I will not say that the book "Unconquerable Nation Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves" is a MUST READ. I will however say it is well worth your time.
Maybe the incoming leaders of the Democrat congress, especially those holding key committee posts, should be locked in a room with this book and a few others before they start trying to redirect our war policy.
Which is precisely why it will fail.
Declaring war on 'terror' is as silly as if Roosevelt had declared war on 'aviation' after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Terrorism is a tactic.
One doesn't win by declaring war on a tactic. One wins by declaring war on the enemy using that tactic.
Sadly we haven't done that. We know who the terror masters are yet they sleep soundly in their beds in Riyadh, Tehran, Damascus, Mecca, and Qom.
Such a strategy is doomed to failure.
L
Thanks for posting and thanks to Brian Michael Jenkins for his service. He offers concrete examples and potential solutions to convince some. The success of any program must be measureable, but how do you measure philosophy of individuals, in the greatest collective in the history of civilization? What is the motivation to renounce the collective, to abandon the strong horse?
I side with Lurker's comments on this.
The hierarchy in THIS collective will not be converted. Trickle down annihilation should be our first option. A dead Saddam is sending a message, with rule of law legitimacy (ping Ramsey). A dead Nasrallah (for those too queasy to take out his boss) would send another, with rule of the jungle legitimacy.
Measureable results.
save
And there in a nutshell is the conundrum. How can anyone that believes it is their duty to lie to and kill everybody that doesn't believe in said duty, be considered a "passive" supporter or moderate Muslim or any of the other esoteric terms used for deceit. It's high time people of importance and media heads quit with the Religion of Peace BS and start identifying Islam for what it is. A death cult. The Religion of Pieces.....dismembered "infidel" and "martyr" pieces.
The war will not be won in a detention cell, browbeating fanatics. Nor will it be won by offering goodies to fanatics in return for their lies.
The article also in passing speaks in revealingly stupid ways about issues like Palestine and Kashmir, which are unjust causes not noble ones, to which we can never agree, any more than the other more radical ones.
The article is also hopelessly naive about the enemy's political strategy. It does not see how they depend on division in our own countries and resentment of other great powers of our strength in the world. It glibly speaks of avoiding alienating other countries who are in fact politically committed to our defeat. The terrorists depend on the fact they are helping the interests of such countries, against ours.
Yes we need much more intelligent political warfare, no intelligent political warfare does not consist of trying to brainwash prisoners nor trying to coopt thugs by giving them money power jobs and access. Both strengthen the terrorists. The former strengthens them morally, the latter strengthens them practically, and they are fully able and willing to cash both for more recruits, more committed and happier recruits, and more operational ability.
Intelligent political warfare is not directed at the terrorists themselves. It is directed at their human environment. Its purpose is to make them hated, to energize uncommitted third parties to take our side against theirs, to start blood vendettas indeed, not to pretend they don't exist, and to ensure lots of energetic angry people are baying for their blood every day.
It is also directed at the underlying ideological and political relationships not only motivating the terrorists, but exploited by them. It paints the terrorists as ideological competitors, not merely with us, but with local governments and their elites, with existing doctrines and beliefs. It emphasizes that they are heretics and treasonous. None of which is directed at coopting them, all of which is instead directed at coopting their countrymen and their potential recruits. Without trying to make those our agents or get them to agree with us or act as though they were in Mayberry.
Successful political warfare is Ethiopia driving the Islamicists out of Somalia, it is the northern alliance spotting for us straight into Kabul, it is Kurds policing theirs own areas successfully. It is emphatically not torturing detainees to recant, or demanding Iraqi Shia act as though they were in Mayberry and must refrain from hurting their Iraqi enemies.
Intelligent politics is always directed at reducing the potential resources of the enemy and increasing ones own, by targeting neither their direct supporters (direct action, not political action, does that) nor our own. The world does not consist of committed agents of the authorities and committed terrorists. Almost everyone on earth fits neither description.
The terrorists succeed when they play to all the various audiences better than the authorities do. And it is utterly futile to instead try to "win" anything over men in our power in our prisons, already.
The publics to "play" for are -
(1) the domestic opponents of the war who are scared by the terrorists or more afraid of the immorality of the authorities. These are not in the camp of the authorities, and playing for them is a key terrorist goal. It includes the press and at the moment the entire international left.
(2) the foreign powers who want us to lose simply because it would mean a reduction in our power in the world. These cannot be played for by pretending they agree to some pious consensus condemning terrorism in speech. Their interests not their hypocrisy, their deeds not their words, matter. And there must be consequences for choosing the terrorists over us.
(3) the outright pro terrorist governments, which fund them, supply them with arms, given them safe haven, train them, provide intel and operational direction. This includes as leading examples today, Iran and Syria.
(4) the governments of the countries in which the terrorists operate or those they seek to control, but do not yet control. This includes the Iraqi and Afghan governments, the government of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It also includes a score of others important for scale or present conflict - Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia, Sudan, Somalia, etc.
(5) the peoples of the last, which are the most direct front for political warfare, the place where the terrorists expect the most in the way of new recruits and real gains in power.
(6) the people of all the others, as an independent means of leverage with their governments. Yes that means political warfare is directed at e.g. public opinion in say Spain or France, also in Iran. And not as "America is the greatest thing since sliced bread" - that is not political warfare. No, as is, the way to win your next election and defeat your domestic adversary is to take stance X on terrorist related issue Y.
(7) in addition to active management of all of the above, one also requires serious ideological analysis of the root attractions and the strategies of the terrorists themselves. You cannot expect the US to be credible to any of these people. But you can expect the US to use its resources and objectivity to understand the philosophic and political fights involved better than anyone else, and to identify the most promising indigenous intellectual and political forces to sap the strength of the terrorists and outcompete them in local ideological debate. And having identified them, to quietly further their efforts, both intellectually and in resources etc.
And furthermore, for political warfare measures to succeed, it needs to be understood right at the outset that the goal is emphatically not to prevent attacks or reduce violence, nor to "end" the conflict. It is to increase the ranks and political power of those who believe their own interests will be served by the defeat of the terrorists, and to get them to actually succeed in achieving their own ends that conflict with the interests of the terrorists. Which makes powerful enemies besides us athwart the terrorists' path to victory, with strong interests in resisting them.
The goal of the whole thing is to make people all over the world realise they can get rich and powerful stomping on terrorists or they can get poor and powerless being stomped on by us. That this needs to be explained to the sort of cynic pretend realist who wrote this article, is an index of just how stupidly this war is being waged.
Under pressure to send troops to Vietnman, Eisenhower set some preconditions that included Congress declaring war. He knew what he was doing.
I just finished chapter 3, so I still need no catch up with you guys. Amazing read so far.