Carl, I got a bit more time;
Re: "[F:]Get really serious about denying terrorists funding."
[C:]I disagree. Funding for terrorists is trivially unimportant. The whole WTC attack took less cash than the tyipcal disgruntled Islamic homeowner in Southern California has in his house. It's utterly impossible to track down amounts of cash that small. Instead of being useful, our activities in that area will only piss off the locals. What the terrorists need, far more than money, is suicidal people.
The actual operations cost the least. B Raman is something of an expert. I'll quote a bit more than necessary so funds are contextualized. Raman doesn't make a big point of this but serious funds are required to establish sanctuaries, whether in Afghanistan, Yemen, Europe, or the tribal lands of Pakistan.
"Motivation, recruits, funds and sanctuaries constitute the four essential ingredients for the survival of a terrorist organisation and its success in organising acts of terrorism. Hence, any counter-terrorism strategy, to be successful, has to focus on depriving the organisation of as many of these ingredients as possible, if not all the four of them.
2. Of these four ingredients, motivation and sanctuaries are the most important. A poorly motivated terrorist organisation would not be successful even if it had all the other three ingredients and an organisation without sanctuaries cannot operate effectively even if it had an unlimited flow of well-motivated recruits and funds. Many of the ideological terrorist groups of West Europe withered away when the increasing economic prosperity and the disenchantment with Communism resulted in the weakening of the motivation of their cadres. The international terrorist group led by Carlos disintegrated when the collapse of the Communist States of East Europe and sustained Western pressure on its State-sponsors in West Asia and North Africa deprived its members of sanctuaries from which they could operate.
3. The importance of funds arises from the fact that they partly help in the recruitment and motivation through monetary incentives and partly contribute to maintaining the morale and motivation through the successful planning and execution of acts of terrorism. A continuous lack of success or decreasing success against the State has a negative impact on the motivation and fresh recruitment. Funds play an important role in the recruitment of cadres, in procuring shelter and logistic support from the community amongst which the terrorists operate, in acquiring the weapons, explosives, identity documents and other material required for an act of terrorism , for travel etc. Hence, action to identify the sources of funding, determine the means employed for their transmission and choke off the flow of funds from the sources to the organisations and from the organisations to their cadres deputed for carrying out the acts of terrorism has always received high priority from the States confronted with the scourge of terrorism."
saag.org
Carl, those guys the US killed out the Yemeni desert a couple of weeks ago needed serious money. Sure, the locals are probably positively disposed, but nonetheless if you want to operate undisturbed and grow the local goodwill you still need lots of money. Involvement in quasi legal stuff easily increases costs by at least 2X's, probably lots more, actually. And when you figure out costs of communications, back ups, plans b,c, and d, transportation, documentation.
Raman claimed last July that bin Laden was holed up in the Binari madrassa in Pakistan. Think about the costs of running those places, not one, but dozens. These are recruiting grounds and places of indoctrination. Cost lots of money. These places are found all around the world.
Cut back the funding and eventually the movement will turn to criminal activity for financing and then they will start the down the slope of local unpopularity. Once they stop being the soldiers of god or liberation, or whatever, and start being just another bunch of dealers, leg breakers and extortionists they are on the path to local defeat.
So it's very important to cut off their international money flow.
And, in any case, always follow the money because you're going to learn something.
You have to do it all. You have to have the big picture but unless you have smart folk working on all the details, you won't be effective on the social-psychological side. Cutting of the funds is both part of the propaganda campaign, and part of the direct operations.
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In your reply to me you emphasized not making the West unpopular with ME citizens as PR efforts might be construed by them as an effort to change their countries. They are already enraged because their countries and rulers are the pits and because our countries and rulers are not.
We have the means to show them how we got that way and we should use them all.
The reaction to modernity by most folk is not exactly the same as in the 19th century. Then the victims of modernity objected to "innovation" because they saw it as only to the benefit of the innovator, an attack on their religion, etc as they do today, but they did so from a much greater position of ignorance. The means are available to let them understand the real benefits and pitfalls of modernity.
You write,
Humans are a hard sell, as far as propaganda goes. The US has been trying to stop its citizens from smoking, but so far they've had no success. Trying to convince foreigners to like the US may not be much of an easier sell.
In today's paper. The non wet, non PC one:
nationalpost.com{A8A91A38-B422-46A0-827C-22C9B27E7016}
Smoking falls to lowest level in 50 years
Cigarette firms say sales figures hide toll from smuggling
Brad Evenson
National Post
Thursday, November 28, 2002
<http://mirror.nationalpost.com/images/s.gif> ADVERTISEMENT
<http://mirror.nationalpost.com/images/s.gif>
[Click here to find out more!]
OTTAWA - Cigarette smoking has plummeted to its lowest level in half a century, new statistics show.
According to Statistics Canada, sales fell to 37 billion cigarettes in the first 10 months of 2002 from 39.9 billion in the same period a year ago. That is an 8% drop in per capita sales, the biggest year-to-year decline in 30 years, according to the Non-Smokers' Rights Association.
Since 1999, consumption in Canada has fallen at more than triple the U.S. rate of decline -- 17.5% versus 5.5%.
"This is great news," said John Garcia, president of the Canadian Council for Tobacco Control.
"It shows that Canada's co-ordinated and comprehensive tobacco control strategy is working to reduce the tobacco epidemic along with the human and financial costs associated with it."
However, tobacco companies say the sales figures hide a growing trade in contraband cigarettes.
[More at URL]
Smuggling does decrease that number a bit but not significantly. Canadian tobacco companies aren't selling as much product. You can see it. Less folk smoke.
Government campaign has contributed but mostly it's not fashionable to smoke anymore.
If you can get folk to give an addiction to a drug, then you can get them to give up an addiction to anger.
A marketing oriented cynic would say,"Never mind the campaign against the addiction, market them a different brand. It's Coors or Molson's Canadian."
"People like beer, lets them feel good," he'd say. "People like anger - lets them feel good, energized. Market to them a different brand."
So the marketing cynic gets a contract to do some serious market research. He finds out many ME citizens are angry both at the US and their rotten, tyrannical, kleptocratic governments. And he finds out many are shocked at violence and extremism of many islamists. And lots of other stuff.
He comes back and says, "I've roughed out two plans. One is to create less anger at us, but like the non smoking campaign, it's not so good because folk give up something they like. The other is to make anger at their own governments feel better than anger at us. Put the two campaigns together and you've got a winner."
A couple of the committee members he's pitching to start looking like deer in the headlights. "Hey," says the marketing cynic, "Did you you worry about offending the people who were never going to vote for you, anyway?" |
