Haft of the Spear

Simplified the two main arguments are;

“Coughlin was telling it like it is WRT radical Islam and pointing out flaws in Mr. Islam’s outreach strategy,”

and

“Coughlin’s extreme views were undermining the good work being done by Mr. Islam.”

The fact that Coughlin’s work was not for public consumption is a problem for those conducting outside analysis because we have no way of judging for ourselves the quality or nature of his work (having seen one brief, extracted example I was not impressed, but that isn’t necessarily a fair assessment).

Not knowing who else Mr. Islam is working with (besides groups like ISNA, which is not exactly the Boy Scouts) is also a problem, as is the general tendency for bureaucracies to identify “experts” via questionable means (‘You’ve touched a computer? You’re our IT guy.’).

Let’s assume for the time being that both men know their business and a reasonable, well thought out assessment of the situation led Pentagon leadership to decide that the best course of action would be Mr. Islam’s. All well-and-good except for this one nagging question: why does the most powerful war-fighting apparatus in the world – one that is currently engaged in a battle with Islamic extremists – have such a weak bench of expertise? Why after six years are we bearing witness to a cat-fight between two – TWO – differing opinions on these issues?

Contrast our efforts to combat Islamic extremism with the cryptologic battle against Japan and Germany. We have no parallel to this effort today. Pockets of expertise yes, but a concentrated, concerted effort to counter the ideology of our adversaries? As far as anyone I know can tell it does not exist.

Mr. Islam may be the right man for the job, but what happens when he gets hit by a bus? Had Mr. Coughlin triumphed in the internal political struggle, who would have carried on his work if he were felled by illness? We don’t need cloisters of expertise, we need cadres of it, but that seems unlikely. That’s unfortunate in the extreme because last time I checked Madrasas weren’t hurting for students and radical Imams weren’t declining in significant numbers.

Warm up your shoulders because this marathon game of whack-a-mole has just started.