Hard Knocks and Soft Power

In the first half of this essay we looked at our need to combat Trumpism and the violent threat it poses as a new phase in the Bush-era “Global War on Terror.” In part two we dive into aspects of that campaign that go beyond conventional law enforcement, military, and intelligence operations.

Like fixing potholes.

The Limits of Brutality

While the so-called Global War on Terror succeeded in neutralizing Al Qaeda as an urgent threat to the Western world, it failed (thus far anyway) in defeating Islamist extremism at large. Eradicating an ideology — religious fanaticism, fascism, communism, or any other — is a much taller order than beating any given army, terrorist organization, or paramilitary force.

Indeed, “Al Qaeda” — the Base, in Arabic — is itself a Western term for a multipronged global movement of radical militants, with Bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a handful of others at its core, and a vast web of admirers, freelancers, lone wolves, and copycats spread all over the world. Its fluid nature meant that it was less defeated in the conventional military sense than merely dispersed, like mercury dropped on the floor, to reassemble spontaneously in new and sometimes even more lethal forms. In that regard, the successful destruction of Al Qaeda as a combat effective organization was a mirage…