Negotiate?

This is coolbert:

An interview on National Public Radio [NPR] about a year ago demonstrated how difficult the war on the current group of Islamic jihadists will be.

The man being interviewed was an Englishman who had done a lot of negotiating with the IRA regarding the situation in Northern Ireland.

Extensive negotiations between the IRA and the British authorities had gone on in for many years, unbeknownst to the public. And if not negotiations, dialog at any rate.

This negotiator made some interesting points.

With most of these guerilla movements, terrorist groups, etc., throughout the world, a finite goal is the target of the insurrectionists. What is that goal differs from locale to locale. In the case of Northern Ireland the goal for the IRA was reunification with the Irish Republic.

And the men doing the negotiating were for the most part not wild-eyed fanatics that were out of control and totally unreasonable. These were and are reasonable men who have resorted to violent means to gain their ends, but still retain a large degree of sanity and an appreciation that negotiations and compromise may be a solution for them. Even if they do not espouse this approach and do not make such ideas public.

Behind the scenes the negotiations and dialog for Northern Ireland between the IRA and the British government went on for decades. And accommodation and compromise in the end were agreed upon.

This negotiator being interviewed was very pessimistic with regard to any of this being true for the jihadists.

To begin with, the jihadists do not seem to have finite goals in mind.

They may from time to time talk about U.S. troops out of the "holy soil" of Saudi Arabia [almost U.S. troops have already departed Saudi Arabia, none were not even close to the "holy" cities of Medina or Mecca, and while in Saudi, the U.S. troops did behave in the most obsequious manner possible].

Providing justice for the Palestinians is also a goal stated by the jihadists from time to time, but only in a vague manner. This is not a realistic goal anyhow. Israel will not dismantle itself.

And secondly, the jihadists do not have anyone that is willing, able, or even interested in negotiating. Their mentality seems to have totally precluded the possibility of any negotiating or even dialog.

It seems to be not even clear in the mind of the jihadists exactly what it is they seek anyhow.

An all-encompassing Islamic state unifying the nation of Islam [umma].

Or the U.S. converting en masse to Islam [fat chance of that].

So we see no reasonable or rational goals in mind for the jihadists, and in addition, no one willing or able or even interested in negotiating.

Not a pretty situation.

coolbert.