Progress in the war of ideas

U.S., Allies See Progress in Selling Al-Qaeda As an Enemy to the Muslim World

From an article in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus:

The top White House terrorism expert thinks some gains are being made in the worldwide public relations battle against al-Qaeda, as the administration and its overseas allies press efforts to show that Osama bin Ladens network is killing Muslim civilians rather than defending its interests.

“More and more Muslim and Arab populations — [including] clerics and scholars — are questioning the value of al-Qaedas program,” Juan Carlos Zarate, deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, said Wednesday at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The efforts he described are in line with plans that Michael E. Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, discussed in February before the same organization. Leiter, who is responsible for strategic communications planning in the fight against terrorism, said the goal is “to prevent the next generation of terrorists from emerging.”

One approach, he said, is “to show that it is al-Qaeda, not the West, that is truly at war with Islam.”

Last week, Zarate echoed that theme. He said al-Qaeda “should be revealed as themselves being at war with Muslims, especially those who do not believe as they do or subscribe to the al-Qaeda agenda.”

This small step is positive in my view basically because heretofore the information war with the proponents of Salafist Jihadism has been so lamentably bad. For the most part by blundering around what we’ve done is help the Jihadists sell their narrative obscuring the fact that AQ actually has no positive agenda for the advancement of the well-being of the Muslims whose interests they purport to represent. This is foolish. It defies the logic of Napoleon’s famed injunction ‘never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake.’