My post on Tuesday was too short. I know people who read what I write are probably laughing now but I reconsidered it and think I jumped to my theme with too little preparation.
The article I was commenting on points out that Al Qaeda's own literature proves that they have been extensively influenced by the ideas of Mao and other allegedly Maxist, and so atheist political-military thinkers. Contrary to stereotype the founders and leaders of Al Qaeda aren't parochial fanatics who see any thought but that of their branch of Islamic fundamentalism as unclean but are at least as able to do research and study history as secular thinkers in the west and, I'd say, seem to be somewhat more likely to consult their ideological opposites to see what they can usefully learn from them. What serious attempt at a revolutionary movement wouldn't look at Mao and the winning side in Vietnam who defeat the greatest military power in the history of the world? They've obviously learned more from that long and terrible war than the big thinkers and movers in the United States have.
It is the double bigotry of the racist establishment and the racists, both atheist and otherwise, who present Muslims as ignorant, fanatical religious fanatics - all billion and a half plus of them - that has set up the west for the disasters of the past and those which will, no doubt, come in the future. When it comes to people in the Islamic world, most of us turn out to be Doug Feiths.
Of course this was bound to interest me since I've become something of a critic of the conventional atheist POV of what passes as an intelligentsia in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Looking long at things like that gives you a taste for the more bitter varieties of irony. Considering how the Sam Harrises and Christopher Hitchens of fashionable atheism talk about Muslims, how their assertions sound like the worst of the old line racists of the 1950s and before and how those figures have been taken to the bosom of so many who believe themselves to be sophisticated non-racist members of some kind of left, commenting on the article was irresistible to me*. I only wish I'd taken more time to develop my response to it. Though this is a topic which isn't going to go away.
In order to defeat something like Al Qaeda it is necessary to really understand them and what they are doing. The rather insulting and condescending appeal to racism to rally what elites believe are the ignorant masses, exposing their own ignorance and racism in the process, precludes having enough respect for your adversary to see them as they really are, in all of their malignant intentions but, also, admitting that they are not genetically or culturally unable to think. Muslims are presented in the American media, most often, as if they are some kind of dangerous animal. That has been an ongoing effort in the west for centuries. Among the people who like to think of themselves as the educated class I suspect there is a large component of self-congratulation involved. Our educations seem to come with an over sized section teaching a satisfying and pleasurable assumption of superiority that reality doesn't justify. If conceited self-regard built on the backs of the ignorant and inferior masses were true it would have worked out a lot better than it has. One word, Iraq. Another word, Vietnam. When we don't learn from our own massive and horrible mistakes, who's being stupid?
* The most influential strategic documents appear to be anything but religious in origin. For example, Al Qaeda strategist and trainer Abu Mus‘ab al-Suri wrote in his voluminous “The Call to Global Islamic Resistance” that one of the most important books on guerrilla warfare has been written by an American. That book, published in 1965, is “War of the Flea,” by Robert Taber, an investigative journalist who covered Castro’s operations in the late 1950s. The title refers to Mao’s often-cited analogy that guerrilla warfare is like the attack of a weak flea against a powerful dog. The flea first agitates the dog with a few bites, and then the dog attacks itself in a frenzy but is unable to kill the flea; as the bites multiply and other fleas join, the dog is weakened and eventually dies.
Taber’s book, a classic popular study of insurgencies, examines how guerrillas end up succeeding or failing in wars against overwhelmingly powerful enemies. The book’s title was translated into Arabic as, approximately, “The War of the Oppressed”; a more literal translation would be “the war of those thought to be weak.” The message is clear: If you feel weak, this book shows you how to be strong.
Except for history and military buffs, few Americans today read Taber’s book in English; similarly, few Al Qaeda terrorists would have read it in Arabic. But its lessons ended up embedded in Al Qaeda’s philosophy and insurgency campaigns. Al-Suri even recorded a lecture course on the book, and both the failed mid-2000s terrorist campaign in Saudi Arabia and the current war in Yemen bear its imprint.
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