The reasoning is simple; the more we attack, and the more successful our attacks are, the more polarized the "moderate" Moslems become, the more likely they are to become radicalized, and the radical Islam factions will become more powerful. Eventually all of the moderate regimes will be toppled, and all of the Islamic nations of the world will be radicalized and united in their violent opposition to the West.
I've simplified my arguments, but I trust you get my point. My question to you is; am I correct in my assumptions? Or, am I totally off base? I look forward to your reply.
That is what he wants. It is the logic of guerilla war, which tries to radicalize and polarize populations, forcing those who initially have only limited interest in a particular fight to take sides, and along the precise cleavage or fault line the guerilla strategist intends beforehand.
Bin Laden could not get the votes of a billion people for a policy of murder, nor any sizeable fraction of them. He is trying to divide an "us" from a "them", of his own choosing and following his own policies, in order to rule what he has no mandate, or support, to rule.
His natural enemies in this process are not only us in the U.S. or in the west or in the first world. Other governments and parties and ideas in the Islamic world are also natural enemies of this attempt. Those following his fault-lines, dividing friends from enemies as he has chosen, are not listening to their legitimate leaders on the same question.
The government of, say, Turkey, does not want the citizens of Turkey deciding who is an enemy and who is a friend according to the machinations of a Saudi exile plotting in the mountains of Afghanistan. The government of Turkey would like to decide who are its enemies and who are its friends, on its own. You have to see the second edge of Bin Laden's campaign and of his problems. He is a usurper, to almost all states in the region. He wants their job, and he is not asking.
So your question, will this necessarily happen and will all the moderate governments in Islamic civilization be overthrown by polarized populations, reduces to the question, is it inevitable that Laden will win and his plan will work? And the answer is obviously no, it is in no way fated. And our strategy ought to be directed precisely at preventing that sequence of events.
This is why it is so important to understand that we are in a battle of ideas, and that sweeping categorizations play into Laden's hands. Reaching for ruthlessness does not work. It is the precision with which we divide our enemies from our friends that will be tested. And the attractiveness of the rival ideas moderate governments in the region can offer, compared to Laden's medieval vision.
There are two main ideas in the Islamic world that we ought to be backing and encouraging in this fight. One is the traditional legitimacy of moderate monarchies. We should encourage them to become constitutional monarchies, but understand that such shifts must be done with care. The second political idea is the national republic, which we should encourage to be constitutional and representative, again with care about transitions. I will explain some of the reasons for each.
The traditional monarchies are status quo regimes. They do not seek revolutionary change, and tend to avoid violence in external relations. They are often culturally conservative, and the first pitfall we must avoid is thinking we can castigate them for this with safety. When such regimes force secularizing and westernizing cultural trends on their people, especially when they do so undemocratically, they create legitimate grievances for those who see important values in their traditional culture. This drives some otherwise decent people into the arms of the Islamicist groups, which exploit this legitimate desire and tack on all of their far less legitimate baggage.
This is part of what happened in Iran under the Shah. During Desert Storm, many criticized the Saudis for their hidebound cultural traditions, but believe me they are mild next to what Islamicists enact. And if e.g. the Saudi monarchy dropped a culturally conservative policy, they would undermine the traditional legitimacy they possess as kings. Everyone who cared for traditional culture would flock to the opposition, and the kings would not remain on their thrones for long. The Shah of Iran thought he was safe against this, but badly miscalculated the state of internal sentiment.
One corrective to such problems in the long run is for traditional monarchies to grant constitutions, and then act as limited monarchies, effectively sharing power with a parliament. That provides for a pace of reform and cultural change that the people desire themselves. It also releases the political pressure that can otherwise build up in favor of socialist policies, from the extreme concentrations of wealth, and from government corruption, to which monarchies without parliaments are exposed.
But making the move to a parliamentary system is a ticklish business. It can't be done safely (from the stand point of the rulers, who decide of course) at a time when the immediate result would be either Islamicists taking over the country at the polls, or anti-western socialists doing so, or when civil war rather than stability would be the likely result. So we should encourage and reward such reforms, without insisting on them as a condition for decent relations.
A similar set of issues arise in the case of nationalist republics in which the military dominates politics. In Turkey, for instance, the general government attitude toward anything non-secular is violently hostile, in ways that you or I would recognize as illiberal and repressive. It is one thing to not require women to wear veils, and another to forbid them to do so. In Egypt and Pakistan the issues are somewhat different - each of those is more culturally conservative, and less secular, than the previous.
Some of these regimes use harsh internal measures - party bans, torture, suspending elections or mounting coups against unwelcome governments - that inevitably provide just grievances for some internal opposition, which often moves to radical groups, whether Islamicist or anti-western socialist in outlook. Sometimes these are measures of survival, in need of the excuse of necessity; sometimes they are the high handedness of unnecessary tyranny.
Again we ought to encourage representative government in these places, without insisting on the timing, or forcing regimes to oust themselves. Both types of friendly governments often have problems from ordinary economic mismanagement, or the ordinary vices of government in our day and age. But they have less room for error in these matters, as every failure swells the ranks of the waiting extremists, who are ready to blame all ills on the whole modern world.
In the past the U.S. has had a major problem with these friendly Islamic countries. We take them for granted and ignore them. When they do the slightest thing wrong from our perspective, we chide them, restrict trade, etc. They still come through for us when the chips are down, and we thank them heartily for it - for about five minutes. Nothing does more to feed the internal political success of men like Laden. The governments go far to work with us in critical times, and internally they get thought of as lackies because of it. If success followed, the bargain might be appreciated. When being ignored, economic failure, and contempt follow instead, another slice of the population will draw the conclusion that the west are fundamentally unfriendly whatever policies are followed.
Our goal is to stop Laden's plan from succeeding. His plan depends on people in the Islamic world siding with his ideas against the rival political ideas available in the contemporary Islamic world. The wedge we need to drive in, to derail his plans, is not the one he wants, between us and Islam as a whole. Instead we need to drive the wedge between his vision and those offered by moderate Islamic governments.
Which means driving our wedge between a political order as wide as the whole civilization, acting as a horde of assassins externally and internally condemning as treasonous anything modern, liberal, or western - and the alternative, in which Islam as a religion is practiced and respected, culture changes only as fast as the people choose, where there is peace and civilized life, friendly relations with the outside world, and their countries are respected and heard.
The moderate Islamic governments have every reason to side with us in this endeavor. Because as you saw, there is no place for them in Laden's vision of religious war. And those governments do not rule most of that part of the world by accident. They know quite a bit about what their people demand, about what sort of world they want to live in. They don't always give it to them, and their people are almost always quite divided on the subject. But the governments know opinion in their countries. And respond to it, however they choose to "play" each issue or crisis.
How do we go about driving such a wedge? First and foremost, simply by aiming well. We cannot afford to lump all Islamic countries, all their parties, all the citizens of each of them, into one big ball and swat away at it. That way lies sorrow. The first requirement is discrimination in targets, in who we treat as our enemies. The second requirement is that we remember the whole formula, and do good to friends as well as harm to enemies. When a government bends over backwards to support us against the Islamicists, we must remember it, and treat it not just as a matter of course, but as deserving of acknowledgement, respect, and reward.
Some might think that with men willing to kill themselves it hardly matters what rewards or punishments are held out over them, to dissuade from hostile and encourage to friendly courses of action. But this is a misunderstanding of the nature of extremism. Extremism is a rare condition selected out of a mass of mostly agreeing sentiment. For every man willing to do what the men did on Tuesday, there are a thousand willing to help them but not to go that far themselves. And for each of them, there are another thousand who agree with them theoretically, though they are not radicalized to actually do evil directly. Even the most extreme bunch depends on a mass base of opinion, out of which to select the most strident. Shrink that base, and they will feel it.
It is a war of ideas. The rewards and punishments we can hold out, by diplomacy and by military action, have a political aim. To swell the ranks of those in the Islamic world willing to side with us against a policy of murder, and to shrink the ranks of those on the other side. Including their motives as well as their numbers today.
Understand that Laden is one man. He has not insignificant organizational skills, and access to a lot of money, which would not die with him although it might otherwise be frozen or impounded, if we knew enough about how he hides it. But fundamentally, these two are amplifiers rather than the real source of his evil power. That evil power comes from his ideas. And ideas are not mortal as single men are mortal. That, too, is something he and his followers count on.
We have to engage on the plane of ideas, as well as militarily. Which means understanding the chain of action and reaction he is trying to trigger, and derailing it. By driving the wedge where we choose - between moderate Muslims and Laden - not where he chooses - between Muslims and non-Muslims.
I hope this is interesting.