Reply to What is the best strategy to fight ISIL/Al Qaeda/Taliban/Boko Haram/Al-Shabaab etc

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Reply to "What is the best strategy to fight ISIL/Al Qaeda/Taliban/Boko Haram/Al-Shabaab etc"

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[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]The common denominator is that all the groups follow Wahhabi Islam. It will be very hard to get rid of them, maybe impossible. There is a long list of legitimate grievances among most Muslims. Nothing the US has proposed will reduce that list. In many ways, US military action will simply confirm many of the grievances and end up making the situation worse. There are [b]few good actions the US could take and none of them are politically acceptable.[/b] The politically acceptable actions aren't good, but that's all available given the political realities. So, Obama has a strategy that will make things worse, but not as bad as some of the alternative strategies.
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Jeff, what are those few actions?[/quote]

The best course of action is to embrace American principles of democracy, liberty, freedom of expression, and economic freedom. One can argue about how much the US political system supports those principles domestically, but there is no argument internationally where we routinely ignore election outcomes and support dictatorships. That would mean acknowledging and treating as legitimate political representatives such groups as Hamas and Hizbollah that do not share US interests, but have popular support. It would mean supporting the rights of the opposition in Bahrain and opposing the Saudi Arabian military intervention there, it would mean opposing the Saudi Arabian political system and the economic monopolization demonstrated by the ruling family. It would mean supporting democratic opposition groups throughout the Arab world.

When the US supports military dictators over popularly-elected Muslim groups as it did in Egypt, it undermines the moderates and liberals who would be our natural allies as they are left holding hollow political values (i.e. they support "democracy" which the US clearly does not). It strengthens the Muslim groups which oppose democracy. There is a strong tendency in Islam to actually oppose democracy because it presupposes that two fools can out-vote a genius. That is not far from the American position that democracy cannot be trusted because it elects the wrong leaders. Those who are told by Muslim leaders that democracy cannot be trusted, can easily see that the West doesn't trust it either.

The US would need to realize that oil dependency means that the monarchies of the Gulf have us in a stranglehold. We need to plan for resource-independence as a way of ending political dependence and therefore be better positioned to remove factors that create grievances among the common people of the Middle East.

In short, the US needs to take the long-term view that stability and peace better serve its interests than the short term view that we should attack anyone who doesn't support our immediate goals. All we do now is put out fires rather than implementing a long-term fire prevention plan.

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