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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (36654)	8/9/2002 2:06:14 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

re Moreover, launching war on Iraq seems a sure way to recruit more to the terrorist cause. Yes and no. The Islamist recruiting pitch seems to have three main components: 1. we of the true faith have been under attack from the West for hundreds of years 2. we are weak because we have abandoned the true Islamic model of our anscestors 3. if we embrace the true Islamic model then Allah will grant us victory because we will be strong, while America is really decandent, weak and soft. Now a real attack on Iraq will definitely shore up recruiting point #1, but a swift American victory with overwhelming arms is just the pits for the #3, the "Allah will grant victory" recruiting pitch. Part of the reason that Islamism flourished in the 90s was that our weak responses to the Khobar Towers bombing, the embassy bombings, the Cole, etc., let the recruiters "prove" to their recruits that we were soft and that our material advantages could be easily overcome by the jihadi's greater love of death. It didn't work that way in Afghanistan, and though Al Qaeda may be regrouping, I am not hearing of another wave of madrassah students running off to join them, as they ran off to join the Taliban (and mostly didn't come back, the poor shnooks). Defeat has not been a good recruiter.