Who is Hurting Whom?

The war against Al Qaeda and other terrorists can only be won if we reduce their recruitment base.  That is, the weapons are easily available--guns, bombs, whatever.  The scarce resource--people willing to fight and die for a cause.  There are more stories of Westerners joining the fight on the side of AQ.  Why?  Because they see pictures of Muslims being killed.

But as this story suggests, the past several years, far more Muslims have been killed by Muslims.  That is yet another reason why the Iraq war has been so problematic--that it obscured this basic reality.  AQ is not popular in the Islamic world.  The Sunni extremists in Iraq caused the rest of the Sunnis to rise up against them--the Awakening.  Indiscriminate violence is counter-productive.  So, what we need to do is do a better job of publicizing this reality to those most likely to be seduced by AQ recruiters. 

This really is a war of hearts and minds.  And if we can get the minds to act--to see, think and process, then the hearts will calm down, and people will do less stupid/counter-productive stuff.  Of course, that would be easy to say, hard to do at anytime and especially given the polarization of American politics.