Center for a New American Security

That's not to say the ideas

That's not to say the ideas aren't soundly based or the approach isn't right, it just means that there's no bigger picture that captures the imagination, presents the prospect of things being different or generally inspires to action.

I don't know. Seems to me Ann Coulter had one.

What you mean, of course, Londonstani, is that there is no such leftist picture. This is your problem: you know how much fun it would be to be a terrorist, but you know terrorism is evil. So you try to split the difference. You are with RFK: "the alternative to violent revolution is peaceful revolution." But what, exactly, is "peaceful revolution?" RFK didn't know, and neither do you. You're unwilling to consider the possibility that there is no such thing.

The essence of revolution is violence. "Change" implies violence. "Action" involves violence. "Impact" involves violence. You are doing something to someone. They resist with political or military force. They are overcome. Victory is achieved. This is the very soul and spirit of violence. It just doesn't involve blowing up airliners, that's all.

So, if the only difference between the idealist and the terrorist is that the former is more squeamish, one would not expect "idealist" methods to work in fighting terrorism. Rather, it may be necessary to oppose both at once.

False friends discarded, there is actually a very easy framework for eradicating terrorism. Simply apply the same doctrine and methods that USG has always applied to the original homegrown terrorist organization: the Ku Klux Klan.

This name actually describes four entirely distinct generations of homegrown American "activists" - the original Klan of Forrest, the faux Klan of D.W. Griffith, the lame Klan of Bull Connor, and the uber-lame Klan of today. Anyone who thinks the last is an actual social problem, on the scale of the actual problems America actually has, is delusional. So the latter three Klans were successfully dealt with. The first (of course most like the not-at-all-lame Taliban) prevailed, but the Grant administration made enough headway against it to show how these matters can be handled. Look it up. You can.

So I don't need to go into details. There is one big difference, however. In all cases, suppressing an organization like the Klan requires a social change (yes, "the prospect of things being different") by which all members of society are socially obligated to distance themselves proactively from the cause.

Thus, when segregationist terrorists blow up a church in Birmingham, the event becomes a cause celebre, and makes it within the span of a few short years socially unacceptable to be a moderate or peaceful segregationist. The alliance between the redneck good-old-boy thugs, who go a little too far on some occasions but are basically good kids, and the pillars of society at the all-white country-club who are friends with the county judge, had to be broken. It was broken. And American segregationism, peaceful or violent, is no more.

Certainly, no one suggested that the best way to defeat the terrorists of the Klan was to drain off their support by rewarding and encouraging moderate segregationists, whether with a "bigger picture that captures the imagination," or with fawning legal attention to peaceful white activists, or even simply with good old-fashioned collective bribery. It is not difficult to imagine the results of any such strategy.

Therefore, Occam would suggest that Islamic terrorism is almost entirely leftist and Western in nature and origin. Except for its Koranic camouflage, it is quite indistinguishable from the anarchist bombers Conrad and Dostoyevsky wrote about a century ago. Whether workers, Muslims, or whatever, civilized society creates its own terror problem by collectively rewarding the groups in whose name terror is made, endorsing their grievances with both sympathy and cash. This stimulates their revolutionary energies, which otherwise would be negligible to nonexistent.

So the more bombs go off, the better Muslims in the West must be treated, the more their injuries must be addressed, the more open and giving the West must be to the Islamic world. Yadda yadda. Again, American society has been dealing with this nonsense since Ole Hanson was a little boy. Ole's methods were thick-headed and direct - a real American hero, like Sarah Palin.

My suspicion is that it's not even necessary to reverse the grievance-reward effect. Perhaps all that's necessary is to eliminate it - not rewarding "acting out" with any attention at all. Every parent will be familiar with this approach. If that doesn't work, escalate to the full Coulter - isolate or conquer. Also, "deport" is not a dirty word.

But the cycle of terror and reward is simply identical to RFKism. End RFKism, end terrorism. The alternative to violent revolution is no revolution at all - or, in the last resort, counter-revolution. There is no right to rebellion. The natural and correct response to rebellion is contempt if the rebellion is weak, isolation or repression if it is strong. In any case, no one should gain any advantage, individual or collective, through violations of law or order.

Or at least, so history would suggest. Seems to me the score is history 1, hippie Jesus 0. Whatever the approach, counter-revolution can and should be every bit as drastic and visionary as revolution itself. For every Che, there's a D'Annunzio. Order has its own ideals.

"That's not to say the ideas

"That's not to say the ideas aren't soundly based or the approach isn't right, it just means that there's no bigger picture that captures the imagination, presents the prospect of things being different or generally inspires to action."

Well, this vision was pretty successfull for a while, considering the country that adopted it is one of the richest Muslim countries despite having no oilfields to exploit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemalist_ideology

I don't know that Peace

I don't know that Peace sells, but you're right about poking holes in the narrative.

That's been a failure for the last couple of decades. The last ones to poke holes in a narrative were Reagan, Thatcher and JP II. Not enough on it's own, but it worked.

MM is right about not rewarding the behavior, which will only encourage it. Certain behavior of course requires a response.

If I were to offer a counter-narrative, it might go along the lines of: what has the Jihad bought Muslims? A great justification for the Jihad was the supposed occupation of Muslim lands, as if ARAMCO and military alliances - alliances that when put to the test were honored - were the same as occupation. America had occupied exactly two pieces of Muslim territory prior to 9/11. Bosnia and Kosovo. To protect Muslims from non-Muslims.

9/11 bought the conquest and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. It may well bring more. It bought the word drone into the daily Pakistani vocab. The suffering is not over and in some cases may have not yet begun.

It's a start.

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