I must disagree with the good Dr. Shackleford on his assessment of the importance of the cyber-jihad.

While I have no issue with American hackers being paid to take down jihadist sites and forums, I don't believe that it's an imperative to winning this war. I did a post back during the Cartoon Jihad wherein I pooh-poohed the reaction of people to the MSM's failure to print them, because all of us had already seen them. By us I meant blogs, and those who frequent them. A nice commenter reminded me of the total number of people who don't get news from blogs. Healthy slap in the face, that was.

Yes, the internet is a tool used to recruit terrorists, but it's just a tool. Recruitment of Islamic terrorists was going along just fine before the internet became a household tool. The Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed when the internet was in its infancy.

Rusty wrote:

If we cannot win the cyber war, we cannot win our war against Muslim ideologues bent on creating the Islamic utopia by any means necessary.

Mohammed had no internet, and now 1.2 billion people on this Earth are forbidden to gaze upon his visage. Saladin had no internet, and it didn't stop him from kicking Crusader ass. The mujahadeen in Afghanistan had no internet, and they stomped the Soviets.

Hacking jihadi websites doesn't stop madrassas being built in Eastern Europe. Hacking jihadi websites doesn't stop imams preaching on Fridays. Hacking jihadi websites doesn't do any more good than jihadis hacking our websites. They, like us, will just put them up somewhere else.

Hacking sites may even be counter-productive. We, the great unwashed, have no true idea of what our government's capabilities are. Most of that stuff is classified. If hackers start disabling jihad sites, who knows what information they would be depriving us of.

So I disagree with my blogfather. The best way to deal with jihadis is not to hack their websites, it's far more simple than that.

Kill them all, let Allah sort 'em out. It's hard to access Ummah.com when you're dead.

And before you spit in my face in the comments, "Kill them all" does not refer to all Muslims, just the jihadis. And yes, Improbulus Maximus, "Kill them all" does refer to all Muslims, not just jihadis. And no, Background Noise, I really don't mean all Muslims, just jihadis. There, have I covered my ass?

Rusty responds--the bitch slap! Ahhh, finally a debate! A debate, a debate, my kingdom for a debate!

Okay, how to respond? Since most of my posts are tongue in cheek, focus on lipstick lesbians, or are devoted to calling people names, it isn't easy slamming on the brakes and putting on the academic helmut so quickly. But here goes.

What Vinnie has just done is a classic example of not understanding two very important points and because he misses those points, is arguing against a straw man.

1) Probabalistic relationships are different than cause-effect relationships.

Contrary to what you were taught in both physics and logic, not all cause-effect relationships are direct. No one is arguing here that the internet causes terror, only that the increase in jihadi activity online has led to an increase in a) sympathy for terrorists which gives them room to hide among the civilian populations of the world b) recruitment of terrorists.

Thus, decreasing online terror activity will certainly decrease support for terrorism worldwide and therefore terrorist acts worldwide.

2) An effect often has multiple causes.

Before the internet there was jihad and after the internet there will be jihad, thus jihad must not be caused by internet. True enough, but the internet is a cause today if not the cause.

Wars are fought on many fronts and in many different ways simultaneously. So far, we have not even begun to fight the front that is cyberspace. My argument has never been that if we win this front we will win the war on terror, my argument is that if we wish to win the war on terror we must also win the cyber war.

Winning the cyber war will not mean we will win the war on terror, but it will certainly help. However, if we do not win the cyber war we cannot win the war on terror. It is a necessary condition for winning, but not the only condition.

Why? Wars are won when the enemy believes there is no hope for victory. When fighting an army, a nation, or even an organized resistance group, killing/capturing most of them or taking control of key physical territory usually serves as sufficient grounds for resistance to fall. But because in assymetrical and decentralized warfare beating individual cells is not enough to win, an atmosphere must be created in which enemy combatants have no hope of winning and therefore lay down their arms.

There are several other erroneous points Vinnie makes--such as not understanding the differences between Saladin's or Mohammed's very centralized armies and decentralized cells of terrorists--but I'll skip to the most important one.

The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that taking down terror websites is impossible since terrorists will just find new web space and new sites will pop up. That is, we should not wage war against the cyber jihadis because we cannot win it.

I'm sorry, but that just doesn't fly. How do we know we can't win it if we've never even attempted to fight it? Further, I would argue, effectively fighting the cyber war is actually much simpler than most understand. Since the vast majority of cyber jihadi activity only come from a handful of websites, taking out the most popular ones will drastically reduce the power of terrorists to shape the opinions of Muslims around the world.

We do not need to take down every jihadi website, we only need to take down the most popular ones. This could be accomplished today if we put our mind to it. That's right, today.

And, when the jihadis move to another website, we can follow them. Then take down that website. And the next. And the next.

Last, if you think taking down a few hundred websites is hard, how hard do you think it will be to find and kill a few hundred thousand jihadis? Impossible.

Vinnie:

I still don't see how this is a necessary condition to winning the war. To me, a necessary condition would be, say, removing the mullahs from power in Iran.

Hacking jihad websites is more like H/I fire in my opinion.

So...could you elaborate on that for me?

Posted by: Vinnie at 12:50 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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