Understanding Your Enemy

To Undermine Your Enemy

     Hillary on the trail is parroting an approach, that she in fact may have authored originally, to not call the Islamic State In the Levant (ISIL) "Islamic" radicals or "Islamic" terrorists or "Islamic" extremists because she doesn't want to offend all Muslims. Not only is this nuts, it is counterproductive to learning how to undermine them.

    Calling them Islamic radical extremists jihadist terrorists is exactly what they are. Yes, they are also criminal, but understanding why they self-identify how they do is a step necessary toward understanding how to undermine their thinking which is a necessary component on the War against them. You shouldn't call them ISIS or ISIL not because they are Islamic but because they don't merit ever being called a "state."

   Daech or ISIL is a deeply misguided geo-politically imperialist purification fundamentalist strain and vein of Islam. It is a movement that believes it is purifying the earth of the non-islamic non-believing infidels or Kafar and all their vices.  It sees itself as in service of their God (Allah) against vice infected westerners. It is rooted in a misguided theological emphasis on the Koranic versus calling for "Killing" and "fighting" infidels (Jews and Christians mostly) of which there are literally hundreds in the Koran. Pick up a copy, Hillary, and read it. They are translated in English. Anyone who reads it past the first chapter will immediately see all the calls to kill or fight the non believer.

  The other Muslims who are "moderate" or peace-loving, who do not subscribe to the barbarity of taking literally the "Kill" verses of the Koran but adhere to the peaceful pillars of Islam (prayer, service, tithing, etc) know that ISIL is a strain, a version of terrorist criminal Islam that believes it is a purification movement. Those moderate peaceable Muslims are needed to combat the perverse ideology of Daech, to undermine their legitimacy in the religion. It is incorrect to say that Daech has nothing to do with Islam. The fact that their recruits believe that they are God's Army indicates that their motivation is religious. The fact that their texts are the texts of organizing religion through all Islam in the Koran, means they are Islamic. The fact that they shout God Rules (Allah Akbar) while committing heinous criminal atrocities means they are Islamic, the fact that they say on video "Allah commands it" means they are Islamic. They are a brutal, fundamentalist, jihadist, extremist strain or version of Islam, but it is Islam. To quote someone running for President "Do you think they are all from Denmark?" Of course, they are Islamic and it is necessary to understand that this is a religious purification movement under Islam that has its attractiveness to recruits because it is an Islamic purification movement.

    I think sometimes the people thinking through these Foreign Policy strategies think they are a bit more clever than they are. The refusal to call a strain of Islamic fundamentalism for what it is does not help.

   The fact that it is a purification anti-vice movement that uses that as a recruiting tool should tell you that it is not a good strategy to promote things globally that they consider pure vice-like homosexual marriage-and doing that actually inflames them and creates more recruitment. For them its like promoting drunkenness when they are against alcohol. Western society is viewed by them as profoundly vice-ridden, profoundly decadent, and for them Paris the capital of EuroTrash vice. So note to foreign policy crafters: don't flaunt vice like it is a national past-time with a constitutional right in America. If you don't understand that jihadism is an islamic purification movement you don't get that vice matters in foreign policy. Its time to  connect the dots people.