Mob Politics
Mary Madigan posts at Dean’s World comparing Islamic radicals to organized crime. While like any analogy, this one isn’t perfect, I do think it is useful.
While I do think that for many of these groups the original motivation was more in ideology than worldly gain, human venality and the very real need for money and power to propel their organizations forward have combined to make any sort of ideological reason far less important than then simply gaining money and power. Whether it is the Taliban, Al-Qaida, the Mullahs of Iran, or Hezbollah and Hamas, at the end of the day it is simply about using violence to extort, both from the local populace they deal with, and western nations.
This perspective helps to explain why seemingly ideologically oppossed groups are willing to ally, especially when what they are allied against is law and order that would put them out of business. Of course in this paradigm, the U.S., being the worlds policeman, is a primary enemy. Equally worrisome for such thugish groups is a democratic Iraq that would show a different way.
Their core ideology still matters of course, while it probably doesn’t have much to do with their current tactics, it is integral both in recruiting new members and in attacking our own sense of justice that motivates us against them. If they are simply thugs, we are certainly justifying in ending their reign of terror through exteme measure, if on the other hand they are justly serving their people in fighting oppression, or even have merely misunderstood Islam, our position is less clear.
They’re like the mob? Good! Then we can use the criminal justice model against them rather than the war-fighting model.