Thread by @sfrantzman

Thread: If this was actually broadly happening then they would talk about them the way they do those "militants," arguing to use counter-insurgency strategy to make them feel enfranchised and moderate them, rather than radicalize them further.

https://twitter.com/gregpmiller/status/1348033617843380226

The fact is that if this were true, then we would hear that the militants have been driven to this by poverty, desperation and feeling humiliated and disenfranchised and the US would send special forces to meet with "tribal elders" and build schools for them...obviously not.

While some may draw parallels between US militias and militias in some place like Iraq, the fact is that no one proposes treating them as militias in Iraq are treated...like "oh let's incorporate them into the security forces like the PMU"...

No one suggests working with the "moderate wing" or isolating the "armed wing" of these groups...because secretly everyone knows this doesn't work...it has been applied abroad with predictable failures. No one would try it at home.

No one seriously thinks that COIN would have been applied inside the US to address radicalization...because quietly people know that it doesn't work...it only "works" on "the other" or "over there"...as some failed experiment.

Domestic terror in the US, for instance, was never treated like foreign terror, even terms like "far-right" are not applied to Al-Qaeda (even though it is far-right)...there was no notion of confronting it the same way.

Can you imagine if the US had confronted the KKK the way it did...say...ISIS. Obviously not. No one suggested either treating the KKK like Hamas or Hezbollah, as a kind of semi-permanent part of the political landscape to be "understood" or secretly met with.

Imagine if people used the same narrative about the KKK the way they talk about Hezbollah. Just read any policy statement from a think tank and try replacing the worlds. Obviously no one would suggest doing that domestically in the US. Because everyone knows it doesn't work.

Abroad all these strategies ended up doing, usually, was making Hezbollah-Hamas-Taliban or the PMU some permanent legitimate force...over time...not sidelining "extremists" and defeating them. But just "koshering" the whole thing as "sort of moderate"

Western countries view their own extremists or "far-right" as a law enforcement issue. When they deal with the Hamas far-right or Taliban far-right...they view it totally differently. And they suggest different policy goals and prescriptions for foreign states, than domestic.

I'd be fascinating to see the day when the western far-right is treated the way western governments advise treating the far-right in say Pakistan, Turkey, Gaza...Syria...Iraq...Libya...Somalia, etc. It won't happen, because it doesn't work.