Don -- this was posted here in a thread of the same name.It is an interesting analysis and will probably be our second framework of focus for our greast adventure ino war, assuming we can escape the first one, which looks very much like Afgganistan to me (since they are rejecting Bush' ultimatums). his can get ugly. The ex-Soviets have made it real clear they think we'd be crazy to try an Afghanistan war, the Taliban insists it will start an Islam-wide jihad, etc.
What to do?
1. Go flat out to win.
2. Show them clear cut evidence re Laden and then, if further refusal, go flat out to win.
3. Rework the whole strategy to make allies out of individual Muslims in Afgh. -- long, slow but more effective.
4. Pull horns and wait for another wave of terrorist assault somewhere. Then, do 1.
Option 4 ain't gonna happen. Option 2 might. Option 3 will probably will be continued in parallel but with too little work, too late, and will be blunted by the counter-PR of the Taliban and other militant Muslims.
The scary part of today is the possibility that Muslims internationally will listen to the over-torqued rhetoric of the militant radical clerics who are the philosopical mouthpieces of the terror net. The NS will get hot and heavy -- rationalizations, justidfications, illogical dialog, data distortion. We need to be ready to launch a major PR burst, not just one good speech. We're up against entrenched fixed ideas and authoritarians, who use Big Lie techniques and any rhetoric they can find to postyion themselves as wronged instead of doing wrong, innocent victims instead of complicit accomplices to murder of noncombatants, and religionists instead of power-hungry control freaks. We need to be able to SHOW in every way that for each of these positions they try to assert, the facts disprove the claim, and the other half is closer to the truth.
A