Terrorism: We play Checkers, They play Chess
This is a rant, so feel free to comment and disagree, but this is my personal opinion, and I felt like posting it here so I did….
While to most of us current events are not a game, it seems like using game analogies aptly describe how our politicians are acting. I keep hearing news reports about who is winning the war on terror, or winning the debt limit talks. Our politicians are playing checkers with out future, making jumps reactively. “Hey he jumped me, I am going to jump him back”… Watching our politicians solve problems is akin to watching an ADHD Labrador Retriever piddle in the back yard “Hey it’s a squirrel, look at the bird, hello mister squirrel, I want to chase a ball, ooh look it’s a squirrel, I’m hungry?”
The problem is the people employing terrorism as a tactic fighting aren’t playing games. The Islamists that hate our way of life are not playing checkers, they don’t care about who has the most pieces on the board. They are playing for a singular goal. They do not want to negotiate with us for a place at our table and a part of our society. Religious terrorists want to completely destroy the table and make us slave to their society.
Define “Jihad”
As an example of our policies not relating to the reality on the ground, I want to explore the word jihad. In countless sensitivity classes I have heard that jihad does not necessary equate to violence. Jihad means “holy struggle”. Jihad is as much a personal event as it is a group action. It’s probably better defined as a personal struggle against sin. You can have a jihad against porno, and stop lusting after those women on those bad websites, or a jihad against gluttony where you stop eating gut bombs from the fast food place.
Alternatively some choose to wage a jihad against what they think of as the “Great Satan” and fight America and her interests. Americans and most other westerners equate jihad with terrorism. We think of the word jihad as a pejorative. To call some a jihadist carries the same connotation to us as calling someone a pedophile or a racist. We can label someone a jihadist terrorist and then send them to Gitmo or the Chair and be happy we won our checker game against that one individual. Its pretty simple in our minds, catch a terrorist, make a jump, kill Bin Laden and get a king.
We Have Bad Strategy and Great Tactics
Unfortunately, our enemies are not playing checkers, they are playing chess, and they look at all the angles and are willing to sacrifice smaller goals to win the WHOLE pot. To fight our enemies we need to look deeper and see how our actions work on a larger stage. Every time we call an Islamic terrorist a jihadi, we need to translate what we are saying to mirror how they hear it. The words “A Jihadist terror group just assassinated Senator L Liar Hotpants and 12 members of his staff” are translated by our enemies to mean “Holy warriors righteously punished an infidel”. Basically every time the government kills our enemies our media hands the terrorists a more propaganda.
We are fighting to stay safe, to prevent future attacks, but they are fighting to root out and destroy our way of life so they can replace them with their own. On a global scale, you have a small percentage of us, a similar number of them, and a great number of undecided’s that don’t really like us, but aren’t ready to join them. However, every time we use the term jihadist interchangeable with terrorist we are, at the least showing our ignorance and apathy to their religion, and at the worst inviting more attacks against ourselves.
When Carter wanted to give the Soviets the same treatment they gave us in Vietnam, he allowed arms to be given to Islamic groups resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He allowed them to recruit and raise funds in America with the idea that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. This allowed them to build entire networks in our county. Carter used the soviet invasion of Afghanistan to make a couple jumps in our cold war checkers. However, to Islamic hard liners, Carter’s actions were proof that God supported them and put blinders over our eyes so they could take our money and our weapons to kill the Russians, while building up networks to later kill Americans.
Political Rhetoric is Feeding Our Enemies
Every word a misguided talking head sputters about the global terrorism threat raises or lowers a daily polling number to no good advantage to our side. But that rhetoric is analyzed by our enemies and used to advantage by the extremists to show we are ignorant and unable to comprehend the true nature of the war.
Every dollar spend in ineffectual security measures is money we have to borrow. This borrowing puts us at long term risk of collapse while giving our enemies a confidence boost at how we have to spend billions of dollars to protect against a three ounce container of liquid or a 2 dollar box cutter.
Every new assault on liberty we allow for our safety further destroys who we are and makes us that much closer to a totalitarian government our enemies want. I mean once we are no longer ruled by our Constitution and look to our government for our very survival, then how far are we from the basic elements of Sharia law?
I know this is a pretty ineffectual rant, and there is really no way for what I see as a solution to actually be adopted, but rather than just complain, I will tell you what I think should be discussed in the war on terror.
Know the Enemy
We need to know our enemy – what is their end goal, and in every decision make sure that our actions will not in any way help them.
Our side must to stop appeasing our enemies. We should stop worrying about making friends. Our enemies hate us, they always will. We need to realize they have framed us as in league with the devil. They will not negotiate with us, so rather than try to appease them; we need revisit our cowboy image. It’s what helped make us a superpower. Thaw out John Wayne, dust off Clint Eastwood. We need to start lubing our M4s with pig fat and growl out “Go ahead punk, Make my day”.
We need to play to our strengths. And our strength is not government it’s the will of our people. As a old crusty soldier once told me, “Make no mistake, the American GI is the meanest B!@#$d in the valley, he is mean, ruthless, and violent. Whenever the enemy threatens his mother, his girlfriend, or his way of life all he thinks about is what he has to do to accomplish his mission and go home safe.” Think about how the last couple attempted hijackers got beat up by passengers – and that’s after the TSA failed to find the bombs they had smuggled aboard.
Our strength is our people, give our people the tools they need and stand out of their way. If a terrorist tried an attack like just happened at the Finland summer camp down here, I know quite a lot of armed American citizens that would have summarily shot him
