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HungryHobo comments on [Link] A rational response to the Paris attacks and ISIS - Less Wrong Discussion

-1 Post author: Gleb_Tsipursky 23 November 2015 01:47AM

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Comment author: brazil84 27 November 2015 08:41:57PM 0 points [-]

"Start a war between Islam and the rest of the world. Since our religion basically teaches that we are inevitably going to conquer the world by force, we will be guaranteed victory in such a war."

I agree with this to a large extent.

But it would be an extremely bad thing if it happened at all, regardless of whether they win. So playing into their hands is probably not a good idea anyway, even though they are wrong.

Assuming that's true, it's still not like the situation where your adversary is an evil genius so that doing what he wants you to do is likely to be helping him succeed in his evil goals. In this situation, it's not worth it to put much stock in whether the West is playing into Isis' hands.

But it would be an extremely bad thing if it happened at all, regardless of whether they win.

It depends how far they get in their war, it seems to me.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 November 2015 09:14:58PM 0 points [-]

ISIS (or any enemy, for that matter) doesn't need to be led by evil geniuses in order to know how to set a trap for the West to fall into. With 9/11, Al Qaeda set a perfect trap for the U.S. to be blinded by pain and rage (having the simpleminded W. in office certainly helped) and, as a result, the U.S. engaged in what from the White House looked like a righteous campaign for the liberation of oppressed masses, but to those masses looked like a meddlesome intrusion into their already complicated lives. In this case (in every case, actually), I think it's absolutely essential to consider what our enemies are counting on us to do.

Comment author: brazil84 27 November 2015 09:23:59PM *  0 points [-]

ISIS (or any enemy, for that matter) doesn't need to be led by evil geniuses in order to know how to set a trap for the West to fall into

No, but it would (edit: arguably) help quite a lot.

With 9/11, Al Qaeda set a perfect trap for the U.S. to be blinded by pain and rage (having the simpleminded W. in office certainly helped) and, as a result, the U.S. engaged in what from the White House looked like a righteous campaign for the liberation of oppressed masses, but to those masses looked like a meddlesome intrusion into their already complicated lives. In this case (in every case, actually),

What is the evidence that Al Qaeda's intention with the 9/11 attacks was to goad the United States into invading Afghanistan and later Iraq?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 November 2015 09:43:11PM *  0 points [-]

Various journalists have analyzed the writings of Al Qaeda strategist Muhammad Makkawi a.k.a. Saif al-Adel, concluding that:

"His goal, for at least five years, had been to goad America into invading Afghanistan..."

"September 11 constituted the first step: dragging the United States into the Arab region in preparation for an extended war of attrition."

Comment author: brazil84 27 November 2015 10:07:54PM 0 points [-]

Various journalists have analyzed the writings of Al Qaeda strategist Muhammad Makkawi a.k.a. Saif al-Adel

What exactly did he write and when?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 November 2015 10:50:28PM 0 points [-]

The text in question is allegedly called "Al Qaeda's Strategy until Year 2020." My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don't read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn't show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi's writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn't give a complete view of it.

Comment author: brazil84 27 November 2015 11:07:38PM 0 points [-]

The text in question is allegedly called "Al Qaeda's Strategy until Year 2020." My search met a dead end at the website of the newspaper Al Quds al Arabi. I don't read Arabic, and that newspaper doesn't show digital archives for 2005, which was the date when Makkawi's writings were first made available to the general public. Journalist Abdel Bari Atwan wrote a book on the subject, but Google Books doesn't give a complete view of it.

Ok, well your second source states the following:

The immediate question on the above is how much of these strategic theses of al-Qaeda actually predate events, or whether they constitute a ‘moving target' that takes as much from the unfolding of events as it purports to steer them.

It would be interesting if an individual who was known to be a senior Al Qaeda official were known to have written BEFORE the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq that they had a plan to goad the US into such invasions. But without this kind of evidence, your claim does not stand up to scrutiny.

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