"What lies ahead for jihadi terrorism"

[TexasLawyer]

Another interesting article in the Asia Times:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA04Ak01.html

What lies ahead for jihadi terrorism
By B Raman Jan. 4, 2005



<snip> The Central Intelligence Agency's psywar operations were effective against international communism because the US was not the occupying power anywhere in the world during the Cold War, but are so ineffective in Iraq because it is the occupying power. The words of an occupying power do not carry weight, particularly if it is as ruthless as the terrorists in the way it operates. Faced with what they perceive as the marauding actions of the US troops on the one side and those of the insurgents and resistance fighters on the other, it should not be a surprise if the Iraqis accommodate themselves to the latter in order to get rid of the former.

Nearly two years after its occupation of Iraq, the US has not been able to encourage the formation of even a small hard core of patriotic moderates in the Sunni community because of its dependence on a group of political exiles who were practically carried to Iraq in the haversacks of the marines and placed in power. It is not surprising that their words carry even less weight than those of the occupying forces. The over-demonization of Saddam Hussein and his secular Ba'ath Party in the months preceding the invasion and the inability of the Bush administration to admit and correct its policy errors are standing in the way of letting bygones be bygones and calling on Saddam and his Ba'athist colleagues to join the international community in defeating the jihadis.

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