THE WAR IN CONTEXT:: Iraq, the War on Terrorism, and the Middle East Conflict

Iraq + war on terrorism + Middle East conflict + critical perspectives

Finding an intelligent alternative to the war on terrorism
By Paul Woodward, The War in Context, April 27, 2007

If the next administration in Washington is blessed with great imagination -- I know that's a big if, but it's worth considering what that could mean -- then one of the first policy changes the next president needs to make is to end the war on terrorism. This so-called war need not be declared won or lost, but it needs to be ended because it was ill-conceived and has done far more harm than good. It needs to be replaced by an intelligent response to revolutionary jihadism.

The starting point of that response will be a recognition that America's efforts to crush al Qaeda have had the opposite effect. The ideology that al Qaeda epitomizes and the global movement that it spawned are now stronger than ever.

After 9/11, America's drive to "fight back" was rooted in the unquestioned predicate that fighting terrorism was first and foremost an act of will. The question that for the last six years no one in Washington appears to have been willing to seriously consider is this: Is challenging al Qaeda and the philosophy it espouses a task that the United States is competent to assume?

Thus far, the paradigm that has dominated the U.S.'s counter-terrorism strategy is that of crushing the enemy. The war on terrorism has been engaged as though it was somehow akin to the World Health Organization's campaign to eradicate smallpox -- even though everyone knows that killing terrorists does nothing to destroy the motivation of future recruits. Indeed, the war on terrorism has probably served as the greatest terrorist recruiting exercise in history.

As a campaign of eradication the war on terrorism has been worse than a failure.

An intelligent response to revolutionary jihadism begins by asking, what would make a would-be terrorist choose a different vocation? Embedded in that question is an acknowledgment that revolutionary jihadism is a vocation. The willingness to die in the service of a greater cause reflects a level of passion and intentionality that cannot be redirected towards some trivial pursuit. Moreover, in those for whom revolutionary jihadism feels like "the answer," a viable alternative must look equally if not more compelling. The idea that would-be extremists can be persuaded to opt for moderation without their core sense of purpose still being served is simply unrealistic.

We already know that revolutionary jihadism is fueled by the sense that Islam is under threat from infidels and that the political regimes and religious establishment across the Muslim world do not serve as defenders of the faith. It follows therefore that an alternative path is not going to arise out of the very elements that seem to threaten Islam from the outside or those that are failing to defend it from within.

An intelligent response to revolutionary jihadism already exists. It doesn't need American support -- in fact, such support would almost certainly be counterproductive. But it does need Western recognition -- an acknowledgement that such a response exists, that it can be effective, but that its effectiveness has thus far been undermined by America's fear of Islamism.

The Muslim Brotherhood presents just such an intelligent response to revolutionary jihadism. It is time we started listening to what they have to say.

The moderate Muslim Brotherhood
By Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2007

The Muslim Brotherhood is the world's oldest, largest, and most influential Islamist organization. It is also the most controversial, condemned by both conventional opinion in the West and radical opinion in the Middle East. American commentators have called the Muslim Brothers "radical Islamists" and "a vital component of the enemy's assault force ... deeply hostile to the United States." Al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri sneers at them for "lur[ing] thousands of young Muslim men into lines for elections ... instead of into the lines of jihad."

Jihadists loathe the Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) for rejecting global jihad and embracing democracy. These positions seem to make them moderates, the very thing the United States, short on allies in the Muslim world, seeks. But the Ikhwan also assails U.S. foreign policy, especially Washington's support for Israel, and questions linger about its actual commitment to the democratic process.

Over the past year, we have met with dozens of Brotherhood leaders and activists from Egypt, France, Jordan, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Kingdom. In long and sometimes heated discussions, we explored the Brotherhood's stance on democracy and jihad, Israel and Iraq, the United States, and what sort of society the group seeks to create. The Brotherhood is a collection of national groups with differing outlooks, and the various factions disagree about how best to advance its mission. But all reject global jihad while embracing elections and other features of democracy. There is also a current within the Brotherhood willing to engage with the United States. In the past several decades, this current -- along with the realities of practical politics -- has pushed much of the Brotherhood toward moderation. [complete article]

See also, To talk or not to talk? -- that is the question (Robert S. Leiken) and, Strategic thinking about the Muslim Brotherhood (Robert S. Leiken and Steven Brooke).

Smoke and mirrors
By Gihan Shahine, Al-Ahram Weekly, April 26, 2007

The relationship between the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and the US administration seems to have been receiving much foreign and local media attention in recent weeks. This month's issue of Newsweek, for instance, features a lead story suggesting an "apparent softening" in the US approach towards the banned group. The article maintains that the issue of how the US should handle the Brotherhood has recently been a bone of contention among US officials and experts.

What seems to have brought the US-Brotherhood issue back to the fore is the recent controversy surrounding two brief encounters on 8 April between US House of Representatives majority leader Steny Hoyer and Mohamed Saad El-Katatni, a Brotherhood member and leader of an independent bloc in the People's Assembly allied with the movement. Hoyer and El-Katatni first met in parliament during a visit by a congressional group which got together with MPs of different political stripes, and then later the same day at a cocktail party held at the residence of US Ambassador to Cairo Francis Ricciardone. [complete article]