9/11 Argumentative Essay

Gork & Kilcullen become concerned about radical ideologies after 9/11 attack and look for ways how to counter similar attacks. During the article, ?Who?s winning the Battle for Narrative? Al-Qaida versus the United States and Its Allies?, the authors are concerned the West is losing the battle due to poor communication with the Muslim world. They recognize the communication problem and suggest from a single counter-narrative to communicate to specific audiences (Gork & Kilcullen, 2009, pg. 229).The article traces methodological and empirical shortcomings that are at the root of the problem and builds on these findings to develop a model to strategize about counter-narratives.

In the United States, the 'battle of ideas' opened on several fronts after 9/11. According to Pintak?s article ?Dangerous Delusions: Advertising Nonsense about Advertising America?, where Beers created the "Shared Values Initiative" campaign for the U.S. State Department and television commercials depicted Muslims Americans living happily in the United States (Pintak, 2004). This advertising shows that our communication strategy has failed because we could not answer the questions of who is the audience that accept the values and who support jihadist violence.

The authors have mentioned a few times about Sun Tzu?s strategy

We have shown that some of these parts are accepted by most Muslims (War on terror as a War on Islam) and some parts are rejected by most Muslims (attacking civilians). Yet even the accepted part, that there is supposedly a war on Islam going on, represents only a single mechanism of radicalization ? group grievance. A completely effective attack on this grievance would yet leave eleven other mechanisms of radicalization in play. We conclude tentatively that even eliminating the perception of a War on Islam may not have, at least in the short term, a large effect on the rate of