PoliticalWarfare.org

Statement or coincidence? Russia fires nuclear missile over Norway as Obama accepts Nobel Peace Prize

2009-12-10T09:05:14-08:00

Was it just an unfortunate coincidence or a calculated political statement? Russia test-fired a next-generation nuclear missile that was visible over Norway on the eve of President Barack Obama's visit to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Bulava-30 submarine-launched ballistic missile is the most modern strategic nuclear missile in the world. It has yet to be perfected, and the system, as well as its platform, the new Borei-class ballistic missile submarine, has proceeded in fits and starts.

But there is no mistaking Russia's continued, Cold War-style belligerence on a range of fronts. And now, with a bizarre white spiral and blue tail illuminating the black Arctic sky as the multiple-warhead missile arced toward space, our leaders have to ask if Moscow is trying to send us a signal that most of the world would rather ignore.

A show of hands, please: Who wants to prosecute the Navy SEALs on Pearl Harbor Day?

2009-12-07T10:24:58-08:00

It's Pearl Harbor Day. How is the Navy marking the anniversary of the sneak attack? By putting three of its most elite sailors on trial on spurious, absurd charges.

An al Qaeda training manual advises terrorists to allege that their captors have tortured them so they can use their detention for political warfare purposes.

Osama bin Laden, no doubt, views overzealous US military prosecutors and other legal quacks as assets in their terrorist arsenal.

Apparently the legal weenies in the military haven't caught on to this terrorist propaganda technique.

Today, Monday, December 7, military prosecutors had two Navy SEALs arraigned before a military court for allegedly committing the heinous crime of punching a notorious terrorist in the belly and giving him a fat lip, and for supposedly misleading military investigators who took the terrorist's claim seriously. A third will be processed later.

Military prosecutors are using the terrorist's allegations to go after the SEALs and throw them in the brig.

The terrorist, Ahmed Hashim Abed, masterminded the notorious 2004 ambush, murder and mutilation of four Blackwater security men in Fallujah, Iraq. The terrorists video-recorded the killings and then hanged the broken bodies of two of the men from a bridge (pictured).

Here are the three SEALs and the allegations the terrorist and prosecutors made against them:

Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe of Perrysburg, Ohio, was arraigned today on charges of assaulting the terrorist. After capturing the terrorist in September, McCabe allegedly punched him in the stomach and in the lip - or so the terrorist alleges. McCabe is also charged with "dereliction of duty." He deferred entering a plea.
Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas of Blue Island, Illinois, was arraigned today for alleged dereliction of duty, lying to investigators, and impeding an investigation. He pled not guilty.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Virginia, is slated to face a separate arraignment before a court martial, on charges of dereliction of duty and lying.

McCabe's trial is January 19, 2010. Huertas is to go on trial on January 11.

People are pushing back at the military's legal insanity. Over the weekend, thousands turned out in frigid New York weather to protest the civilian trial of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, with many voicing support for the three SEALs.

Today, on Pearl Harbor Day, former Navy SEAL Scott Taylor, who is running for Congress, led a protest outside the Naval base at Norfolk, in support of his persecuted brothers. Taylor echoes my own observations from special operations professionals who are disgusted with how political correctness has crippled the military. "I know that within our community we are really upset with the political correctness on the operational level that is infused there," Taylor tells a local TV station. (Click here for Taylor's Facebook page.)

As of this posting, more than 83,824 people have joined the Facebook group, "Protest the Prosecution of 3 Navy SEALs." I joined it early on, and urge my readers to do the same. Be sure to read the great comments. An electronic petition on behalf of the SEALs has generated more than 13,000 signatures in five days.

A similar movement has started in support of US intelligence officers and others whom bureaucrats and twisted prosecutors have harassed and put on trial. That group, StandWithIntelligence.com, was founded by a Marine who himself was unjustly prosecuted for killing two Iraqi insurgents. The Marine was found innocent.

Military prosecutors - anonymously, of course - say that there's a lot more to the punch-the-terrorist-in-the-lip-and-belly story, but I don't believe them. Interestingly, the Navy's news website is silent about the issue this Pearl Harbor Day. Indeed, the name of Matthew McCabe appears nowhere on Navy.mil.

This prosecution is insanity. As the Washington Times recently editorialized, if the SEALs had simply killed Abed - as they probably should have - they never would have been put on trial.

It's time for major pushback from the public against out-of-control military bureaucrats, prosecutors, and trial lawyers. It's time to expose THEM and hold THEM accountable for being such unwittingly reliable assets of the enemy that the enemy writes a training manual on how to exploit them.

What the Taliban's response means for US Afghanistan strategy

2009-12-02T13:24:51-08:00

The Taliban was quick to respond to President Barack Obama's December 1 announcement of a new strategy for Afghanistan. It's worth studying the response to learn about the Taliban's propaganda themes, at least as directed toward the outside world. The response shows that the Taliban pays close attention to American political debate, echoing US politicians and aware of splits in the president's political base.

Points to consider:

The Taliban opened its statement by taunting President Obama with the word that former Vice President Dick Cheney used: "dithering."
The Taliban is trying to show that President Obama is not able to make decisions on his own, but is acting under pressure from those outside his natural support base.
Obama is portrayed as being under political pressure from military generals, "neo-conservatives" (a term that critics use as a euphemism for Jews and for Jewish-oriented national security hawks close to President George W. Bush's administration, and specifically to Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Ironically, the Taliban is correct in saying that Obama's strategy is similar to the Bush policy; Cheney told the Center for Security Policy in October that he personally provided the Obama team with the policy options that President Obama was adopting in Afghanistan.
Echoes of Soviet propaganda: The Taliban shows a Marxist analysis of US strategy, saying that the Obama policy is on behalf of "the wealthiest few . .. of America and for the protection of their interests. Hence is a strategy of colonialism aimed at securing interests of the American capitalists."
The Taliban says that Obama is trying to appeal to two opposing constituencies: the military and political conservatives on one hand, and anti-war liberals on the other.

The point here is to show that the Taliban is becoming increasingly sophisticated about American politics and the president's own political base. The group is no longer as insular and provincial as it had been.

This development follows the Taliban's declaration in August that it was going to lessen its abuse, torture and deliberate killing of civilians (a.k.a. become more respectful of human rights), recognizing that such methods smothered its possibility of winning significant support - as well as tactical allies abroad.

It will be interesting to see if fringe elements of the American "anti-war" movement end up reaching out to the Taliban, just as they have done with other US adversaries such as the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein. Or if the new and improved Taliban reaches out to them. Once this connection occurs, we should expect to see an organized "anti-war" movement in the United States in which American activist leaders coordinate their political action at home with enemy action abroad. Just as we saw in Vietnam and elsewhere in the past.

Click here for the full text of the Taliban's statement as issued in English.

By the way - hats off to the White House for so quickly providing official transcripts of the president's speech (plus fact sheets) in other languages, including in Arabic, Dari, Hindi, Indonesian, Pashto, Persian and Urdu, and in the languages of other Coalition forces including Czech, Estonian, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Spanish, Turkish and so forth.

US military enabled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's propaganda photos. Why?

2009-11-30T12:32:34-08:00

Some in the US military still don't seem to care about how terrorist propaganda can be used to incite attacks on our country and our allies.

They have a policy of allowing the detainees at Guantanamo to pose for pictures in "holy warrior" costumes and pass them on to terrorist websites to inspire new attacks.

A Navy spokesman at Gitmo says he has no problem with that.

I'm sure a lot of us would like to know the names and ranks of the uniformed knuckleheads who helped terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed polish his propaganda image in time for his civilian trial.

Since 2003, the world's only real look at the 9/11 mass murder mastermind was the imagery that US soldiers took when they captured him. No real charismatic presence there - just a chunky, disheveled, filthy-looking slob.

Others have said that the US military planned out the ugly imagery of KSM in order to tear apart his mystique. I know we have plenty of PSYOP and information ops people who could do that if they were allowed to, but I also know that it wasn't planned. It was simply a bureaucratic process of public affairs officers releasing photos of the terrorist after his capture.

And it could have stayed that way. But some bureaucrats in the US military allowed KSM - in the supposedly tough confines of Guantanamo - to grow a long militant beard, have access to a traditional "holy warrior" costume, and pose for photos last July. The pictures were openly out of Guantanamo to the terrorist's family members and posted on pro-al Qaeda websites. The pictures are supposed to appeal to Islamist militants and show KSM as some sort of great sheik and holy warrior.

KSM's new, made-in-Guantanamo image shows him swathed in pure white, spotlessly clean, wearing a red-and-white headdress. In one pose he stares, doe-eyed, directly into the camera, a slight smirk on his face. In another he's kneeling, with prayer beads in his right hand.

The pictures restore the terrorist's propaganda image among his followers and potential followers. Which is why the pro-al Qaeda websites posted them. But it doesn't explain why the US military allows them to be created under the noses of the guards and probably at US taxpayer expense.

Clearly not everybody in the US military is on board with this "war of ideas" thing, and that some are so narrow-minded and criminally bureaucratic that they're fine with allowing one of the world's worst terrorists to un-do the ugly image of him bestowed on him by our warfighters.

MSNBC and others reported in September that terrorists were using the made-in-Gitmo photos to "inspire" attacks on the United States.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says that, based on a US military policy from last February, the Guantanamo detainees are allowed to have pictures taken of themselves and may choose which poses they would like to send their families. The ICRC says that there are no restrictions on distribution of the photos; the policy thus allows the detainees to pass the photos to terrorist supporters for propaganda purposes.

MSNBC cited a US officer at Guantanamo as saying that the US military doesn't care whether or not the policy aids enemy propaganda:

"Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the prison where the US holds about 225 men, said the military is not concerned with distribution of the images and takes no position on how families of prisoners handle their photos," according to MSNBC.

No wonder we're not winning the war!

Our troops live and die by how the terrorists are perceived. We don't need bureaucrats within the military to do the enemy's work.

Why the Swiss vote against minarets is so important

2009-11-29T20:32:00-08:00

Six out of ten Swiss voters acted on facts that many in the western democracies still fail to recognize: The political warfare battle that Islamist extremists are waging against free societies.

Last weekend's referendum to ban the further construction of minarets in Switzerland was not against the religious aspects of Islam - it was specifically a defensive mechanism against the legal and political revolutions that Islamists are waging against secular democracies.

The surprise Swiss vote was a significant fightback against creeping sharia law that is corroding the free fabric of much of Europe and North America. We should be applauding the Swiss for their stand. They remain tolerant of the religious freedoms of hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in their country, but draw the line on sharia practices that would undermine their democratic way of life.

Western liberals, Islamic leaders, the government Iran and, surprisingly, the Vatican, condemned the vote. But the critics miss the point: The vote was not against religion, but was a line against foreign political encroachment.

Proponents of the minaret ban "said from the outset that they were not seeking to prevent Muslims from practicing their religion," the Washington Post reports.

"We just want to stop further Islamisation in Switzerland, I mean political Islam. People may practice their religion, that is no problem," Swiss MP Walter Wobmann tells Reuters. "The minaret is the power symbol of political Islam and Sharia law."
The minaret is "a political symbol against integration; a symbol more of segregation, and first of all, a symbol to try to introduce sharia law parallel to Swiss rights," Swiss MP Ulrich Schlüer tells the Los Angeles Times.
"On one hand Islam is a religion. But on the other hand Islam grants its followers a certain social behaviour. Islam requires its followers to apply certain rules, a certain religious law that we call Sharia. And Sharia law is not at all compatible with our law as it stands today in this country, Switzerland. Our law and Sharia law are at odds with each other," Schlüer says in Euronews.
"The outcome of the vote is a reflection of the fears and uncertainties that exist among the population, and concerns that Islamic fundamentalist ideas could lead to the establishment of parallel societies," Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf says in Time magazine. The minister adds, "marginalization and exclusion on the basis of religious and cultural differences would be devastating for an open country such as Switzerland."

That's precisely the point. Islamist radicals for a decade have tried to silence their critics by branding them as racists and bigots, all the while imposing their political symbolism and demanding acceptance of their un-democratic ideology. They're doing it again right now. Indeed, the Swiss are facing a global backlash.

"Initiative sponsors said they wanted to prevent Islamic extremism from seeping across the borders from other European countries with large Muslim populations," according to the LA Times. "'When you look at the European Union, where are there extremists?' asks Schlüer, the member of parliament. 'In the suburbs and ghetto banlieues of Paris and London. . . . We don't want that in Switzerland.'

"He said Muslims were welcome in Switzerland but must assimilate into Swiss society."

And that's the point that practically all the critics - from the Muslim, Christian, "progressive" and business sectors - seem willfully to miss.

Reuters wrote a heavily editorialized article ominously warning of a "new right-wing surge" in Switzerland, burying any balance into the last paragraph of the story by quoting a supporter of the minaret ban. The vote isn't about religious bigotry, the supporter tells Reuters: "It's to show that we don't want political Islam in Switzerland. We don't have a problem with people who pray in mosques."

Most of the press coverage seems more interested in applying negative labels on the proponents of the ban - "ultraconservative," "right-wing," "anti-immigrant," etc. - than in discussing the huge problem of sharia-inspired political warfare against secular democracy and Christian societies.

Very little press coverage has reported an inconvenient truth about the Swiss referendum: The minaret ban had plenty of support from the political Left as well. The Guardian, Britain's self-described defender of liberalism, is one of the few to bring us that fact in the English language:

"The prohibition also found substantial support on the left and among secularists worried about the status of women in Islamic cultures. Prominent feminists attacked minarets as male power symbols, deplored the oppression of Muslim women, and urged a vote for the ban."

Curiously, local authorities across Switzerland banned the political billboards pictured above, censoring political debate on the grounds that the signs were "racist," "disrespectful" and "dangerous." So it's OK in some parts of Switzerland to ban political expression against Islamist fundamentalism, but those same censors say it is not permissible to ban the construction of Islamist fundamentalist symbols.

Indeed, many in the European political and legal establishments, who oppose the banning of Islamist symbols, actively promote the banning of Christian symbols. As Schlüer tells Euronews:

"The European Court of Human Rights has just decided that the Christian cross cannot be shown in public buildings and public rooms. We have to take them down. At the same time we are quoting the European Court of Human Rights as saying that we can’t have a say when it comes to the construction of minarets. So according to these people we have to make the Christian cross disappear from public view but we should accept minarets! I think that exposes a problem that goes very far, very deep. The problem is the islamization of our society."

Many European countries do not permit the citizens to hold legally binding referenda, but some Swiss experts think that if they did, the continent would largely reflect the concerns in Switzerland. "The vote is sending a strong signal about the concerns of average people regarding Islam; it will encourage people in other countries to develop strategies," religion researcher Jean-François Mayer, head of a religious research institute in Fribourg, Switzerland, tells the Christian Science Monitor. The Monitor reports, "If other European countries held similar votes, he adds, he has 'no doubt that the results would be similar.'"

A Muslim challenges Muslim leaders to quit whining and to denounce jihad

2009-11-13T20:46:59-08:00

None of the evidence that the Fort Hood terrorist acted on his extreme Islamist beliefs seems to be relevant to what the media calls mainstream North American Muslim groups.

This bothers Muslims like Canadian commentator Tarek Fatah, who takes on those groups in the Ottawa Citizen:

"In statements after the mass murder, they tried to manipulate the media narrative by suggesting it was they who were the victims of this tragedy. Instead of denouncing the rise of Islamism and jihadi doctrines among Muslim youth, Islamist organizations once more came out with banal denunciations of 'violence.'
"Muslim groups condemned this 'cowardly attack' without mentioning Maj. Hasan by name. And there were the usual provisos that 'Islam in no way accepts such violence and terror,' and that 'Islam is a peaceful religion with great reverence for human life.'"

Their condemnations are hollow because few condemn the violent jihad ideology that motivated Hasan. Until North American Muslim groups take on the issue of jihad, they will be hard to take seriously. According to Fatah:

"such statements must include a denunciation of the doctrine of "armed jihad," which is without doubt the force that gives religious validation to such acts of terror and encourages so many young Muslims toward suicide attacks on non-Muslims.
"Unless and until Islamic organizations, imams of mosques and their allies who have penetrated every institution that matters in our public life, say explicitly that there is no room for jihad at a time of the modern nation state, and that the doctrine of holy war is defunct, outdated and needs to be shelved, the rest of North America will not take us Muslims seriously."

Enough of this pathetic victimhood mentality that breeds paranoia about an anti-Muslim backlash that has never materialized. Says Fatah:

"If the mosques do not stop spreading the virus of victimhood there will be more Muslim men willing to waste their lives for a jihad that God never asked them to fight.
"We have a window of opportunity. Let us acknowledge what Muslim youth living among us are being fed. If a Muslim man, educated and trained at the expense of the American taxpayer to be a doctor and rise to the rank of major, could still feel a victim, and could launch an attempted suicide attack against America, then those who cry Islamophobia every day also share some blame in this atrocity."

Let's place a lot of the blame squarely on the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Hamas affiliate that masquerades as a civil rights group. CAIR is heavily responsible for fanning paranoia not only among Muslims, but among the public at large - including the military - that has caused so many of our leaders to turn the blind eye that allowed terrorists like Nidal Hasan to plot and kill.

Weed them out: Supporters of sharia law in America cannot uphold their military oaths

2009-11-09T15:02:40-08:00

One way the US military can weed out radical Islamists from ordinary Muslim troops is to define an adherence to sharia law as being incompatible with the Constitution of the United States.

Adherents to sharia law, understood as Islamic law, by definition cannot support and defend the US Constitution. Therefore, the US military would be correct to determine legally that a proponent of sharia law is incapable of taking the oath of enlistment or as a commissioned officer, and, once sworn in, cannot uphold his or her oath and sympathize with or believe in sharia.

Not all Muslims in America believe in sharia law, or in Islamic law to be imposed on America's secular society, so an anti-sharia policy of the US military would not be picking on Muslims. (Indeed, many Muslims immigrated to the US to escape sharia law in their homelands.)

The standard would apply only to those who advocate a religious legal system that would subvert or supersede the US Constitution. The standard would not affect foreign military forces allied or in coalition with the United States, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, whose governments are Islamic republics.

The American service member or officer embracing sharia law would have to resign or be expelled from the military, or, if found to have joined under false pretenses, tried in the military justice system for having taken a fraudulent oath. They would also be required to reimburse the US military for the costs of training, paying, and supporting them while they were fraudulently in the service.

Had such a sharia standard been applied to MAJ Nidal Hasan when he first began openly espousing Islamic fundamentalism, the officer-turned-terrorist would not have been free to have committed murder and maiming at Fort Hood last week.

US Army enlistment and commissioned officer oaths are as follows:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

The wording is there; the intention of the oath was, in part, to defend the military against infiltration from foreign powers and ideologies hostile to the Constitution. Let's use it while we can.

Relevant news & comment about Islamist terrorist at Fort Hood

2009-11-09T09:55:07-08:00

It was obvious to many of us from the earliest news reports that the Army major who shot more than 50 people at Fort Hood was an Islamist extremist and therefore a terrorist: A soldier who had turned traitor and joined the enemy. Yet Army leaders, civilian leaders, many journalists and others tried to gloss over the fact that MAJ Nidal Hasan yelled the jihadist war cry of Islamist extremists when he opened fire. (Here is, shown in his Muslim fundamentalist pajamas at a Fort Hood-area 7-Eleven the morning before his attack.)

Rather than highlight the bad journalism and commentary, I'm putting down some of the best for the record. But it's puzzling why the Army leadership would make that weird comment about "diversity."

Nailing Hasan "wouldn't have been an act of bigotry, it would have been an act of prudence." Washington Post, November 10: Civil rights columnist Eugene Robinson argues that the Army was "foolish" to have ignored the warning signs about MAJ Hasan, and that it did a disservice to all Muslims who serve in the American uniform. "How is the Pentagon supposed to tell the difference between reasonable caution and blatant discrimination? There are thousands of Muslims in uniform, serving their country at home and abroad. Ask them."

"How did Army miss so many clues on Hasan?" Dallas Morning News, November 9: In an editorial, the Dallas Morning News notes, "As we learn more about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused Fort Hood killer, what we discover is deeply disturbing – but not as disturbing as evidence piling up that military authorities knew for months, if not years, that he had displayed radical Islamic tendencies and did nothing about it."

"To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Hasan's motive was instantly clear." Wall Street Journal, November 9: Dorothy Rabinowitz, whom I first met in the ideological warfare fight more than 25 years ago, comments on many commentators' desperate need not to know about an Islamist connection to the killings: "What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic."

'Hard questions' for Army about detecting 'warning signs.' Wall Street Journal, November 9: Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman says he will hold hearings about "warning signs" that the Army might have seen but missed that MAJ Hasan was a "home-grown terrorist." GEN George Casey, Army Chief of Staff, says the Army will have to ask some "hard questions" of itself.

Feds investigate possible al Qaeda connection to Major Hasan. Washington Post, November 9: "Federal investigators are examining possible links between Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal M. Hasan and an American-born imam who U.S. authorities say has become a supporter and leading promoter of al-Qaeda since leaving a Northern Virginia mosque, officials said."

CIA learned of Hasan's attempts to contact al Qaeda. ABC News, November 9: The CIA picked up intelligence 12 months ago that MAJ Hasan attempted to make contact with Al Qaeda.

Like the 9/11 hijackers, Hasan liked bars, strippers. CBS News, November 9: Hasan acted like a devout Muslim, but like some of the 9/11 hijackers, he enjoyed a good striptease and frequented a bar where female strippers lap-danced on him.

Are the motives really that difficult to figure out? FrontPageMag.com, November 9: Daniel Pipes, a prescient observer of Islamist extremism who fundamentally understands the importance of ideology, comments on the phenomenon of why so many are willing to disbelieve the obvious about fanatical Islamist killers.

"Why he shouted 'Allahu Akbar'" FrontPageMag.com, November 9: Two more experts on political warfare and the importance of ideology discuss why MAJ Hasan called out the Muslim jihad cry when he shot up his brother and sister soldiers at Fort Hood.

Political correctness in Army kept officers from reporting warning signs. Associated Press, November 8: Fort Hood-area Muslim leader had told Hasan something was "wrong" with him; Army medical school colleagues "complained" about "Hasan's 'anti-American propaganda,' but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal complaint."

General Casey says loss of 'diversity' would be worse than Fort Hood killings. Reuters, November 8: General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff tells CNN, "as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse." (Casey made a similar comment on ABC: "what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy. But I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here." Click here for the video clip.)

Senator calls for hearings to see if Army could have prevented "terrorist" attack. Wall Street Journal, November 8: Senator Joseph Lieberman, Chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, says that Maj. Nidal Hasan was a "self-radicalized, home-grown terrorist" and calls for an investigation into how the Army could have prevented a terrorist officer from killing fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.

Hasan started his Islamist radicalization process 9 years ago. Washington Post, November 7: Nidal Hasan was a secular Palestinian-American until his mother died 9 years ago, when he began undergoing a process of Islamic radicalization, relatives say.

Hasan shouted jihadist war cry as he started killing. Associated Press, November 7: Reports of Hasan yelling the jihadist cry, "Allahu akbar," or "God is the greatest," are buried in the press coverage. Journalists seem to either misunderstand or purposely ignore the significance of the ideological motivations that such a war cry signifies. (By contrast, British news organizations, including the liberal Guardian newspaper, recognized the meaning and reported it in a headline. See the Guardian, November 6: "Fort Hood Army officer shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before shooting rampage.")

Fort Hood killer linked to mosque of 9/11 terrorists. The Times (London), November 7: Hasan attended a radical Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers.

'We need an ask and tell policy regarding jihadists in our military." TownHall.com, November 7: A commentator argues spiritedly that it defies belief for the US military not to notice when one of its own officers spews anti-American propaganda, pro-jihadist sentiments, and shows all the signs of being part of the enemy camp, yet that same military waits until people are murdered before taking action.

Muslim soldier accused Hasan of extremism; Hasan prosyletized when he should have been treating soldiers. National Public Radio, November 6. As an Army psychologist, Hasan traumatized combat veterans with warnings of Hell if they didn't convert to Islam; a Muslim soldier accused Hasan before the attacks of Islamist extremism, but the Army didn't seem to pay attention.

Hasan gave away belongings, Qurans, just before his killing spree. New York Times, November 6: Hasan seemed at "peace" as he gave away his belongings and copies of the Quran in the day and hours before he launched his terrorist attack, neighbors say. (Curiously, the New York Times illustrates the article with a photo showing a Catholic crucifix in the background.)

White House surrenders Iranians to the regime

2009-11-05T07:39:06-08:00

The White House has formally surrendered the political battlespace to Iran's mullahs and Revolutionary Guard. As the Iranian regime officially celebrated the 30th anniversary of the terrorist takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, President Obama chose to recognize the "Islamic Republic," undermine the democratic opposition, and announce he would do nothing to undermine the regime internally.

Like the Bush Administration before it, the Obama Administration is inadvertently helping the Iranian regime by not assisting the broad-based democratic and cultural opposition movements in that country.

Even as the regime continues to kill American military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq through its ongoing arming of terrorists and insurgents with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) and follow-on weapons.

This is inexcusable. Historians of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will note the squandered strategic opportunities to fight back. This blog has suggested various methods of doing so, both violent and nonviolent. One of the easiest is simply to support the millions of Iranians who oppose the two-headed regime of the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard - but to do it seriously, as we would support any political movement that we wanted to win.

The Iranian opposition used the regime's sponsorship of vicious "death to America" rallies with "death to dictators" counter-demonstrations of their own. As the regime crushed them with force, President Obama undermined them politically.

Obama chose not to embrace the Iranian opposition the way President Reagan embraced the nonviolent resisters of Soviet Communism. Instead Obama opted to reach out to the mullah and Revolutionary Guard. Observing the 30th anniversary of the embassy takeover, the President of the United States announced that his administration "seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interest and mutual respect." As if to rub it in, he declared, "We do not interfere in Iran's internal affairs."

The Iranian government was delighted. Its Press-TV propaganda outlet stated that Obama's comments "offered an explicit acceptance of the Islamic Revolution by twice mentioning 'the Islamic Republic of Iran.'"

However, Tehran objected to the administration's increase in Persian-language broadcasting to Iran.

In issuing statements to appease the Iranian regime and undermine the opposition on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy, President Obama was horribly wrong. He showed moral weakness. The president is undermining a positive future for Iran. And by default, he is relieving pressure on the Iranian regime as it continues to sponsor the killings of American soldiers and Marines.

Between counterinsurgency & counterterrorism

2009-11-04T12:19:23-08:00

A winning strategy in Afghanistan isn't as black-and-white as advocates of counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism would have us believe. The solution is a hybrid - and the Army is already putting it in place. All the Army is waiting for is for the president to hurry up and make a decision.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post shows how solidly he understands the issue in his recent column from Afghanistan. The column is titled,"The Real Afghan Strategy: Will Obama Give It a Chance?"

Ignatius looks at the quizzical look on the face of an Afghan farmer who is speaking with US troops who understand his culture. Perhaps the farmer is wondering, Ignatius writes, "Can these pleasant, tea-drinking American soldiers really be the same people who are assaulting Taliban fighters in this region of eastern Afghanistan?"

"The answer is yes. Even as US forces show a gentler side with their new stress on people-friendly counterinsurgency, they continue to conduct devastating attacks on the enemy. It's this mix of hard and soft that's the essence of the US battle plan here, but this reality is not well understood back in America.
"The Washington debate about the Afghanistan war - pitting advocates of a broad counterinsurgency strategy against those who favor a narrower counterterrorism approach - has sometimes been misleading, at least in terms of what actually goes on here. The fact is that U.S. forces are doing both missions every day and night - and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one."

There's a danger, though, as Ignatius observes. "A strategy that combines stroking your friends and pounding your enemies runs the risk of sending mixed messages. The public, here and around the world, may conclude that for all their new talk about drinking tea, the Americans are ruthless killers. Meanwhile, the enemy may conclude that whatever its firepower, the United States is impatient and will eventually go away. The wires may get crossed, in other words, with people getting the opposite message from the one intended."

Very true. Ignatius is in Afghanistan to discover what he calls "both sides of this complicated and ambitious strategy."

The first is the soft, "population-centric" approach, which Ignatius demonstrates in a pilot project to improve local governance. The US hopes to show that the locals won't see the central Afghan government as "a distant and corrupt force in Kabul" but as a better-than-Taliban local presence. The problem, Ignatius correctly notes, is that the illusion defies reality: "the Kabul government is distant and corrupt."

Representatives of the first wave of a US "civilian surge" that President Obama promised are already on the scene (though this stability operations initiative predates the Obama administration by several years). The US Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, State Department and other agencies have been at work on this for quite a while, with valiant - and often very successful - efforts that remain almost unknown here at home.

The "hard" side of the US strategy consists of widespread use of special operations forces: the lethal "black" side that kills or neutralizes enemy forces, and the soft "unconventional" side consisting of "A-Teams" to work among the towns and villages with Afghan soldiers, police, and tribal leaders.

"These are creative operations, employing some of America's best soldiers," Ignatius notes. "They reflect a growing understanding of what counterinsurgency experts call the 'human terrain map.'" And mastery of the human terrain, as this blog constantly notes, is key to winning the war.

"It's like all the instruments in an orchestra," a US military commander tells Ignatius of the battle plan's varied parts. "You have to know how to play them together." (This is the very approach of the Institute of World Politics, the graduate school where I teach.)

So the choice between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, Ignatius notes, "is a false argument. What the United States actually has in Afghanistan is a mixture. Obama must now decide whether to provide the resources - and take the risks - to test whether this combined strategy can succeed."

Photo: Human Terrain Team at work. An Afghan interpreter, left, and Jared Davidson, with Human Terrain Team, both attached to Regimental Combat Team 3 (RCT-3) and the Afghan National Army (ANA), talk with a villager during a mounted patrol in Nawa district, Helmand province, Afghanistan, Sept. 23, 2009. The ANA and RCT-3 Marines are talking with village residents to try to gain public assistance in ridding the area of enemy forces. The Marines are deployed to conduct partnered counterinsurgency operations with Afghan National Security Forces in southern Afghanistan. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Gunnery Sgt. James A. Burks/Released)

Empowering Afghan locals is key to winning

2009-10-29T07:19:08-07:00

If we learned anything from the war in Iraq, it's that big-government solutions will fail when imposed on a tribal society with century-old local power structures that we have usurped. Afghanistan is very different from Iraq, but the turnaround in the latter country came only when the US military sought to restore power to traditional local leaders. Those leaders rapidly switched from some of our worst enemies to our best local allies. And with their crucial help, we wiped out Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Afghanistan is even more deeply rooted in local tribal power culture. And we have been alienating local leaders across the country with our made-in-Washington, cookie-cutter approach to governance there. By forcing a weak, ineffective and corrupt central government authority on the provinces, we have angered a lot of already cranky people. Their anger at us is understandable.

So it's exciting to hear that the White House is actively exploring a new strategy to empower local leaders in Afghanistan. (Let's hope they ask good questions without micromanaging.) I have long been arguing for a plan that the US military and civilian policymakers from both parties intensely disliked because it's not all nice and neat, but some of our senior military leaders appear to have similar views on parts of it. Here's a stripped-down version of what it looks like:

Empower local tribal leaders, warlords and village elders with their own militias (now being discussed at the White House);
Arm, equip, train and mentor the local militias (required if the White House opts for local empowerment);
Pay the locals more than the Taliban and drug traffickers can to hunt down and kill all Al Qaeda and Taliban members who refuse to submit, defect, or abandon the fight, and to help us do the job if the locals can't (we're doing some of this already and it's cheaper than sending more troops);
Empower the locals to turn Taliban factions against one another, encouraging defections and intra-Taliban fratricide (already being done but needs a big push);
Peel off and marginalize certain Taliban factions, to splinter and weaken the movement (already being done but needs momentum);
Reward local leaders who demonstrate a continued commitment to fight narcotics production and Islamist extremism, and to fight corruption that goes beyond the traditionally generous cultural norms (already being done, but locals are undermined by the Big Government strategy);
Provide logistical and emergency combat backup to ensure the basic security and humanitarian needs of the people in the cities and countryside (in progress, but much more is needed);
Penalize local leaders who play both sides or turn against us by treating them as we would an enemy (difficult to do, but necessary if we are to promote local empowerment);
Defeat the enemy at the propaganda game (we're chasing our tails here and seem pretty helpless without real political leadership); and
Hold other countries accountable for any harm they inflict on American and Coalition troops and our Afghan allies, and take the war to them (not being done, as our guys continue to die).

This is not a solution for a western-style democracy. But Afghanistan is not a western country. And the "democracy" we have built has discredited itself in ways that should shame us and will certainly come back to haunt us.

Our strategy to date - building and imposing a corrupt central government on an independently-minded , localized populace, while depending on that alienated populace to be our eyes and ears in the counterinsurgency fight, while doing nothing substantive against Iranian involvement in the conflict - is doomed to fail. Yet this is still a war that we can win.

Photo: US Army paratroopers prepare to load into a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during an air-assault mission to detain a known militant in the Bermel district of Paktika province, Afghanistan, Oct. 13, 2009. The paratroopers are assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's Company B, 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team. US Army photo by Pfc. Andrya Hill

Listen to this anti-war protester. He has a point. Now he should get back in the fight.

2009-10-29T06:25:06-07:00

It's easy to dismiss the Washington Post's breathless, over-the-fold, front-page story that a "US official" had resigned in protest of Afghan war policy. The prominently placed headline implied that a senior figure in the Obama administration had quit. In reality, the official was a very low-level operational person on the ground who had been with the State Department for barely a year.

Anyone who remembers Post correspondent Karen DeYoung's shamefully biased reporting from Central America during the 1980s could hardly be blamed for disregarding her story about the resignation of Marine-turned-diplomat Matthew Hoh.

But they would be mistaken this time. Hoh has many valid concerns. Many of the most knowledgeable people are low-level operators on the ground. Hoh is a very well regarded public servant. He's no peacenik. He's worked in one of the most troubled parts of Afghanistan. If his resignation can do any good, it will be to highlight problems in Afghanistan and help us win the war.

As with many Post articles, the real meat of the story is buried deep within the text. In this case, it's in the next-to-last paragraph, which reads,

"[Hoh] also would suggest providing more support for Pakistan, better U.S. communication and propaganda skills to match those of al-Qaeda, and more pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai to clean up government corruption -- all options being discussed in White House deliberations."(Emphasis added.)

Excellent ideas! This is where Hoh can still make his contribution to the war effort. Rather than withdraw from the fight completely, he should use his newfound fame to hammer away at the continued US inability to counter enemy propaganda - tactically, operationally and strategically.

General McChrystal and the White House are revising the Afghan strategy. They need the insights of operators like Hoh. (See the text of his resignation letter: Download Hoh letter)

I know what it's like to be on the ground helping a war effort, getting demoralized at how it's being carried out, getting extremely frustrated with the bureaucrats and the process and with less-than-stellar allies, and being worn down by lose-the-war reporting from journalists like Karen DeYoung - who, in the 1980s, was biased heavily in favor of the communist enemy. But we didn't quit. We stuck with the fight in one way or another. And our counterinsurgency effort in El Salvador succeeded, along with our support for the democratic insurgency against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Hoh's frustration is understandable. I don't agree with all his points. But he's right on the matter of how to deal with local Afghans and on our nation's dysfunctional counterpropaganda capabilities. He should be helping with the new strategy instead of sniping out of the Washington Post's turret.

[Photo: U.S Army Spc. Zackery Cely, of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment provides security for an air assault mission, after being dropped off, above Tacome Valley, in Zabul province, Afghanistan, Oct. 13, 2009. U.S. Soldiers, from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army Europe (USAEUR) are deployed throughout southern Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Tia P. Sokimson/Released)]

Firepower culture will not bring us victory in Afghanistan

2009-10-22T09:47:59-07:00

The US-led effort in Afghanistan will fail as long as the Coalition is wedded to its culture of superior firepower and inferior psychological power. That's the assessment of a US officer in Afghanistan, and I agree with his conclusion.

"I think it is fair to say the US has fire superiority over just about any insurgent force anywhere. It is hard to convince my colleagues and superiors to plan from a different perspective. In the world of political warfare we are the inferior opponent. If we continue to rely on our ability to bring fire power to bear coupled with a contingency based top-down antiquated IO [information operations] structure it is feasible we will not accomplish our objectives here," the officer said in an email from Afghanistan today.

I am not revealing the officer's name, rank, unit or geographic location. He appears to have breached no protocol and has given me permission to post his comments on this blog.

The remainder of this posting is in the officer's words (I broke the text into smaller paragraphs, inserted explanatory notes in brackets [ ], and highlighted some of the text).

"Summary: The Taliban offer at least four critical services to the people of rural Afghanistan. They maintain control of the rural areas by following a simple three step process. The main line of effort for these services and process is supported by a sophisticated messaging apparatus that paints our efforts as the 'proof' of their ideological tenants. A shift in resource allocation may offer a dynamic counter argument.

"The Taliban’s soft power in the rural areas in stems from at least four critical services they provide.

A system to resolve local disputes such as land ownership and water rights. For example, many communities share wells and use a primitive – yet effective – ditch work system to move water to their land. The Taliban offers an accepted and speedy settlement on these types of issues based on their interpretation of Islam – they serve as the judge and enforcer.
Protection from the criminal element; crops, property, and family members are protected so long as the Taliban enjoys the support of the locals. In areas where theft, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom are common place this is huge.
A system of government. Open source reports cite a 'shadow government' down to the district level. I imagine it mirrors the previous Taliban governmental structures...but not sure exactly.
A means of redress. The Taliban have a system in which people can report 'corrupt' Taliban to higher levels – a quasi 'tip line' if you will. To be sure, deviation from the Taliban’s ideology or activity that threatens to reduce TB [Taliban] strength/credibility will not be tolerated within their ranks.

"The Taliban does at least three things to maintain the status quo – keep the government de facto out of the rural areas, keep the criminal element alive but weak in order to ensure an enduring problem set it can resolve, and manufactures just enough instability to prove that the 'corrupt government' cannot meet the needs of the community - i.e. spectacular attacks, IEDs, baited ambushes which facilitate collateral damage and civilian casualties/loss of life.

"The Taliban enjoys a sophisticated propaganda campaign to exploit these by linking the corrupt Afghan National Security Forces, Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and NATO/US forces together as THE blight on the purity of Islam and Afghanistan. In this regard highlighting the existing corruption serves this end very well.

"In this environment an abandoned District/Community Center serving as a ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] outpost becomes a billboard advertising the problem rather than the solution. We call/label the Taliban 'insurgents.' Those who benefit from the TB’s soft power identify them as their champions; the protectors of Afghan culture, identity, and social order. This is not a new phenomenon, the old adage rings true here 'one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.' The victor will be the element that can provide the greatest stability in the eyes of the rural people.

"If we want to affect change in the rural areas we have to provide a 'purer' form of what they are getting from the Taliban. Currently, the rural Afghan has no incentive to withdraw support from the Taliban. A sub-governor who cannot live in the area he is supposed to govern will be as ineffective as the police officers who cannot live in the precinct they are suppose to protect. Neither are viable options for the rural people of our AO [area of operations] however both are the status quo.

"This interpretation of the environment solicits an alternate course of action. The Taliban and other ACF elements are entrenched in the rural areas and ANSF/GiROA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] stands little chance in rooting them out in the short term. We must still continue to partner with ANSF counterparts but we must be weary of validating TB/ANSF propaganda. Shift resources and effort to city. Concentrate our various shades of money and manpower on making the population centers more stable. The cities are the economic hub. Commerce is the link between the city and the farm.

"This approach is like the 'City on a Hill' argument that provides a dynamic counter argument to the TB’s propaganda. The TB would have to consider a transition to 'hard power' techniques. If we showcase this well it holds the potential for separating the populace from the TB. I would offer the 'Sons of Liberty' and the co-option of the Northern Alliance as examples of the success of illustrating how the hard power tactics of extreme ideologues are outside the tolerance of decent human behavior."

(Photo: Afghan National Policeman and US Army soldiers with 118th Military Police (Airborne) Company, 3rd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, hand children school supplies, radios and a flier with a tip line for calling in information about the Taliban. Logar province, September 2009. Photographer: PFC Richard W. Jones, Jr/US Army.)

Good news! New counterinsurgency manual de-centralizes PSYOP

2009-10-22T05:58:53-07:00

The Department of Defense has just issued a new joint forces counterinsurgency doctrine. Among the many new developments is the long-awaited decentralization of PSYOP. I've been advocating this step for years to give commanders at all levels of the chain greater flexibility with psychological operations. Until recently, most PSYOP products required a cumbersome, not very flexible, slow approval process that harmed the ability of the warfighter and inadvertently helped the enemy.

That's changed. Here's an operative section from the new Joint Publication 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations, issued 5 October 2009:

"(4) PSYOP Product Approval. Under US policy and the PSYOP Supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, PSYOP product approval authority may be subdelegated by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to the geographic combatant commander (GCC) and further to the commander, joint task force through official approval authority to be delegated down to the brigade combat team in order to facilitate responsive PSYOP support. Current policy facilitates decentralized PSYOP execution and allows for commanders with product approval to developed a streamlined time sensitive product approval process. A JFC must have an approved PSYOP program, execution authority, and delegation of product approval authority before PSYOP execution can begin."

The document was issued under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide "joint doctrine for the planning, execution and assessment of counterinsurgency operations," according to the official introduction. Download your copy of Joint Publication 3-24 here: Download JP 3-24 COIN 091009

(Photo: US soldiers patrol in Paktiya province, Afghanistan, October 2009.) Thanks to LM for directing me to JP 3-24.

Fear of public opinion might prompt Obama to help Taliban survive

2009-10-12T20:54:39-07:00

President Obama's adminstration is seriously considering a new Afghanistan policy that in effect would leave the Taliban to survive and fight another day.

From an insurgent's perspective, that means the Taliban will win.

That's not the intent of the policy option. But it would be the net result. A variety of factors is at play, including concerns about over-stretching the US military, troubles with Pakistan, the fact that we're stuck with crummy allies in Afghanistan, a philosophical unwillingness to commit the necessary force, and budget issues that would take dollars away from healthcare and other big-ticket spending programs.

The administration also appears paralyzed by a lack of self-confidence on military matters, and a fear about what people will think. "One phrase that always comes up in the administration's strategy sessions is 'public opinion,'" a US official tells McClatchy news service.

If that's the case - and my sources in the military, intelligence community, and administration agree with the McClatchy report - the administration is doing next to nothing to muster domestic support for a victory in Afghanistan. Nor is it doing much to support allies, win neutrals, or defeat opponents in the infosphere abroad.

The administration seems more concerned about implementing its social agenda at home than winning the war. McClatchy, in interviews with 15 mid- and senior-level military, intelligence, defense, diplomatic and administration officials, says that internal discussions are worried about "a lack of political and public support at home, which they fear could also undermine the president's domestic priorities."

Shades of LBJ. For those of you lucky enough to be too young to remember, President Lyndon Baines Johnson didn't want the Vietnam War to detract from his marvelous Great Society domestic program. So he didn't escalate against Hanoi, didn't destroy the North Vietnamese military, and allowed the enemy to grind us down through protracted conflict and skillful propaganda warfare. And his Great Society program wasn't much more successful.

As of today, the administration has done NOTHING to try to enlist the support of pro-defense groups in Washington who might be critical of his domestic agenda, but who would enthusiastically support a sound strategy for victory in Afghanistan.

"Now the White House is downplaying the dangers of doing the only thing that they think Congress and the public will support - a limited war against the guys who hit us on 9/11," one source tells McClatchy. That jibes with what I'm hearing from talking to people in the administration. The president is considering a very dangerous move. A gamble based on wishful thinking and lack of confidence.

The Taliban must be thrilled. No doubt they will escalate the killing of our troops in order to put more psychological pressure on our indecisive, dithering commander-in-chief.

New: Parody of al Qaeda training video - CAUTION

2009-10-09T08:26:37-07:00

Satirists are mocking al Qaeda for its latest "butt bomb" tactic. The People's Cube, a political humor website, today released a new video that ridicules the terrorist organization for sponsoring colon-deployed suicide bombers. In the feature, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's #2, is shown instructing followers on how to assemble, insert and detonate the bombs. This hilarious, patently offensive, clever video crosses the bounds of good taste and is definitely not for children.

The video is an excellent inspiration for Arabic-speaking satirists to make fun of al Qaeda, its leadership, and the young, pretty men who become suicide bombers. As I proposed on September 29, properly done in the right cultural context, the mockery can be used to humiliate al Qaeda members and deter young men from becoming assassins.

I'm posting the video not for laughs but for the educational purpose of showing how to weaponize ridicule against the enemy, and help turn al Qaeda into a laughingstock among Arabs and Muslims worldwide. Let's get some discussion going.

You can watch the video here (Facebook subscribers please click here or below on "View Original Post" to view the video on the PoliticalWarfare.org blog). Be forewarned - many people will find this video tasteless and hurtful to their sensitivities. Which is no doubt what the creators intended.

"Al-Zawahiri" speaks heavily-accented English that may be difficult to understand. Click here for a transcript.

Child's play: Explaining why we're in Afghanistan

2009-10-06T20:33:17-07:00

Some of our key allies are losing heart in Afghanistan. A sizable chunk of the American public is wondering why we're still there. Even some of our troops deploying there don't know exactly what their mission means for the nation.

Somebody in Washington should explain why the US and its allies are in Afghanistan.

Fortunately, someone is. It isn't the president. And it certainly isn't the public diplomacy shop at the State Department. No, nothing like that. That someone is KidsPost, the children's section of the Washington Post.

KidsPost frames the issue nicely in a headline: "Why the US Fights in Afghanistan." The subtitle: "The President Must Decide If More Troops Should Be Sent to Country Where 9/11 Terrorists Trained."

Margaret Webb Pressler of KidsPost and Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran do a nice job asking and answering the following questions for the kids:

Why are US troops in Afghanistan?
Is there a war in Afghanistan?
Why has the situation gotten worse there?
Why does it matter to us what happens in Afghanistan?
What happens now?
What about Iraq?

Pretty easy, no? Isn't it something that, say, the State Department's under-worked public diplomacy machinery could be telling our friends and allies around the world? Or that the president could be explaining to the public, now that he's actually met with General McChrystal?

Time is running out. A new BBC poll shows that 56 percent of Britons now oppose their country's military presence in Afghanistan. What meaningful thing has the US done to try to keep British public opinion up? Nothing that I've seen.

Thanks are due to my nine year-old who showed me the story tonight. If a child gets it, can't the president and the secretary of state?

Getting serious about strategic influence

2009-10-05T22:40:01-07:00

The US isn't declining as a world power because of the war on terrorism. It's declining because it has ceased to be serious about using strategic influence. The United States has become a military Achilles but a political Lilliputian.

"More troops" seems to be the universal answer to the world's security problems. Plus weak, plaintive cries for "more public diplomacy." Whatever that is. And then there's the newest fad: "strategic communication."

Yeah, that's the ticket: more strategic communication. Really! But wait - Does the government have an active, functioning machine that's doing the huge job of strategic communication? Can anybody name the government official currently responsible for the job? Is that person being effective? Does he or she have the right tools, resources, personnel and procedures? Is there anybody on the National Security Council with the stature and authority to coordinate the "strategic communication" of the world's sole superpower?

Of course not. That's part of the problem. I take a look at the issue in the current issue of the Journal of International Security Affairs - a journal, by the way, that's crammed with thought-provoking material on the subject of influence during war and peace. (My only quibble with the journal is that my friends, the editors and publisher, are capitalistic types who actually want readers to buy their publication, so the articles aren't available yet online.)

You can download a pdf of my essay, "Getting Serious About Strategic Influence," here: Download Waller JINSA Fall09. Meanwhile, here are some of the highlights:

The mission of strategic communication "must be similar to the mission of the armed forces: to project American power and influence and provide a permanent system through which to ensure the national interest globally."
The mission must not be "simply to make the United States a player in the 'global marketplace of ideas.' The mission must be to dominate the market."
The effort "must be to fight to win. It must be run strategically, like a permanent political campaign."
Therefore, current State Department diplomats are not qualified for the job. The job is for "real strategists and practitioners in the art of political action."
The State Department's wartime public diplomacy record is so free of successes, so hideously failed, that the public diplomacy mission should be removed from Foggy Bottom: "Nobody has been held accountable for the public diplomacy mess. Yet everybody seems to want the State Department to continue its role as the leader in wartime strategic communication."
"American message-makers have failed to develop a coherent strategy to wage an ideological counterattack against political Islamism. They can't seem to grasp that there is a significant difference between Islam the religion and the politicized, power-seeking ideologies of radical Islamism. Our national obsession with not wanting to offend has trumped our obligation to defend our national interests. And so our young soldiers continue to die."
"Imagine . . . if the James Carvilles, Dick Morrises and Karl Roves of the world put their visionary, calculating, often deviously cynical genius to work to promote the national interest globally."
"Reforms will take years. What the US leadership can do now is to define the purpose and nature of American strategic communication. That is why the nation needs diplomats and communicators who are political warriors, and not simply ex-politicians who checked their political instincts at the door when they entered the State Department."
"Strategic communication must be strategic. . . . It must be designed to achieve national objectives through other than lethal combat, and to enhance the capabilities of the warfighters who must go into battle."

Leadership starts, of course, with our president, who is a gifted politician and communicator in his own right, but who seems to need help in developing a strategy. Our vice president was for years the ranking member and then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yet he did nothing significant in those capacities on the public diplomacy/strategic communication front. Maybe he can do something about it now. Our secretary of state is a masterful, school-of-hard-knocks political warrior who can win a partisan fight but doesn't seem to be getting traction at the State Department. Like the president, she is a trained disciple of the late Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky. I'd like to see her put those skills to work against the Islamist extremists of Al Qaeda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood and elsewhere. I'd gladly help out.

'Mohammed Greenberg' - Ahmadinejad's psychological vulnerability

2009-10-05T09:35:30-07:00

A closeup photo of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ID document shows that he has Jewish roots. That's no big deal in itself - except for the fact that the Iranian president is one of the world's foremost anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Looks like the militant Islamist extremist is trying to compensate for some perceived inner inadequacy.

London's Daily Telegraph has the story. "A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots," the Telegraph reports. "A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver."

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections," says Ali Nourizadeh of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies. "He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

That's a great opportunity for us in the West. Here's Ahmadinejad's psychological soft spot - and we ought to be squeezing every shekel out of it.

Damian Thompson of the Telegraph sees the opportunities. Ahmadinejad, Thompson says in a blog entry based on the identity document, started life as Mahmoud Sabourjian, it seems – which is the Persian equivalent of being born Mohammed Greenberg." Now, how can we expose Ahmadinejad among his peers? Thompson has an idea:

"I mean, think about it: this venomous anti-Semite and Holocaust denier will never be able to play the anti-Israel card again without members of his audience sniggering. 'How can you attack your own cousins?' they’ll ask. And as for Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic political enemies, both in Iran and the Arab world, I can tell you exactly how they will refer to him in future:
"THE JEW AHMADINEJAD.
"Yup, it’ll be in capital letters, or whatever the equivalent is in their script. And he won’t be able to deflect it with a Woody Allen-esque shrug of the shoulders, because, well, it’s true.
"As for the Jewish world, I think it should milk Ahmadinejad’s new status for all it’s worth. Instead of raging against his race hatred, the Jews should bellow back, in an unmistakeably fraternal tone of voice: 'Oy, Mahmoud, enough already!'"

A Jewish conspiracy within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? What a concept! Especially in a culture that thrives on bizarre conspiracy theories.

Now . . . Ahmadinejad says there are no gays in Iran. Might he be overcompensating for something else? Inquiring minds want to know.

Squandering the presidency's political prestige

2009-10-02T17:34:13-07:00

He assumed the presidency with the goodwill of almost the entire world, a man with a remarkable story and seemingly limitless political capital. There seemed to be nothing he could not achieve. But Barack Obama somehow has been unable to grow from grassroots community organizer to president of the world's sole superpower.

And that's a tragedy for all Americans and their allies around the world. Because instead of strengthening the international appeal and stature of the American presidency, Obama has diminished it. He has squandered the international political prestige of his office.

Historians might say the turning point was his humiliating bow to the totalitarian king of Saudi Arabia. Others might identify his deliberate snubs of the British prime minister and the queen, his unilateral concessions to Kim Jong-il, or his praise from Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Muammar Qaddafi. Or his allowing himself to be upstaged by Qaddafi at the UN, where the American president gave two flat, clumsy, hollow-sounding speeches.

I say the turning point happened today, October 2, 2009, when the International Olympic Committee gave the thumbs-down to his personal plea in Copenhagen to make his home community of Chicago the host of the 2016 Olympic Games. When Obama flew to Denmark to lobby the IOC, it seemed like he had it in the bag; no American president would risk the prestige of his office on a last-minute gamble. Or so I thought.

But gamble he did. And he came back angry and humiliated. Why should anybody be surprised? He had no political strategy. He did no real prep work. Just a mad dash to Copenhagen with the near-presumption that his smiling, messianic face would save the day.

How tone-deaf are the Obamas at a time when America's name brand is down the tubes internationally? "I'm asking you to choose Chicago. I'm asking you to choose America," First Lady Michelle Obama gushed at the IOC bureaucrats. The president laid it on even thicker: "If you do, if we walk this path together, then I promise you this: The city of Chicago and the United States of America will make the world proud."

Huh? Like the United States of America really has a good name around the world right now! Obama cheapened himself and his office. Not even CNN, in the above video, liked his approach to the Olympic committee.

President Ronald Reagan would not make a public request at an international event unless the answer had already been worked out to his satisfaction in advance. Obama needs forget his community organizer tactics that he learned from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and study real statesmanship and strategy. Reagan knew how to be a statesman. He knew how to uplift the image and power of the American presidency. He won the praise of his critics. And the respect of the nation's enemies. Obama has much to learn.

UPDATE: The Associated Press has an interesting take on Obama's Olympic trip:

Obama's defeat feeds impressions that "he's a better talker than closer, more celebrity than statesman";
"this could hamper his efforts on the weightier issues";
"Despite Obama's fabled charm and powers of persuasion, his in-person plea for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Games fell flat."
"It was a hugely embarrassing defeat."
Obama is losing confidence of some in his own party: people "are beginning to wonder whether he's someone who tries a lot but succeeds at little, and whether he has the sense to focus on the most important things";
"some perceive Obama as arrogantly relying too much on his celebrity status and not enough on the nitty-gritty work of winning votes";
"some IOC members resented the fact that Obama blew into Copenhagen for just five hours, jetting back down the runway toward Washington hours before the result was even announced. 'It can be that some IOC members see it as a lack of respect,' said former IOC member Kai Holm."

How to counter Al Qaeda's butt-bombs

2009-09-29T12:09:13-07:00

Al Qaeda has flummoxed security experts with its new tactic of evading detection systems by hiding explosives and detonators inside the bodies of suicide bombers.

The method redefines what it is to be an "assassin."

The new trick came to light last month in a Saudi palace when an Al Qaeda operative, claiming to want to surrender, exploded in a failed attempt to murder the Saudi prince in charge of counterterrorism operations. The terrorist stuffed a pound of explosives and a detonator up his behind (or perhaps one of his buddies did it for him) in order to foil bomb detectors.

What I'm about to propose is gross and disgusting and downright insensitive. But it's culturally appropriate. And it's a quick, inexpensive way to see if we can damage terrorist recruitment and neutralize this new and dangerous Al Qaeda murder tactic. So here goes.

Rather than get alarmed about lacking the technical means to detect such bomb smugglers, we should use Arab and Islamic (and generally universal, lowbrow, adolescent) cultural traits to make terrorists too ashamed and embarrassed to turn their bottoms into bombs. And to humiliate their supporters.

This tactic is begging for ridicule. Terrorists hate being ridiculed. Sexually repressed young men hate being ridiculed. Islamist extremists hate being ridiculed. Mockery stains their honor. Most terrorists are sexually repressed Islamist extremist young men.

Therefore, it's time for the US and its allies, as well as the Saudis, to turn on the laughs by making fun of the butt-bombers. We can all think of ways to ridicule these weirdos in English - oh, the metaphors are just too plentiful and too crude to list here - and the Arabic language is likewise awash in backdoor humor. To say nothing of Pashto.

Let's start making fun of Osama bin Laden and his butt-stuffing buddies in Al Qaeda, and see how long this terrorist fad lasts. (My money is on the US being too politically correct to give this a try, but I hope I'm wrong.)

Rather than fear these freaks, we should be mocking them. In every country, in every language. It's perfect for the uber-homophobic, repressed, pseudopious culture in which the terrorists live. Let's see how many macho young men really want to meet their fate with the world knowing this: That their last act of piety was packing their fanny full of phallic-shaped C-4 and having their buddy detonate them with a cell phone text message.

Let's see how many virgins that buys them in the next life. And how many other Islamist extremist boys want to emulate him.

Bonus points: Al Qaeda is officially promoting the butt-bomber tactic in a new video it recently posted on the Internet. So we can pin this on Bin Laden personally, and take down his persona a notch or two with some good, old-fashioned locker-room laughs.

Here's a video about the Saudi butt-bomber (CBS calls him the "Trojan Bomber.")

Watch CBS News Videos Online

(Top image courtesy of www.peoplescube.com)

A swell way to declare an Afghan victor

2009-09-21T08:31:25-07:00

Here's a terrific way for the United States to settle the Afghan presidential election controversy: Have the Voice of America broadcast an "exclusive interview" with the CIA director who says the US-favored candidate will win and that a vote recount won't matter.

Not!

Yet that's just what the VOA and CIA Director Leon Panetta have done. Here's what the VOA reported on September 18:

Official preliminary final totals in Afghanistan's recent presidential election have incumbent president Hamid Karzai the winner, but the election was marred by allegations of massive vote fraud. A U.N. electoral oversight group has ordered a partial recount. But the head of the Central Intelligence Agency believes that will not make much of a difference.

In an exclusive VOA interview, CIA director Leon Panetta says that even if suspect ballots are discounted, President Hamid Karzai will in all likelihood win re-election.

"It's clear that there was some degree of corruption and fraud involved in the election," Panetta said. "It's being viewed now by the commissions involved in counting those votes. I think what appears to be the case is that even after they eliminate some of the votes that resulted because of fraud, that Karzai will still - still looks like the individual who's going to be able to win that election."

The preliminary final results have Mr. Karzai with enough votes to avoid a runoff with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Mr. Karzai has angrily denied major fraud and denounced the media for what he says are exaggerated reports of electoral corruption.

A few problems show themselves here. First, the CIA director should never try to declare the winner of a US-backed election in another country. Even if the CIA wasn't involved in trying to manage the outcome of the Afghan election (and shame on the US for not using the CIA for that purpose, given that the Saudis, Pakistanis, Iranians and others are meddling plenty in Afghan political affairs), an official CIA comment simply looks bad and taints the favored candidate.

Second, why in the world is the Voice of America, as a major public diplomacy instrument of the United States government, eliciting and promoting such statements from the CIA Director?

The CIA-VOA electoral pronunciation has other negative effects, too, but I'll end with just the above pair of thoughts and the following question: Who is in charge of US strategic messaging on Afghanistan?

How dictators censor us

2009-09-15T21:10:14-07:00

Dictatorial regimes and movements continue to censor the American media through implicit or explicit threats of retaliation. Anne Applebaum notes the problem in her Washington Post column that:

Yale University Press censored a book about the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and didn't include important cartoons that the author had included in the manuscript.
GQ buried a story (first broken in the US by David Satter) in its September 2009 issue that pointed to the former KGB as being behind a series of bombings of Russian apartment buildings that Vladimir Putin used as a pretext to invade Chechnya; the story was purged or never posted on GQ's website and censored out of its Russian-language edition.
Google has merrily censored its Chinese-language search engine to come up with few if any significant results on the Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan or democracy.

"These three incidents are not identical," says Applebaum. "Yale Press refused to print the cartoons because the university fears retaliatory violence on its campus. Conde Nast [publisher of GQ] refused to promote an article on the Russian secret service because it fears a loss of Russian advertisers. Google refuses to let its Chinese users search for 'Tiananmen' and other taboo subjects because Google wants to compete against Chinese search engines for a share of the huge Chinese market. All three companies exhibit greatly varying degrees of remorse, too, from Conde Nast (none) to the Yale Press (a lot) to Google (ambivalent: Google founder Sergey Brin initially argued that the company would at least bring more information to China, if not complete information).

"Nevertheless, the three stories lead to one conclusion: In different ways, the Russian government, the Chinese government and unnamed Islamic terrorists are now capable of placing de facto controls on American companies -- something that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. In a world that seems more dangerous and less profitable than it did in the pas t, either greed or fear proved stronger than these companies' commitment to free speech."

Incidents like these are nothing new. One almost forgets that CNN ran deliberately biased coverage of Saddam Hussein's regime as the price its executives paid for the dictator's permission to operate a "news" bureau in Baghdad (a la Peter Arnett). Harvard University is notorious for its apparent faustian bargain with Chinese benefactors to water down its academic skepticism of the Beijing regime - and to invite People's Liberation Army intelligence officers to Cambridge as part of an "exchange" program. And so much more.

Taliban targets German public opinion to oust Merkel government

2009-09-06T18:34:24-07:00

The Taliban has reportedly targeted German troops to be killed in propaganda attacks in the hopes of causing a public opinion to backlash to unseat the conservative-led coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We are facing a critical challenge at this time," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung tells journalists. "We are aware of Taliban declarations targeting the German army due to the election."

Germans go to the polls in three weeks.

Jung made the comment in response to reports - still in dispute - that a NATO air strike killed scores of people near Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan, where German troops operate. The Germans called in the airstrike in response to intelligence that the Taliban had hijacked fuel trucks that were to believed to be used in a sensational suicide bombing of German soldiers. A US Air Force jet responded to the call for help and bombed the tanker trucks.

The German commander on the ground said he feared the trucks would be used as improvised bombs to hit his troops. While German military officials say all those killed were Taliban, local reports indicate that many may have been civilians who had been been looting fuel from the tankers. The US is criticizing German response time, among other factors, according to AP.

German military participation in Afghanistan is unpopular at home, and though it hasn't become a campaign issue of significance yet, it could if the Taliban succeeds in provoking incidents to inflame German opinion.

The German Social Democrats and Greens should publicly denounce the Taliban's attempt to unseat Merkel's coalition in their favor. To their credit, the Social Democrats say that Germany should continue its military presence in Afghanistan. (And as we should expect, the European Union's foreign ministers criticized the NATO operation.)

A Soviet political warfare manual comments on 'socialist education'

2009-09-04T21:34:00-07:00

With all the controversy now about propagandizing schoolchildren, I dusted off an old Soviet political warfare manual titled Communists and the Youth: A Study of Revolutionary Education. Published in the USSR in 1984, the 255-page book sat on my shelf, unread, since I got it while infiltrating a Soviet front organization during United Nations International Youth Year celebrations in 1985. Today I cracked the cover the first time - and how relevant it is to today's debate! Here's an excerpt from the introduction, with some sections highlighted for emphasis:

"'The hot student summer' of 1968 affected nearly 50 countries of the capitalist world. Bourgeois publishers jumped at the opportunity to cash in on the events, and hurriedly printed everything connected with this event, even collections of graffiti and glossaries of the 'insurgents' slang. The bourgeois mass media gave wide coverage to the student battles. And soon the Western publishing conveyor began churning out more profound 'studies' prophesying the appearance of a new 'thinker class' and the dawn of a new era called 'the revolution of the young.' What made this more alluring was the fact that the waves of the student tempest continued to swell from time to time, especially on American campuses.
"It would be wrong to belittle the force and significance of this student unrest, its extent, the political awakening and attempts of social self-assertion by the young people of the 'sixties. But this student action, which had quite a considerable impact when it did erupt, was, on the whole, spontaneous and chaotic. Led principally by anarchist, Trotskyite, and ultra-left elements, the student protest had a pseudo-revolutionary colouring.
"But youth will not automatically come to the side of the revolutionary forces. For them to do so there has to be a persistent, painstaking, daily work by the progressive forces, and especially by the communist and workers' parties. And objective and subjective factors play a special role. . . .
"Alongside the objective conditions for the growing breadth and depth of social action by the youth, the subjective factor is equally significant: the correct ideological and political orientation of the young, the ability of the communist parties and youth leagues to impart the protest by the youth a conscious and organized nature, and their ability to educate them in a genuine revolutionary spirit.
"In an antagonistic society the ruling classes determine the content, objectives, forms and methods of the system of education officially recognized in that society. However, this does not exclude that other classes are involved in educational activities, activities directly opposed to the objectives of the official education. Here, the question is to change the character of education. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party [Communist Manifesto], Marx and Engels wrote: 'The Communists have not invented the intervention of society and education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.'
"The founders of Marxism-Leninism pointed to the close interconnection between the process of education and the revolutionary transformation of society. They considered that the educational process was of a political character, and said that the revolutionary class of society - the working class led by its vanguard, the Communist Party - had to play a special role in education.
"At this point one should explain the correlation of the ideas 'revolutionary education' and 'communist education.' Thus, in a bourgeois society, it is a question mainly of revolutionary education, primarily of giving the progressive section of the youth a Marxist world outlook, and class self-consciousness, and of educating these young people in the course of revolutionary practice and revolutionary action. . . .
"Communist education became of general state and political significance only after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution and when the building of a socialist society was initiated. There was a fundamental change in the entire character of social education, which became a component of the building of socialism and communism. . . .
"In several instances, especially during the transitional period of the building of socialism, it is correct to use the term 'socialist education' as the initial stage of communist education. . . .
"The struggle to win the youth is one of the most important aspects of the ideological struggle in the modern world. The outcome of the class struggle of today and tomorrow largely depends on whom the youth will follow."

Source: Communists and the Youth: A Study of Revolutionary Education (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984), pp. 1-11.

US retreat from PSYOP helps Taliban gain 'psychological ground'

2009-09-02T09:37:56-07:00

At a time when the US military has inexplicably moved away from psychological operations, the Taliban in Afghanistan has been gaining "psychological ground."

"There are periods when an enemy does well and seems better trained and fights harder," a senior defense official tells Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post. "The number one indicator we have out there now is that they think they're winning. That creates an attitude, a positive outlook, and a willingness to sacrifice."

This is the exact opposite effect that US policy should be having. US strategy must be to demoralize the Taliban and its commanders, fighters and supporters. US strategy must break their spirit, cause the people to turn against them, and cause the commanders and fighters to turn against one another. US psychological strategy must be to cause the Taliban to implode from within, to induce its leaders to betray and kill one another - not to unite together as has been happening.

If we can't physically hunt down the Taliban commanders, we can accomplish the same objective psychologically by demoralizing the enemy and inducing its self-destruction from within.

One of the problems, of course, has been that the US abandoned the concept of psychological strategy decades ago. And since the 1990s it has given short-shrift to a well-established, successful element of military power: psychological operations or PSYOP.

PSYOP has taken the back seat to a new replacement concept, "information operations," and a larger, nebulous-sounding concept of "strategic communication." Yet the military is not united in its concept of info ops, or IO, and the shift from psychological dominance to information dominance has left us full of information but with little to show for it.

Several senior US commanders have told me that the PSYOP now being waged is "juvenile," "infantile," "embarrassingly basic," "elementary," and so on. But I know for a fact that many of our PSYOP people have devised sophisticated products that the military no longer has the means or worldview to employ.

The US military leadership must re-think its drift away from PSYOP, and restore what's needed to master the psychological battlespace.

"The positive outlook has a basis in fact, the official said, as areas of Taliban influence have expanded," deYoung reports. "They have enough of the landscape that they control to be able to train more and in closer proximity to where they're fighting. And the people [living] there actually believe the Taliban can do something."

"To the Taliban, winning is, in fact, not losing," a US official tells the Post. "They feel that over time, they will ultimately outlast the international community's attempt to stabilize Afghanistan. It's really a game of will to them."

It's time for National Security Advisor Jim Jones to dust off old US military psychological warfare manuals and strategies and order the development of a national-level psychological strategy - and for military commanders to strengthen and empower PSYOP and all it has to offer the warfighter and the nation.

Still time to sign up for my political warfare class

2009-08-27T21:02:00-07:00

There's still time to sign up for my graduate course, Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future. Taught on Thursday nights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, the course is the only one of its kind. It's designed for intelligence officers, military officers and diplomats, but (almost) anyone is welcome to sign up. My Foreign Propaganda class is over-subscribed.

Students will study the ancients: Kautilya of India, Sun Tzu of China, Aristotle and Thucydides of Athens, Virgil of Rome, as well as the ancient Hebrews and Persians and even Attila the Hun. Then we go over the political warfare of the Crusades, medieval and Renaissance Europe (especially Niccolo Machiavelli, who likewise studied the ancients), and six hours of intensive lectures on the political warfare of the American Revolution.

American warfighters will benefit from mastery of Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin's political warfare strategies and tactics; we've helped incorporate them into operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Finally, we study more modern political warriors, including the culturally subversive Antonio Gramsci and - this year, for the first time - community organizer Saul Alinsky and his Rules for Radicals.

My students often say that this is a grueling course with a massive amount of reading - and they're right. It's my toughest course and my favorite one. To sign up, inquire directly at www.iwp.edu, and tell them I sent you. Registration is still open for the fall. The course meets from 6:30-9:30 on Thursday evenings, starting September 3. The course website is www.politicalwarfare.us and contains course information, readings, and class assignments. That site will be password protected once the course begins, so take a peek at it now while you can.

(Image of Niccolo Machiavelli courtesy of my friends at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich)

Political warfare of the American Revolution documents available

2009-08-26T21:03:31-07:00

My new compilation of American Revolutionary War propaganda and political warfare is now available. Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States is a 367-page compendium of some of the best examples of American and British propaganda and political warfare: leaflets, pamphlets, declarations, speeches, letters, essays, articles, official documents, cartoons, and satire.

Authors include Samuel Adams (of course), James Otis, John Hancock, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, the Sons of Liberty, the Continental Congress; and the British Parliament, General Thomas Gage, the dreaded Parliament, and King George III.

I designed this book for my students, as a reader for my Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future course at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of national security and international affairs in Washington, DC. (Class meets Thursday nights starting September 3, and there's still time to sign up.)

It's too soon to order Founding Political Warfare Documents of the United States on Amazon and the other big online booksellers, but the book is available online right now from Crossbow Press.

Great piece of Chinese satire

2009-08-18T23:09:46-07:00

China’s Andy Rooney Has Some Funny Opinions About How Great The Chinese Government Is Here's a fine piece of sophisticated Chinese satire about the communist regime in Beijing, and the flawlessness of its legal system. I don't know if it's from a real Chinese TV show, or something cooked up by those devious tricksters at The Onion. Either way, it's brilliant satire and deserves more attention.

Murtha axes military information operations for FY2010

2009-07-27T10:05:10-07:00

Congressman John Murtha, the powerful House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee chairman, has cut out more than half of President Obama's fiscal year 2010 budget for military information operations (IO) and has singled out specific programs that he demands be terminated. He is also demanding that the Pentagon give Congress a real strategy and explanation of military IO before any funds be authorized for spending.

While the military strongly needs such prodding by Congress to help it focus on more effective strategies and tactics in IO, I'm worried that Rep. Murtha is cutting too deeply and too quickly. Reforms are absolutely needed, but the issue really has to be discussed in detail first, and given careful consideration. According to House Appropriations Committee report language apparently written by Murtha's office:

[President Obama's] budget request includes nearly one billion dollars for Department of Defense information operations (IO) programs. The Committee has serious concerns about not only the significant amount of funding being spent on these programs, but more importantly, about the Department's assumption of this mission area within its rules and responsibilities. Much of the content of what is being produced, and certainly some of the largest cost drivers in these programs, is focused so far beyond a traditional military information operation that the term non-traditional military information operation does not justly apply. At face value, much of what is being produced appears to be United States Military, and more alarmingly non-military propaganda, public relations, and behavioral modification messaging. The Committee questions the effectiveness of much of the material being produced with this funding, the supposed efforts to minimize target audience knowledge of United States Governmental sponsorship of certain production materials, and the ability of the Department to evaluate the impact of these programs.

It's tempting to try to explain Murtha's objections as knee-jerk opposition to the US military mission, or, perhaps, to the relative lack of Information Operations money being "invested" in the congressman's district.

However, some of Murtha's criticism appears justified, and this is the fault of the Department of Defense. For example, the congressional report says that the Pentagon has made "woefully inadequate" justifications for the budget request, which has grown from $9 million in FY2005 to $988 million in FY2010.

More damningly, Murtha's staff writes, "the [Defense] Department's response to attempts by the Committee to obtain a meaningful explanation of funding for these programs clearly indicates that Departmental oversight of these efforts is disorganized, and that a thorough understanding of their scope within the Department's leadership is incomplete."

Unfortunately, based on my experience, I have to agree.

However, I do not agree with Murtha's objection to military IO's broad expansion in "non-traditional" areas - in this case, the military is entirely correct in the direction it's taking. It's the vision and execution that's the problem, and the failure to keep Congress informed. This is a throwing-out-baby-with-bathwater problem. Murtha now wants to axe big parts of military IO, even though he doesn't really understand the concept himself.

His report continues, "The Committee believes that the Department of Defense, and the Combatant Commands which drive the demand for information operations, need to reevaluate IO requirements in the context of the roles and missions of the United States military along with consideration for the inherent capabilities of the military and the funding available to meet these requirements." No problem there. However, Murtha says he is gutting more than half of the requested IO budget before that reevaluation is done, with his staff deciding which programs the Pentagon should eliminate immediately:

"In support of this evaluation, the Committee has determined that many of the ongoing IO activities for which fiscal year 2010 funding is requested should be terminated immediately. The programs for which funding is specifically denied are identified in the classified annex to this report. Accordingly, the Committee has reduced requested funding for information operation programs in the various Service appropriations accounts in which they have requested by a total of $500,000,000."

But wait - there's more. Murtha is nit-picking the war effort, and wants the Pentagon to write its entire IO vision, strategy and programming into a single document for Congress - a document that invariably will be leaked to the press. The report continues:

"Of the remaining funds provided for information operations, the Committee directs that no funds shall be obligated or expended until 30 days after the Secretary of Defense submits a report to the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Department's IO programs. This report should encompass the period from fiscal years 2005 through 2010 and include all Department of Defense information operation programs for which base budget, supplemental, or overseas contingency operation funds have been appropriated or requested. The report shall include: program strategies, target audiences, goals, and measures of effectiveness; budget exhibits at the appropriations account and sub-activity level; spend plans (including positions and other direct costs); and production and dissemination mechanisms and locations. The report shall include an annex for the inclusion of necessary explanatory and supporting classified information. The Secretary shall submit this report in writing not later than 180 days after enactment of this Act."

Meanwhile, Murtha will have military information operations put on hold around the world until he gets his report.

There's no question that such a re-evaluation of IO is in order, and no question that much of the current programming has often been poorly conceived, poorly executed, and wasteful. Lots of reforms are in order. But Murtha's nitpick-with-a-machete approach isn't going to help. Congress has to come up with a more mature and sophisticated way of addressing the issue.