Here's a good one for Bob Spencer

From Gertz:

DoD official sees Al Qaida's destruction by its own ideology

The Pentagon’s official in charge of ideological efforts against Islamist extremism said last week that Al Qaida ideology is flawed and will ultimately lead to its defeat as an idea system.

“The ideology contains the seeds of its own destruction,” said Michael Doran, deputy assistant secretary of defense for support to public deployment.

Doran cited four main reasons, including 1) the global extremist ideology’s failure to meet the needs of local people, 2) its advocacy of killing Sunni Muslims and 3) killing innocent civilians of all kind, and last 4) because its call for indiscriminate killing is contrary to “about a thousand years of traditional Islamic teaching.”

Excuse me fella, but isn't 1 a rather enthnocentric western, HIGHLY secular, and liberal view? If they don't build

schools and fix the roads we vote in the other guy? That worked well with HAMAS now, didn't it? I mean the Palestinians are ready to have their own party convention and settle their internal differences politically, right? Maybe FATAH will have a better Rx plan? What's wrong with that pic? On the day HAMAS loses a free election, and lays down their arms to other secular authority, and it's authority which will negotiate away what 'god' gave the muslims in the holy land, let me know, will ya? 2) They don't do that, they advocate killing those who (in the dialectic) by collaborating with the kufrs (and probably 'greeting' them on their holidays, as well) have apostatized themselves. A bit extreme, but the Quran is the Quran, and the Sunnis are Muslims. 3) Take that one one up at Sbarro's .4) Well, I don;t even know where to begin with that factually delusional view. If we gain small victories like the surge in Iraq, part of the reason may be that the conscience of the average muslim is appalled by what Al Qaeda is calling for and doing, but what they ARE calling for is the word of the Quran. What you, Dr. Doran are suggesting, it seems to me, is that the Quran (for victory to be found) can be choicefully ignored. Until when? By how many? BTW, if you can't follow what I am saying about Sbarro's, those Sunnis (backed by the Shia of the Hojatieh bent in Iran) have a fine museum to remind you about it. I suggest you open discussion with Tantawi, Qaradawi, Krekar, Hamza and Bakri, maybe you can do better than Palazzzi and Kabbani did with that entire branch of the religion.

“And all those factors together, in the right circumstances, I think, undo Al Qaida,” said Doran, a former Princeton professor.

The three distinctive characteristics of Al Qaida extremist ideological are “takfirism” or the branding of other Muslims as non-Muslim and thus making them apostates and targets of the extremists; second is a Leninist-style concept that extremists place themselves as a “vanguard” of a movement for radical Islamic change; and last is the secret cellular structure that while not part of the ideology it encourages the creation of it.

The ideology has spread because of the simplicity of the message and the notion of the vanguard has made it attractive.

NO, sorry, but perhaps it has spread because it is religiously authoritative, and we on the side of non head sawing religion, have no such authoritative rejoinders at hand?

“It's a message that can be translated; a global message that can be translated into local circumstances very easily, because what it says to an individual is the Muslim world, the Islamic community, is under threat,” Doran said. “The threat is grave. The very existence of the Islamic community is at stake. And the only way to save it is to take drastic action now.”

“So it divides the world up into black and white,” he told reporters at the Foreign Press Center. “It says who's on the black side, who's on the white side, and it says, ‘Here's how we do things.’ And that message has appeal to a lot of people in a lot of different circumstances.”

No argument there.

You know, I'm sure these people mean well, but we have Bob Gates, SecDef, whose pronouncements, measurable actions and criticism of whom over the years make him very little different from Barack Obama certainly as far as Iran is concerned, and now we have, 6 years on, horrific misreading of the salafist religious program.

Dude, as long as the people are the sovereign in the west, and NOT God, we will have a big problem with that entire branch of Islam which believes it is their individual responsibility to make 'justice' reign, FOR GOD'S SAKE.
Why do politicians believe it is impossible to have this discussion?