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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: unclewest who wrote (28726)	2/10/2004 10:42:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793838

I do believe progress is being made in SEA. At this point the progress has been confined mainly to arrests of individual terrorists, which is a good and important thing. There has also been considerable deterioration on the political front, most notably in the Philippines and Indonesia. Islamic militancy in both countries has traditionally focused on local issues, with a wider Islamic consciousness restricted only to the inner leadership circle. This is starting to change, and the Iraq war hasn’t helped on this front. I’m also seriously concerned about the immediate future of the whole democratic edifice in both countries. Both are in the process of emerging from extended periods under undemocratic rule; both have democratic structures but have largely failed to produce any meaningful positive changes. Both face major elections this year, in environments of massive public frustration with political gridlock and general ineptness. In both countries substantial geographic areas are almost entirely outside central government control. Widespread political collapse and lapse into failed-state status is an active possibility, and this would have major repercussions in the regional war on terror. it is not just in SE Asia and the ME. The terror problem is worldwide now. The final outcome is far from being settled. True, but we have to watch our definitions carefully. This is not “us vs. terrorism”. Terrorism is a tactic, not a player. It’s not even us against terrorists. You don’t see SF teams fighting ETA or the Tamil Tigers, and you don’t see the FBI chasing down IRA sympathizers. We are fighting a particular strain of Islamic militancy that has targeted the US. That actually makes our job easier: we know who we are fighting. We do not, for example, want to go in with the assumption that in order to win our war on terror, we also have to win Israel’s war on terror. They are not the same thing. We have enough on our hands with our own fight without taking on other people’s fights. We have to avoid the trap of seeing our enemy as a single unified force. They aren’t. They are a network of organizations operating in widely different environments, each with their own points of vulnerability. They are all linked – though not to the degree sometimes supposed – but each fight has to be fought a different way. There is no universal recipe. To win this fight, we will have to fight. Also true, but we will have to fight smart, with strategies and tactics suited to the fight we are fighting at any given place and time. One of the great fallacies of this fight, often seen here, is that we are fighting a bunch of cowards who will give up if we stand up to them. Nice dream, but not true. Ask the Russians about that idea.