September 7, 2004
My Big Picture
Radical Islam is on the move, not just bloodying its borders, but at times fighting with state Islam. Where once state Islam was the agent, now private Islam is the agent of Jihad, except where radical Islam can take over a country, like Afganistan. Russia is just the most recent target. The impotency of state Islam is the reason it is content to sit on the sidelines and let private Islam do the dirty work, and why the work is so dirty. Assymetrical warfare is not the first choice, but the only choice for radical Islam, and having made a virtue of neccessity radical Islam has embraced terrorism wholeheartedly.
First Armed Liberal posted his thoughts on Beslan and Chechnya and asked a vital question:
"If terrorism is about 'liberation' - about birthing new states, like Chechnya or Palestine, or about 'freeing' states like Iraq - we have to ask ourselves what kind of states will be born or won through that process."
Then Dan Darling provided background on Beslan and Chechnya and notes:
This should in no way be seen as an endorsement of Russian policies in Chechnya, which have been worse than brutal - they're simply ineffective. I'll conclude with a link to a reputable organization that is seeking to raise money for the victims of this tragic act of barbarism.
Allah wants you to realize that Putin is not our friend. And that's true. But it wasn't Putin who was attacked, it was Russia itself. Putin is the current ruler of Russia, and both the enemy of our enemy and a practioner of a realist and ruthless foreign policy.
You can look around the world and see of lots of separate fights between people who happen to be Islamic radicals and people who aren't, including one between Osama Bin Laden and the US, or you can take the holistic approach and see a fight between a particular political/religous philosophy and the rest of the world. If your vision is the former, you will have a disconnected, spasmodic response. If your vision is the latter, then you will seek coordination with all the various targets of radical Islam and ultimately the end of radical Islam. One way you fight each head of the hydra separately; the other way you try to kill the body of the hydra.
So we can be squeemish about our partners, not want to get involved in "their fight", or we can seek coordinated response, one that perhaps can be less brutal and broad brush than the responses that will surely come from fellow combatents
anyway.
