Culture and Theology in the War against the Salafist-Jihadiyyah Islamist Transnational Terrorist Threat - US Strategy Implications

This paper examines the cultural and theological underpinnings of the Salafi-Jihaddiyah transnational Islamic threat we face. However complex and antithetical it may appear to us through our western prism, the Islamists are not nihilistic or apocalyptical. The Salafi-Jihadists have a strategic vision, objectives, and a desired end state. In turn, our strategy and operational framework must be tailored to counter the threat. We must have a corresponding strategy, vision, desired end state, commitment of resources, and resolve to defeat the threat. In many tangible ways, we have achieved a high degree of success already in combating the threat, but may not have accurately measured our success, our effectiveness, or understood that we retain the initiative to define conflict termination on our own terms. The paper offers an analysis of the Jihadists successes and failures, and in turn, our corresponding national security strategy, desired end state and intermediate objectives against the transnational Jihadi-Islamic terrorist threat and finally, offers some thoughts on achieving Islamist threat.