‘UK should talk to al-Qaeda’
Discussion
Sensible or 
?
?BBC said:
The British government should be "reaching out" to al-Qaeda, the former head of MI5 has suggested.
Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said she believed the "war on terror" was not winnable in a military sense.
"It's always better to talk to the people who are attacking you than attacking them, if you can," she said.
However, a former CIA director says the use of unmanned drone aircraft to target al-Qaeda leaders is turning the conflict.
In her first television interview, Baroness Manningham-Buller reflects on the UK's intelligence services' role in tackling home-grown terror plots supported or encouraged by al-Qaeda.
She suggests a safer future with fewer attacks is achievable.
"If we can get to a state where there are fewer attacks, less lethal attacks, fewer young people being drawn into this, less causes - resolution of the Palestinian question, less impetus for this activity, I think we can get to a stage where the threat is thus reduced," she told Peter Taylor for the BBC Two series, The Secret War on Terror.
The baroness said she hoped people were trying to talk to "people on the edges of al-Qaeda".
"There won't be a Waterloo or an El-Alamein," she added.
Critics of the "war on terror" have argued that the torture of terror suspects and the continuing use of Guantanamo Bay for detainees has led to a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda.
Baroness Manningham-Buller says hearts and minds are critical in combating terrorism.
"I think making sure we hold to our values, our ethical standards, our laws, and are not tempted to go down a route which others, in my view have made the profound mistake of going down, means in the longer run we'll have a chance from that moral authority of addressing some of the underlying causes of these problems," she said.
Drone attacks
Meanwhile, a former CIA chief told the programme that the increasing use of pilotless aircraft armed with weapons is helping the US win the fight against terrorism.
Former director of CIA Gen Michael Hayden Former director of CIA Gen Michael Hayden denies drone attacks are unlawful assassinations
Gen Michael Hayden was director of the CIA until 2009 and in a rare interview he described the secretive CIA drone operation as: "The best game in town. The one that's shifted the battlefield in our favour...
"It has been a very strong significant force in making the al-Qaeda senior leadership spend most of their waking moments worrying about their survival, rather than threatening yours or mine. And that is a war-winning effort."
The CIA's programme has been criticised as "state-sponsored assassination" but Gen Hayden denies they are unlawful assassinations.
"In the traditional conduct of war and that's the punchline here, this is a war, you asked the question 'Aren't these assassinations?'. No they're not assassinations," he said.
"This is armed conflict, this is action against opposing armed enemy force, this is an inherent right of the American state to self-defence."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12770153Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said she believed the "war on terror" was not winnable in a military sense.
"It's always better to talk to the people who are attacking you than attacking them, if you can," she said.
However, a former CIA director says the use of unmanned drone aircraft to target al-Qaeda leaders is turning the conflict.
In her first television interview, Baroness Manningham-Buller reflects on the UK's intelligence services' role in tackling home-grown terror plots supported or encouraged by al-Qaeda.
She suggests a safer future with fewer attacks is achievable.
"If we can get to a state where there are fewer attacks, less lethal attacks, fewer young people being drawn into this, less causes - resolution of the Palestinian question, less impetus for this activity, I think we can get to a stage where the threat is thus reduced," she told Peter Taylor for the BBC Two series, The Secret War on Terror.
The baroness said she hoped people were trying to talk to "people on the edges of al-Qaeda".
"There won't be a Waterloo or an El-Alamein," she added.
Critics of the "war on terror" have argued that the torture of terror suspects and the continuing use of Guantanamo Bay for detainees has led to a propaganda victory for al-Qaeda.
Baroness Manningham-Buller says hearts and minds are critical in combating terrorism.
"I think making sure we hold to our values, our ethical standards, our laws, and are not tempted to go down a route which others, in my view have made the profound mistake of going down, means in the longer run we'll have a chance from that moral authority of addressing some of the underlying causes of these problems," she said.
Drone attacks
Meanwhile, a former CIA chief told the programme that the increasing use of pilotless aircraft armed with weapons is helping the US win the fight against terrorism.
Former director of CIA Gen Michael Hayden Former director of CIA Gen Michael Hayden denies drone attacks are unlawful assassinations
Gen Michael Hayden was director of the CIA until 2009 and in a rare interview he described the secretive CIA drone operation as: "The best game in town. The one that's shifted the battlefield in our favour...
"It has been a very strong significant force in making the al-Qaeda senior leadership spend most of their waking moments worrying about their survival, rather than threatening yours or mine. And that is a war-winning effort."
The CIA's programme has been criticised as "state-sponsored assassination" but Gen Hayden denies they are unlawful assassinations.
"In the traditional conduct of war and that's the punchline here, this is a war, you asked the question 'Aren't these assassinations?'. No they're not assassinations," he said.
"This is armed conflict, this is action against opposing armed enemy force, this is an inherent right of the American state to self-defence."
That would be working on the basis that a terrorist organisation was a straight forward military opposition with leadership who can make decisions. Whereas I somewhat suspect that Al-Qaeda have several "leaders" running separate units which in turn have separate cells - so that no-one really knows what everyone else is doing.
That would also mean that exactly who would you talk to and who, if anyone could actually make a decision which the entire organisation would follow. I don't think that is likely.
That would also mean that exactly who would you talk to and who, if anyone could actually make a decision which the entire organisation would follow. I don't think that is likely.
Jasandjules said:
That would be working on the basis that a terrorist organisation was a straight forward military opposition with leadership who can make decisions. Whereas I somewhat suspect that Al-Qaeda have several "leaders" running separate units which in turn have separate cells - so that no-one really knows what everyone else is doing.
That would also mean that exactly who would you talk to and who, if anyone could actually make a decision which the entire organisation would follow. I don't think that is likely.
Which surely makes it an ideal organisation for 'divide and conquer' strategy?That would also mean that exactly who would you talk to and who, if anyone could actually make a decision which the entire organisation would follow. I don't think that is likely.
If we take the IRA as a prallel, in the finish, the only way peace was brokered was by some degree of inclusion and recognition.
There really aren't many choices.
1. Ignore them and hope they go away. (They won't)
2. Negotiate with them and come to an agreement, however distasteful that is (IRA Option)
3. Defeat them militarily so they stop (Hiroshima/Nagasaki Option)
4. Continue to faff around and lose (Vietnam Option)
5. Kill all of them (Genocide)
1. Ignore them and hope they go away. (They won't)
2. Negotiate with them and come to an agreement, however distasteful that is (IRA Option)
3. Defeat them militarily so they stop (Hiroshima/Nagasaki Option)
4. Continue to faff around and lose (Vietnam Option)
5. Kill all of them (Genocide)
Digga said:
If we take the IRA as a prallel, in the finish, the only way peace was brokered was by some degree of inclusion and recognition.
I think the difference between the IRA and AQ is too wide to make a comparison, and just because it worked with the IRA, it doesn't mean that it'll work with everyone. I'm sure that there must have been negotiations with other groups in the past that failed, but we don't get to hear about them.I don't think that we can form any real compromise with AQ. Their objectives are in direct contradiction with ours, so I can't see that we can find any common ground.
Digga said:
If we take the IRA as a prallel, in the finish, the only way peace was brokered was by some degree of inclusion and recognition.
...and by so thoroughly penetrating their setup with moles and double agents that we knew everything they were up to, and they came to realise they were never going to get anywhere. Not to mention losing an awful lot of high-profile support especially from the US following the Inniskillen bombing.But yes, I would agree that a traditional military-type solution, however desirable, is simply not acheivable. We can't kill them all, and every one of them we kill simply recruits another few hot-headed young people to the cause.
To stop them attacking us, we have to make them want to stop attacking us. That won't come without talking.
Gaspode said:
To stop them attacking us, we have to make them want to stop attacking us. That won't come without talking.
But the current joint venture with the arab league will start to win hearts and minds with some, that is if we give over total control at the end to the arabs in libya and then do the same over in yemen then syria. Rule one. The only crime in war is losing.
Rule two. The winner gets to survive and write history, portrayed from their perspective. The losers may not survive to write anything.
Rule three. In case of uncertainty, refer to rule one.
Certainly we need to be talking to Al Qaeda. We are trying to engage in a dialogue with them. Unfortunately they are reluctant to visit places like Guantanamo for a little chat. Hence the need for us to incentivise the offer with promotional gifts like free flights from anywhere in the world.
Those who are so radicalised as to join an organisation like Al Qaeda are not open to discussion. Their core belief system is that god has instructed them to forcibly convert the world. It isn’t a position open to diplomacy, reason or compromise unless you can prove to them that there is no god or paradise awaiting them after death. A Hellfire missile is an effective and convincing argument, allowing Al Qaeda members to belatedly discover for themselves that there is neither god nor an afterlife.
There will never be peace and stability whilst people believe in god. The common factors between religions are a belief that yours is true, coupled with the belief you would be doing other people a favour if you convert them to your belief.
In any large group of religious believers there is a spectrum of belief. At one end are invariably those who believe they have Devine instructions to coercively convert others. They believe the ends justify the means. Such individuals will always be a source of conflict. It is immaterial how peace loving the majority sees their faith. The extremists will always perceive themselves as ‘more faithful’ than the mainstream and seek to radicalise the majority. Unfortunately the majority will always see these individuals as more pious than themselves and permit them to become clerics. As these people tend to become the spiritual leaders they are empowered to establish dogma from their more radical interpretation of the texts. This produces a natural bias towards dogma becoming more extremist over time.
Religious texts have to be ambiguous to survive logical critique. This permits the avoidance or equivocation around points which would otherwise disprove the text. Were it not so then they would have gone the way of other texts which are no longer believed because they could be disproved.
Such ambiguity provides the range of possible interpretations that allow many followers to perceive their god as promoting peace, whilst others interpret the same text as authorising violence and other negative actions.
Clearly it’s undesirable and impractical to all religious people to stop believing upon pain of death. It would be hypocritical to decry faiths for advocating forcible mass conversion whilst advocating it ourselves. The only humane way forward is to create an environment in which people can freely and rationally examine their beliefs. That situation has applied in England for some generations with the result that many people have concluded there is no god.
It is for this reason that faiths seek political control. By establishing a country according to their religious beliefs they can utilise State power to exert social pressure in support of their dogma. To such individuals the existence of a State permitting freedom of thought is anathema. They observe the atrophy of Christianity here and fear it will spread to affect their own position.
Regrettably this will mean we will always be perceived as enemies by dogmatic extremists as long as we have freedom of thought. And as long as there are people believing in god there will always be dogmatic extremists even if we deal with the current crop. The nature of religion will throw up replacements.
Rule two. The winner gets to survive and write history, portrayed from their perspective. The losers may not survive to write anything.
Rule three. In case of uncertainty, refer to rule one.
Certainly we need to be talking to Al Qaeda. We are trying to engage in a dialogue with them. Unfortunately they are reluctant to visit places like Guantanamo for a little chat. Hence the need for us to incentivise the offer with promotional gifts like free flights from anywhere in the world.
Those who are so radicalised as to join an organisation like Al Qaeda are not open to discussion. Their core belief system is that god has instructed them to forcibly convert the world. It isn’t a position open to diplomacy, reason or compromise unless you can prove to them that there is no god or paradise awaiting them after death. A Hellfire missile is an effective and convincing argument, allowing Al Qaeda members to belatedly discover for themselves that there is neither god nor an afterlife.
There will never be peace and stability whilst people believe in god. The common factors between religions are a belief that yours is true, coupled with the belief you would be doing other people a favour if you convert them to your belief.
In any large group of religious believers there is a spectrum of belief. At one end are invariably those who believe they have Devine instructions to coercively convert others. They believe the ends justify the means. Such individuals will always be a source of conflict. It is immaterial how peace loving the majority sees their faith. The extremists will always perceive themselves as ‘more faithful’ than the mainstream and seek to radicalise the majority. Unfortunately the majority will always see these individuals as more pious than themselves and permit them to become clerics. As these people tend to become the spiritual leaders they are empowered to establish dogma from their more radical interpretation of the texts. This produces a natural bias towards dogma becoming more extremist over time.
Religious texts have to be ambiguous to survive logical critique. This permits the avoidance or equivocation around points which would otherwise disprove the text. Were it not so then they would have gone the way of other texts which are no longer believed because they could be disproved.
Such ambiguity provides the range of possible interpretations that allow many followers to perceive their god as promoting peace, whilst others interpret the same text as authorising violence and other negative actions.
Clearly it’s undesirable and impractical to all religious people to stop believing upon pain of death. It would be hypocritical to decry faiths for advocating forcible mass conversion whilst advocating it ourselves. The only humane way forward is to create an environment in which people can freely and rationally examine their beliefs. That situation has applied in England for some generations with the result that many people have concluded there is no god.
It is for this reason that faiths seek political control. By establishing a country according to their religious beliefs they can utilise State power to exert social pressure in support of their dogma. To such individuals the existence of a State permitting freedom of thought is anathema. They observe the atrophy of Christianity here and fear it will spread to affect their own position.
Regrettably this will mean we will always be perceived as enemies by dogmatic extremists as long as we have freedom of thought. And as long as there are people believing in god there will always be dogmatic extremists even if we deal with the current crop. The nature of religion will throw up replacements.
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