Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
You've also got to factor in the manpower situation, coming back to your four groups, the goal, or should I say one of the goals of terrorist groups, particularly ones based around a religious belief is to move as many people as possible from segment four across to three, two and then one. Now westernisation has a dulling affect on religious zealotry, or at least it does in Western Europe anyway, and so in an open and tolerant society you'd find more people in segment four than the others, however you will still get those in others because of the youth factor, those going through hormonal changes, struggling to find somewhere to fit in and drift into 'gangs' or in this case, terrorist groups. Honestly though, some of the recruitment language for the Syrian war would not look out of place in a poster for British people to volunteer to serve in Kitcheners army back in WWI.
But back to the segments. So the likes of Daesh need to turn non-Muslims against Muslims in order to push them from segment four down to three, two and one. So when they open fire in the streets of Paris or Berlin, it's not just a case of killing the kaffir, although that is all well and good for the person who is doing it (who most likely has no thought to the bigger picture other than sacrificing himself for his deity) but it's also sowing the seeds of fear in the populace. It's a powerful tool, it's affected me and I'm the very model of a modern major liberal (I've information vegetable, animal and mineral) and so with each attack it shifts, sometimes in single digits, or even in decimal points, those people across and it increases the enemies manpower gradually.
Of course, such strategies are really only applicable to the west, in the Middle East itself it's a case of put a gun to anything that moves and point it at the enemy, that's a much more base level of warfare and one which they are losing hand over fist. On the battlefield we can kick them seven ways to Sunday, but on the homefront they run rings around us because our response is their weapon. If we don't react then we run the risk of leaving ourselves open to further attacks, but if we do react then we change the normal and throw suspicion on the people in segment four who then are slowly pushed downwards.
I think the biggest problem is that we don't know what the problem is, and indeed whether it is a problem that we can solve, without becoming the very thing that we're attempting to destroy. But you're right, it's definitely not going to go away, other problems might overshadow it (I'm looking at you Vladimir, and you Donald) but it's still going to be there, in and out of the background. One could argue that it has been there for centuries, and will continue to be there for centuries more, most likely.
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Yup! You nailed it.
Course it isn't a strictly modern problem. The French suffered similar issues as a result of the guerrilla war in occupied Spain, and even Alexander's armies were bothered by it in India and Afghanistan of all places.
We "Westerners," particularly those of us of a "secular humanist rationalist" bent find ourselves in a real philosophical pickle. A true Catch-22.
Most likely it is a problem that the kids being born right now will still be dealing with and quite possible for generations after that too.
Honestly I'm not that worred about either Vlad or Trumpolini. Trump talks too much, but he doesn't want war. Vlad has about as much as he can handle with his forces in Ukraine having been ground to a halt and the various occupied territories in his toy box always posing some risk.
China is in my opinion a powder keg--has been for decades, but with recent financial events, even more so. The regime there has to walk a delicate line between maintaining control and allowing enough civil liberties that they avert coups and civil wars.
As long as one is okay with periodic spree killers shouting Allahu Snackbar every now and again (along with the interminable drug cartel war in Mexico and the civil war in Syria) as well as the inevitable continued violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, etc. I'd say we're looking at another 8 years of "peace."