harvey, I am aware of the historical origins of the muslim brotherhood and how this ideology has influenced and continues to influence portions of the Arab world and particularly osama and AQ. However I personally tend to view these as interesting and essential background knowledge, but in some ways irrelevent to the greater picture of the current conflict and the possible future evolution of this conflict.
I views that the conflict is driven by different motivations and goals at different levels of the power structure behind it. At the lower levels the ideology may be the overriding driver. For the bigger players and enablers that finance, encourage and support and provide a basic shelter and cover, and arrange recruitment and training opportunities for the lower mass of various groups, of which AQ is a significant one right now, the ideology will be an important aspect, and particularly important to claim a strong belief in, but not as important as the increase of power and wealth that can be attained by the strategic promotion and exploitation of such an ideology. Primarily I see this conflict as being about: - power and the expansion of power and the exploitation of some aspects of a major religion to gain this power, - a recognition of the under-utilized capacity and potential of the mass of the arab world as an effective agent of social,cultural and economic influence, - a recognition of the ease of exploitation of a number of fundamental weaknesses of the western democratic system, - a fear that the strategic and bargaining position and wealth creating potential of the middle east and much of the arab world, based currently on oil reserves and production capacity, might be reduced significantly over the next few decades. The last item gives a schedule for action that we see now. Of course there are many more, but this is a simple and quick post. I might develop further on this in a later post.
Further to your post: You are correct about the "effect a globalized communications world" and a profound effect may "increasingly have on the opinions of the masses of Arab Muslims in particular". But I don't see it as simply a force for change and as you imply positive change, but rather a force for joint change (both positive and negative), control and manipulation to achieve a desired outcome, both in your own culture but more importantly in other cultures. Again the situation is quite complex and a more complete explanation beyond the scope of a few simple posts.
However I will put down a few thoughts: We only need to look at the recent explosion of Arab news services presenting world events and other content targeted not only at an Arab audience, but also at a non-Arab audience, but with a general aim to present the Arab point of view to see that the power brokers in the Arab world have realized that control of the media and the formulation of the narrative of their message is strategic to their aims.
These organizations, very new to the Arab world, would not be possible or even allowed if the power-structure of the middle east did not see the value and even the necessity of it. My guess is that they realize that a great part of all modern warfare both cultural, economic and military, is now conducted in and by the media, and modern wars, particularly military, can be won or lost as much by the strength of an army and the military tactics employed, as by being able to manipulate public opinion to either support or not support the war effort. If a large enough portion of the media has decided to only print and broadcast negative messages about a current war, as in the case of the Iraq and the US media, public opinion eventually is influenced to call for an end of the war even if you may be winning and even be on the cusp of a victory of some sorts. That is true for any almost any message whether about a war, or juts about whether meat is good for you to eat.
Of course we would normally expect that western democracies with supposed "free-press" might be more easily influenced by a broad based media barrage of negative news that dictatorships where a controlled media largely broadcasts a message in line with government policy.
Since I am tired of typing, that is all for now. I might continue later.
