Finally, An article on fighting al Quaeda that hits nail on head

Read Gary Anderson's Why Al-Qaeda Is Losing in today's Washington Post. He answers a question I have had for years about Mr. Bush's War on Terror: since this is a war of ideas why do we do it so badly?

Why, then, are we supposedly losing the information war in the Muslim world, and why has there not been more of an outcry among Muslims over this slaughter of innocents? A big part of the reason is that we spend too much time wanting to be liked rather than turning Muslim anger on our enemies.

We preach some values that are viewed as alien and threatening to the traditional order of things. Our popular culture is seen as decadent at best and downright threatening at worst in traditional cultures. Our message isn't selling. We can't change what we are, nor would we want to. No matter how much the government may disapprove, the government's official propaganda will be overwhelmed by the deluge, both positive and negative, from the popular media. We need to accept this fact and move on, rather than waste more millions on strategic communications "charm campaigns."

I think Mr. Anderson has some very good ideas:

What we can do is to expose our Islamic extremist enemies for what they are. The people of Afghanistan and Anbar found this out the hard way and threw the rascals out. But when al-Qaeda kills scores of innocents, we report it as a statistic without context. We may see weeping relatives and bloodstained bodies from a distance, on video or in photographs, but they are depersonalized, and people quickly become desensitized to anonymous images. Ironically, Stalin was right: One death is a tragedy; millions are a statistic. We need to help Muslims understand how these people really treat other Muslims.

Think about it. Al Quaeda (or other terrorists) get their recruits because they offer themselves as better alternative to a perceived enemy. Once they sell that idea, they can sell the idea that terror tactics are justified against the perceived enemy. Attack the original idea of the terrorist as virtuous victim fighting the foul enemy and you hit the terrorist at its weakest point.