over regimes such as the House of Saud to improve human rights and disapation of national wealth will also contribute to this.
If we resolve the Afghan problem by concentrating on it, remove the underlying causes that feed the jihadists such as Palestine, make the best of the Iraq debacle and attempt to improve standards in the Muslim world, the extremist arguments in the Muslim world will start to flounder. When they try to point at percieved injustices, they won't exist, and they will become irrelevant.
Once the extremist hardcore are irrelevant, they become isolated. They become isolated, we can take them out without exasperating the problem. This strategy worked with the IRA and it can work with Islamic extremism. Undermine, divide, defeat.
All we need now is the political will.....
With extremism being voted out by the American people, and Bliar on his last few months, we have an opportunity to resolve the problems that these fuck-wits have caused. Here's how...
Stop acting like our enemies.
Kidnapping people away to secret torture prisons, running concentration camps and dubious interrogation techniques must stop. This isn't being nicey-nicey, this is called maintaining the moral high ground. This is essential to succeeding in any campaign, something recognised as long ago as the time of Sun Tsu.
The Iraq problem.
This is a Pandora's box. SH might have been an ugly, brutal dictator but he was the sticking plaster that held the superating wound that is sectarian Iraq together. Now that plaster has been removed, the sectarian wound is open and festering.
Coalition troops might be exasperating the situation, but the main brunt of the violence is now on sectarian lines. We have ethnic cleansing, death squads and the brink of a civil war. At the minute, Iraq isn't a single country, but three ethnic groups. The only option is to seperate these groups, maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. Creating three autonomous, yet federal states, with there own internal policies and police forces, will not just create seperation, but will give the sectarian groups something to concentrate on aside from killing each other. The federal Iraqi government will still maintain responsibility for national security and maintain a federal military to help provide a degree of seperation between the sectarian groups. This will allow coalition troops to gradually withdraw and remove the exasperation factor they create. It will also make it difficult for international elements of the insurgency to operate, they won't have the mask of sectarian violence to cover them. We will, obviously, need to maintain excellent intelligence in all the sectarian area, to monitor and counter infiltration from subversive agents from Iraq's neighbours.
In many ways we have to just bite the bullet with Iraq. We have fucked up, and we are left with a mess. We can only make the best of it.
The Afghanistan problem.
The Taliban is resurgent, reconstruction is pitiful, opium production is back to full speed, the President is little more than the Mayor of Kabul and we are massively overstretched. We need to deal with Afghanistan now. We need to reinforce the troops we have there (troops from Iraq) and put down the Taliban. We need to concentrate our efforts on reconstruction, something that has drifted because of the Iraq debacle. We need to alter our international trade efforts to allow Afghanis a market for products other than opium (I know the free-market extremists won't like this...tough)
Reconstructing and creating a viable Afghanistan must be our primary concern.
Undermining Jihadism.
If we want to find a resolution to the problem of Islamic extremism, we need to undermine the messages they use to garner recruits and support. The obvious spike we can put into their plans is to remove the Israel / Palestine problem from the equation. To do this, we need to force a two-state solution on both sides.
Many might think this is an impossibility, but it isn't. Before Israel's recent 'actions', senior members of Hamas were discussing in positive terms the possibility of a two-state solution, though this was undermined by Israeli actions. The US/EU is in a unique position to resolve this problem insomuch as we economically uphold both economies. The threat of essentially cutting the funding and sinking the two economies is easily enough to bring them both to the table, no excuses from either side. The summit will have one single goal, creating a border solution that creates two viable states (ie not a Palestine dictated by Israel).
Once this is achieved (and if it requires it, we lock both groups in a room til the solution is achieved) we deploy troops to ensure the sovereignty of both borders, US troops to protect Israel, EU (ie British) to protect Palestine. Troops retreating from Iraq can be used, to greater effect on the battle against extremism. We then pump cash into both states, we need to improve the living standards in Palestine to cease disillusionment amongst the people.
This will remove the prima factor in Islamic extremist recruitment, and start choking them of the oxygen they require. Pressuring Putin over Chechnya and using our considerable influence over regimes such as the House of Saud to improve human rights and disapation of national wealth will also contribute to this.
If we resolve the Afghan problem by concentrating on it, remove the underlying causes that feed the jihadists such as Palestine, make the best of the Iraq debacle and attempt to improve standards in the Muslim world, the extremist arguments in the Muslim world will start to flounder. When they try to point at percieved injustices, they won't exist, and they will become irrelevant.
Once the extremist hardcore are irrelevant, they become isolated. They become isolated, we can take them out without exasperating the problem. This strategy worked with the IRA and it can work with Islamic extremism. Undermine, divide, defeat.
All we need now is the political will.....
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