The most significant shift signaled by US President Barack Obama is toward a new understanding of the roots of Islamic extremist violence.
This is still a work in progress, as highlighted by the inconsistencies in Sunday night’s Oval Office speech. However, it could have powerful and important ramifications.
Most of the strategy to combat the Islamic State (IS) group outlined on Sunday night had been heard before in various formulations.
There was a further elaboration of the “slowly, but surely” campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy the group. That degrading is significantly more likely than destroying is no doubt privately recognized by Obama and his advisers, but cannot be publicly admitted in the face of vituperative Republican criticism of the administration’s alleged timidity in the face of the threat IS poses.
The statement that: “Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary,” will surprise many around the world. This is not a declaration of a “war on terrorism,” but appears close to one.
In fact, there might be less here than meets the eye. The phrase appears to be a catch-all designed to stiffen the image of the US commander in chief without actually committing Obama to doing much he is not already doing.
Obama rules out a major deployment of US ground troops, on the basis that: IS want one; the US domestic population does not; and it would not work. Instead, the strategy of building up local forces, airstrikes and using small numbers of special forces will continue, alongside a diplomatic push and better intelligence sharing.
Then there are also calls to greater international solidarity. Airstrikes make for good TV, and reassure scared domestic populations. However, if the composition of the US-led coalition launching the strikes underlines a certain degree of international cooperation, particularly among certain close allies, the gaping gaps in its ranks also demonstrates the lack of consensus too.
There is a signal that the White House sees small-scale local ceasefires as the most practicable way to mitigate the intensity of the civil war in Syria, not a global diplomatic solution. This might raise some eyebrows internationally. However, measures on gun control — particularly the purchase of assault rifles — will not.
Most interesting are Obama’s words on radicalization, which reveal an analysis in transition.
The familiar element is the talk of “the growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers.”
Yet there is no evidence that either the Tsarnaev brothers, who set off homemade devices at the sporting event in 2013, or the couple who attacked in California were in any contact with any “terrorists” at all.
Instead, US commentators and officials have in recent days repeatedly spoken about “self-radicalization.”
This at least moves away from the image of “brainwashing” with its implication that radicalization is a passive process akin to dental surgery undergone by a barely conscious or willing individual. It is also a move away from the idea that the removal of the predatory indoctrinators will end the problem of extremism.
The idea that anyone becomes “self-radicalized” in isolation, even with the enhanced access to propaganda offered by the Internet, is controversial. Most eventual killers are exposed to a toxic mix of historical myth, religious reinterpretation and twisted geopolitics through real people as well as Web sites.
However the principles structuring this poisonous worldview in either case are well-known: A belief that the West and the Islamic world are at war; that coexistence is virtually impossible; that most Muslims have abandoned the true path to become lax, cowardly and decadent; that homosexuality should be extirpated; that Jews are evil and run much of the world (including the US); that heretics and apostates within Islam should be fiercely hunted; and that a final battle is approaching.
If not all those who hold these views are violent, there can be few Islamic extremists that kill or maim who do not share some or all of them.
On Sunday, Obama indicated his understanding of some of these ideas, arguing that “we cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam,” and stating that IS “does not speak for Islam.”
However, he then signaled a shift. He did not say that IS has nothing to do with Islam. Not only did he say “denying that an extremist ideology has spread within some Muslim communities” would be a mistake, but added that “it’s a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.”
Obama then called on “Muslim leaders [in the US] and around the globe ... to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups like [IS] and al-Qaeda promote, to speak out against not just acts of violence, but also those interpretations of Islam that are incompatible with the values of religious tolerance, mutual respect and human dignity.”
This final line is significant, or at least could be if pushed to its logical conclusion. Obama appears to be describing a much broader culture of intolerance and conservatism which feeds extremism, in the US and elsewhere, and which has spread through the Muslim world over the past several decades. This culture, he says, is a genuine threat to the lives of US citizens.
Where or what are its well-springs? Obama does not say, and any effort to isolate a single cause would be fruitless. However, he cannot be unaware that the two nations which figure most significantly in the backgrounds of the two shooters in San Bernardino are two long-standing allies: Pakistan and, above all, Saudi Arabia.
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