Total number of comments: 5 (since 2016-05-02 19:57:49)
Glenn E. Robinson
is on the faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has authored or co-authored four books on Middle East politics, and 120 journal articles, book chapters, government reports and conference papers. His most recent book is Global Jihad: A Brief History.
Juan -- your list is accurate but not sufficient. Perhaps the biggest issue is the possibility of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian act of illegal breaking into (digitally) the DNC headquarters and the Clinton campaign chair's office to steal and publicly disseminate private campaign material in order to alter the outcome of the 2016 election toward Trump. This is essentially what happened in Watergate, although today's tools of break-in are digital, not picking office door locks. And this involves a foreign power as well as a US campaign (maybe), so it would actually be a lot worse than Watergate if shown to be true. Given the razor sharp closeness of the election result, it seems pretty clear that several individual items alone swung the election to Trump. The Russian cyber campaign is one of them -- did the Trumpistas assist? That is the $64,000 question. If the answer is yes, then we have an illegitimate president.
"but they likely failed to have any significant effect on the outcome. "
I must take issue with this statement, Juan. Remember, Trump won by 80k votes in three swing states, so if 40k people there voted the other way, Clinton is the PEOTUS. That is the drop in the electoral bucket. What was the combined impact of: the embarrassing leak of the DNC chair, DWS, on the eve of the Dem. convention; the steady drip of slightly embarrassing (but never horrible) internal emails from the Clinton campaign the whole fall -- that Trump repeatedly referred to on the campaign trail; and the leak that Clinton was fed CNN questions before a primary debate. All of these things fed the Trump narrative of corruption, a fixed system, decay and dishonesty. Did they change 40k votes in three states? I suspect it changed vastly more than that, as well as helped deliver more Trump voters to the polls.
In short, the Russian action would not have made a difference in a 55-45 election. But in an election where Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million, and squeaked by in several swing states by the narrowest of margins, I suspect that Putin got Trump elected. That would certainly constitute a "significant effect."
In an election this close, one can point to any number of things that likely swung the election to Trump, including the actions of the FBI Director and Clinton's own mistakes. But one of those things almost certainly was Russia's hacking.
I'm not sure what a "strictly atheist critique" actually is. But my point with regard to al-Jolani's announcement is that he is trying to have it both ways (which I think you agree with): by using "fatah" he means conquest but also trying to tie in to a word that has a historically positive connotation in a way that the English word "conquest" does not.
Juan is right (as usual) on the Keystone Kops nature of this announcement, but yes, the word also has the sense in Arabic of "opening" and has something of a historically positive connotation. It is used, for example, most commonly in the "opening/conquest" of al-Andalus (Spain) in the 7th century CE.
Juan -- you are right on target, as always. But let me play devil's advocate on one issue when it comes to a decapitation strategy (which can never play out in a policy vacuum). I would suggest that for groups that have characteristics that are more cult-like, decapitation has greater chances of success, whereby groups that are more institutionalized will tend to rather easily survive decapitation. Thus, what is often called "al-Qa'ida Central" really was essentially ended when UBL was assassinated. In contrast, Hamas has easily survived the decapitation of many of its leaders by Israel. AQC had many attributes of a cult, while Hamas (etc.) does not.
But I agree with you that the "modular" nature of the ideologies at play mean that other ticked off young men with a gripe can latch on to a group's reputation and called themselves representatives of that group. In the absence of addressing those legitimate grievances, the ideologies and franchises of AQ/ISIS/etc. will multiply and decapitation will do little good.
It reminds me of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during the second Intifada. Israel successfully killed the most important commanders that linked local fighters with national Fatah leadership, so any three guys with guns in a village would call themselves AAMB, even without any sort of actual C2 ties with leadership. Don't address root causes and the violence will metastasize over time.