winning the war on terror: a different approach?
 

i've been doing some stuff on the media in sociology which to be honest is the only thign in it we've done that I've actually enjoyed but it got me thinking.

It would be hard but I reckon one of the best ways to go about this is to totally go overboard on the propganda aiming it at Muslims instead of Westeners.

Ie instead of us getting stuff about iraq and what not, have Muslim states fed stuff about the brutality of it all, them killign their own, mothers left childless because of suicide bombers etc...

would take a while but i reckon it'd sort the problem from within long before dropping bombs will. try to turn people on the fringes of radical militant Islam away from it.

comments?

It's basic occupation strategy and therefore already happening with Al Iraqiyah, the US sponsored Iraqi channel. There is also a US sponsored newspaper and a radio.

The Nazis did it when occupying France, the French when occupying Algeria, the British in India, etc...

Doesn't really "fool" anyone as everybody knows the "ennemy" is behind it, it's still seen as propaganda.

Ponrauil

Nah you're missing the point I'm getting at here.

I don't mean propaganda saying hey we're the good guys God bless America et al and we're here to save you. I'm talking about aiming in them stopping supporting terrorists and radical Islam as opposed to supporting the west. There's a fine line of difference.

Education, Education, Education.

Welcome to what we have been thinking 4 a long time.

That is why the war has made it far worse.

That's a war u cant win. Especially with right-wing propaganda. Education is the key I think, but it's not an easy task to "convert" anyone from islamic countries to support your agenda.

Suicide bombers etc. are already brainwashed to believe that doing so they will get to go to a better place, and there's no power in western world to make them to believe otherwise.

there's not a whole lot of difference between education and propaganda if any.

and it's hard to educate a radical Muslim country to realise that blowing up bus loads of infidels won't get you 70 virgins without actually going in and doing so forcifully. I'd be interested if anyone had another way to go about it?

I would be interested to see who invented that 70 virgins thing, as it isn't in the Koran. I have a feeling that is as much about propoganda that we have fallen for.

Education is completely different form propoganda & until we understand that, we haven't a chance of winning the 'war'. Certainly dropping bombs only fuels their propoganda.

what we learn in school si what the government want sus to learn. just the same as everywhere else in the world.

Back in apartheid south africa, the blacks would never hear anything about historical black figures and events that they could look up to or feel proud of. Just the same as us learning about World War 2 isn't as clean cut as Hitler was a bad dude and his guys were eating babies and all that so we went in and done the job mercifully without being savages like the bad guys.

It's as simple as that. Education is just a different form of media when you really think about it. Just sit through a sociology lecture on globalisation or any similar topic and tell me there's not a great deal of spin going on.

The only real way i can see of educating these people away from supporting the terrorists is havign CIA-like covert networks running and even at that, how exactly does a spy or sympathiser sort out the education system or mass messages that are getting out to a country?

I didn't mean propaganda as "we're the good guys God bless America et al and we're here to save you" either.

Call it education or propaganda, it can shift from one to the other, but it's already happening, it will become easier, more obvious and efficient (as long as it's subtle) as time goes by and the place is settled down.

Ponrauil

When you think about it is that any more ethical than the crusades?

What you can be sure of it when people twist religion to justify their cause you’ve got a hard job trying to control them on any level as you are going against several thousand years of inbred indoctrination, coupled with the good power trip of holding an automatic weapon in your hands.

I couldn’t even think about how you’d manage to successfully implement it in countries with a large amount of religious extremism… I can see it working in China though… many of their students already grasp what is going on with their regime and just need a little push in the right (?) direction and enough support.