Countering jihadis with US teach-ins

1/14/2015
By Benny Avni

Photo: AP

Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight: As Islamists lure new followers to their side by killing, the Obama administration plans to counter them with…teach-ins, more or less.

Days after last week’s atrocities in Paris, the White House announced a February summit to develop strategies to counter the allure of ISIS and the variousal Qaeda branches.

Actually, the White House never mentioned these jihadis. Instead, it defined the summit as an effort to “prevent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting and inspiring individuals and groups in the United States and abroad from committing acts of violence.”

President Obama will meet officials from Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and other hubs in the Feb. 18 gathering; other invitees include guests from around the world in the fields of law enforcement, education and culture.

The event may counter critics of Obama’s no-show at the Sunday global display of solidarity in Paris: See? We’re not just marching against extremism, we’re doing something.

But doing what, exactly?

As the White House said, “Through presentations, panel discussions and small group interactions, participants will build on local, state and federal government; community; and international efforts to better understand, identify and prevent the cycle of radicalization to violence at home in the United States and abroad.”

Yeah. That’ll do it.

Presumably, we’ll develop a Web site where the “radicalized” can, at last, be exposed to the real Koran, rather than to the skewered version of it that some wayward preacher had foisted upon them.

Because surely the Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly just lost their way in the texts. They didn’t understand: The Koran spreads peace and understanding, not the sword (or the Klachnikov).

Ah, if only we can create the right hashtag, app or Web page to counter that erroneous message (and do it before some hacker takes over our Web site), the next wave of violent “extremism” will be contained.

Boko Haram radicals in Nigeria will surely stop kidnapping nonbelievers and raping tween girls if they hear the right panel discussion.

With the proper messaging, we even can stop those guys from strapping explosives on a few of their “surplus” girl captives, dropping them in busy public spaces and then pushing the detonator.

That’s how Boko Haram killed 2,000 Nigerians last week. And that’s how jihadists spread their word.

How difficult would it be to instill a pluralistic message in the hearts of future Boko Haram recruits? Well, the Islamist group’s name translates to “Western education is forbidden.”

Anyone suspected of glancing at a White House-produced educational text, let alone trying to spread it, will soon be headless.

What of that young man in France, Britain or America thinking of heading to a training camp in Yemen, Syria, Iraq or Somalia and then returning to wreak havoc at home? How impressed will he or she be with a US-made YouTube video, the brainchild of some White House media wiz?

Yes, countering the evil message of Muslim extremists can help — but only if it’s a part of a larger anti-jihadi strategy. The war of words won’t be won unless the violence that’s at the core of jihadi ideology meets its match.

That kid dreaming of martyrdom in his parents’ basement in St. Paul will likely be more impressed by the “heroics” of the Paris killers and with ISIS military victories over Western-trained Iraqi troops than by anything a White House brainstorm produces.

To stop jihadi recruitment, we can’t just beg for that kid’s attention. We need to show him that our ideals aren’t just nobler than the jihadists, but that our way of life is also a winning strategy.

But to do that, we must first win. Not only on the battleground of ideas, but also on the real battlefield. That’s where the White House has been weakest, and that should be the focus of any successful global summit to promote the fight against, ahem, jihadi terrorists.

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