Violent propaganda

A lot of people get killed in the war on Islamic terrorism. But maybe killing the terrorists isn't the only solution.I want to talk about if maybe violent propaganda against Islamic terrorism, openly issued by the military, may also be very effective.Some analysis would be made of common psychological weakpoints of terrorist beliefstructures, finding the weak spots in it, where it would liably hurt.Such propaganda might include for instance defaming the prophet Muhammad, something that is not allowed within Islam. It might include porno of some holy figures.... well, strange I realize.. I don't know.A psychologist may have a better handle on it, altough they usually only know how to make a person feel better, not worse.The effects of such propaganda should be to break the terrorist down mentally, and to overwork the terrorist organization in dealing with the propaganda.Another beneficial side-effect may be that the larger muslim population would be more cut loose from the terrorists. This is because I think the connection between them requires a high level of purity in the Islamic discourse, which would be shattered by violent propaganda.On the other hand, there may, almost certainly at first, be a backlash to support the terrorists among the general muslim population. And of course, what all this does to diplomacy may be very unpredictable.I don't really know for sure what the effects would be, and how big they would be. Would official propaganda undermine actual hateliterature against muslims, or would it encourage it? It's difficult to say. I wish I had some spare thirdworld country where I could test this policy, before writing this post.Personally I would be willing to take a little collateral damage on my own religion, for the greater good. Of course, I would insist that there is some precision as to where the propaganda is aimed, just like with laserguided bombing, so I never get to actually see it, ideally.In Nigeria large riots broke out with killing and raping, when a journalist wrote in the newspaper that perhaps the prophet would like one of the contestants of the Miss World contest (which were taking place in Nigeria) as his bride.In the Netherlands member of parliament Hirsi Ali was targeted for assassination, and filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated, after they made a short movie about Islamic repression of women, showing the Koran on women's breasts.These examples show that terrorists are hypersensitive to what they conceive as defamotory to their beliefs. Of course the difference would be that unlike these authors, the military would not mean what they say, they would only mean to destroy the terrorists. (which would mean that any military caught being truly hateful towards muslims would be thrown out sooner?)Many terrorists in captivity have been reported to be mentally ill. They may be already fragile, and I think it's very possible that they can be taken out this way, to the mental hospital, rather then to the morgue. Although I should add that trying to deliberately causing a mental breakdown to a person, is ethically as much questionable as murder, seeing that so many people who have a mental breakdown prefer suicide rather then living with mental illness.regards,
Mohammad Nor SyamsuThis message has been edited by Syamsu, 03-12-2005 11:50 AM

Try and look at this the other way around. What if some country decided to do like this on Americans or British, or Christians. Incredibly vile propaganda. IMO the effect of this would be very limited, because generally those are free societies, and Christians live in free societies. Would it be some horrendous crime if some country did put stuff like that on the airwaves, with the intent of demoralizing the people?In Vietnam the Vietcong did try to demoralize with radiobroadcasts. Was that some warcrime? The effects were not that big as far as I know, although I guess some of the soldiers may have gained some unwanted ability of sarcasm, cynicism over it.The difference is that these muslim fundamentalists are hypersensitive to such propaganda in my estimation. If you would want to get under the skin of some American, you would probably need to know very personal information about that American, about his lovelife, familylife and whatnot. There most all of us have some hypersensitivity.But this hypersensitivity of terrorists is out of place, it doesn't seem to be aimed at cherising life or people, or even God, or religion.The debate following the murder on Theo Van Gogh had two opposing sides. One to curtail free speech, to be more politically correct, the other to support Van Gogh's style of free speech which was generally politically incorrect.For instance after the murder someone made a painting on his house that made a quasi-christian appeal to decency in protest of the assassination, but it was spraypainted over by the police. Things like that might cause riots the police said, between muslims and the general population. Generally an atmosphere is created in the Netherlands where you have to take account of the hypersensitivity of muslim terrorists. It is oppressive IMO.I don't think it's right to give into a hypersensitivity like that. To be sure there are religious scholars who require a hypersensitivity in this area of religion, to do their work properly. But to have this hypersensitivity in general society is unhealthy IMO. And if the muslims get to have hypersensitivity protection, then next the christians want it as well, and there would be no end to it.One thing that Western society is much hypersensitive about is the holocaust, which is quite a legitimate sensitivity IMO. But holocaust historians oppose the suppression of holocaust denial by government, as it is done in Germany.So I would say it is only a free society who is able to effectively use such weapons of propaganda. It is more the thing to do of a 60's free society then of an 80's free society. I would hate to think that some are using the terrorist hypersensitivity to turn back the clock on the 60's.I think all of you need to explain a bit about your ethics, why the military can use guns and bombs, but can't use words and pictures as weapons.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

The objective of the terrorists is to make nations which are hypersensitive to observance of Islam. I don't think it's right to say that they would be satisfied with anything else, like a comfortable life and peace for everyone, even if we could provide it.I acknowledged in my first post that there may be a backlash, of course. There seems to be no weighing of pro's and con's in the replies.The nature of events in the war indicate, that this war is all about free speech. Well I wouldn't go as far as saying that we should choose to support the principal of free speech, even if it meant more terrorists. But in a complex uncertain situation it is sometimes better to support the one fundamental thing that you know for sure to be good, to get good results, rather then to base your action on the assessment of the complex situation. That is because the assessment is likely to be wrong, because the situation is too complex.So on the one hand terrorists would be weakened because their beliefs are weakened. On the other they would be strenghtened because people don't like a foul mouth and would fight it. It is uncertain IMO what the bigger effect would be. So I would suggest to test it, and the Netherlands would be an appropiate candidate to do it.Depending on where you live, or what people you have in your neighbourhood, you may get killed depending on what you write here. Certainly the area where I live has many muslim extremists. It's not impossible I would get attacked if I say the wrong thing on this forum, and someone pointed it out to some local cleric here. I'd say it would be very good for some people around here, to get some free speech in their face, and better then doing nothing. But I'd prefer my government to do it for me, then for me to do it would be more risky, as well as it's a dirty job.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I'm just implying that the terrorists mean what they say. So far they want Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Tsjetsnia to turn into strict Islamic nations. So those plans to pay them off with a comfortable life won't work, because their desire is ideological.Well I don't see any counterargument in this thread, except for the idea that it would create more terrorists. I already covered that possibility in post 1, I think you are likely wrong about it.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Gee, are you all too frightened to do it, to pick up the gun and shoot the terrorist?Well sure there will be counteraction, but on the whole, these protesters would be either terrorists, people not much supportive of free speech, careless people not accepting to take a little collateral damage for the greater good, and a more legitmate complaint of a few devotees who have religious study as their main life's fullfillment.I was thinking about it a bit, what this propaganda should look like. A good violent propaganda does not contain overt lies, because that is too easy to discount. What would work IMO is something like:- a wordy cartoon of the prophet having sex with a young child (which is generally believed to have happened AFAIK). On the face of it such a cartoon should look to be innocent, or non-judgemental about what is described in it. Indeed the cartoon should maybe attempt to portray it as a good thing, that the prophet had sex with a young child, because that way it is more insidious. The cartoon should also have a high standard of accuracy and precision, so that it becomes more real, and so that the ethical judgement invited would naturally also be of a high standard (equal to the high standard of precision and accuracy).The effect should be to have the images and words turn up in the readers imagination or dreams, where it will change into something altogether more menacing to their morale, rather then to shock the readers on sight of the cartoon.A high ethical judgement on the prophet having sex with a young child is a lot of mental work, and certainly it is very risky work considering a muslim may not defame the prophet in thinking about it. It is sure to lower morale that way.Anyway, I think the general rules for demoralizing propaganda are to portray something that looks bad, and then to create a lot of doubt about whether it is good or bad, with an extreme attention for accuracy and precision.Well you could do it with anything, it may also just be fantasy.For instance;
one day Bin Laden found a small cut on his skin. He dutifully cleaned it, and all what was left was a small thin red line, and Bin Laden went back to his daily routine again. But then the next day the wound reopened again, so he did the same, and put a plaster on it, and forgot about it. blablablablabla........ Eventually the wound turns into a sort of mouth, which sings Islamic prayer. With lots of minute detail and physical accuracy in the story, and of course lots of worry and doubt from Bin Laden whether this is a blessed special gift or an uh... obviously ghastly deformation. So then more mouths appear over his body, but not in places that you can see on TV images of Bin Laden of course, so that gullible people may actually believe Bin Laden has this condition. In the end Bin Laden's body is covered with mouths singing Islamic prayer, mouths which also give of a scent, and Bin Laden appreciates it as a good thing, and some woman finds it attractive.Of course it may be possible to consider it as a good thing to be covered in mouths. However that takes a lot of work, and if you slip up then on the downside you have one big fearsome image to deal with.Would this work? Does free speech work to surpress evil ideology? Yes it does. Especially it works with those who are against free speech, to send them into an uncontrollable rage that disables their normal function.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Well, it's an ugly thing violent propaganda, but it may be an effective weapon. It is just very mean, in a way, to intentionally hurt this way. That would be a good argument against it, I guess.Again, I think you should simply consider how you would react to such propaganda, if you were the victim, for instance as a Christian, I don't know, and it was anti-christian fundamentalist violent propaganda. It seems all the people here that don't like it are saying, that they would not be angry, if they were collateral damage, but others would be angry. So far noone here would be angry, or would they?I did not come up with it after reading about the leaflets. Just as something someone like me can contribute in the effort against terrorism. I would not spread this kind of violent propaganda as widely as leaflets.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

It's not the same thing. Those things are only to whip up anger amongst their own, not even aimed at demoralizing the West.But I think there's a lot of propaganda of Islamic extremists aimed at the West about the war being for oil, or any other thing, and that it wasn't really about removing a proven dangerous dictator, who became more of a threat because of the 911 terrorist attack. That propaganda has been very effective in demoralizing the West I would say.Actually the countries that opposed the war did so for blatant economic selfinterest, like Russia and France, who both had, oh what a coincedence, strong economic ties with Iraq.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Because the members of the axis of evil were getting overconfident in the wake of the successfull terrorist attack.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I don't remember exactly, but in the period after the terrorist attack many different nations were in the news for breaching WMD rules, like North korea, Iran and Iraq. They were all quite careless about it.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu