Reflections on a looming success

[erudito]

The New Yorker and The New Republic have both recently run long pieces on the declining support for terror tactics among jihadis. While these are in part deepening moral qualms, the underlying problem is clearly that terror tactics are simply not working and are alienating ordinary Muslims. In the words of the TNR piece there is a dawning

Comments

[jordan179]

Needless to say, an Obama Administration that immediately started withdrawing troops would give credence to Zawahiri’s claims. Just as the pull-outs from Lebanon and Somalia fed both bin Laden and Saddam’s belief in American weakness.

Exactly. Which is why bold American administrations (Reagan, both Bushes) have tended to enjoy success in the Mideast; timid ones (Carter, Clinton, and probably Obama) failure. This is just the local Islamic version of the Bandwagon Effect. Everybody wants to be on the side of a winner; nobody on the side of a loser.

One can see a constant tendency among Western progressivists to see Iraq as Vietnam redux, and the Vietnam narrative presumes a losing war. (And one where defeat had no direct consequences to the US.)The conditional there is very important. The Western "anti-war" movement is largely operating on the assumption that pulling out of Iraq will be a defeat for Western conservatives; not a defeat for the West as a whole, and certainly not a defeat for Western Leftists. Yet in reality, a

[taavi]

Sorry, did you just define Hezbollah as being western progressivists?

[jordan179]

Sorry, did you just define Hezbollah as being western progressivists?

No, he pointed out that Hezbollah shares a conspiracy-theory mindset with Western progressivists. Which is undeniable, if you examine the facts. They even share some of the same villains.