PoliticalWarfare.org

Speaking engagements this season

Thanks mostly to my books Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and The Public Diplomacy Reader, I've been active this season speaking about information operations, psychological warfare and public diplomacy. Here are some of the events where I've been a featured speaker:

August 15: "Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War," 2nd Annual Proteus Futures Workshop, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence University, Center for Strategic Leadership, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania.

September 5: "Semantic Warfare and Ridicule as Weapons Against the Terrorists," Information Operations Workshop, US Strategic Command, Arlington, Virginia.

September 12: "Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War," 3rd Annual World Wide Information Operations Conference, National Reconnaissance Office, Dulles, Virginia.

September 17: Adams Group meeting on Information Operations, Center for Security Policy, Washington, DC.

September 20: Speaker at launch of my book, The Public Diplomacy Reader, The Heritage Foundation, Washington DC.

October 9: Advanced psychological warfare, Joint Senior Psychological Operations Course, US Air Force Special Operations School, Hurlburt AFB/MacDill AFB, Florida.

October 10: US Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. (Ignore security alert when clicking on this link.)

October 21: "Fighting Islamist Extremists in America: Lessons from Fighting the Soviets," Radical Islam 101: Defining America's Enemy and Developing a Strategy for Success, Young America's Foundation, Reagan Ranch Center, Santa Barbara, California.

October 27: "Political Warfare and Propaganda," Association for Intelligence Officers (AFIO) Counter-Jihad Symposium, Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

October 30: "Russia Is Becoming Our Enemy Again," Debate panelist for the motion, Intelligence Squared debate, Rosenkranz Foundation, Asia Society and Museum, New York City.

October 31: "Information Operations: How it is Evolving," AOC Electronic Warfare and Intelligence Operations Conference, Orlando, Florida.

November 29: "Elements of Strategic Psychological Warfare," Conference on the Battle for Hearts and Minds: Soft Power and the Struggle Against Global Jihadism," Link Campus University of Malta, Rome, Italy.

Mark Timothy Coyle, 1965-2007

Another of our brothers-in-arms has died. Mark Coyle was one of my unofficial press agents who booked me on a hundred or more radio and TV shows over the past few years. With an energy and intensity of a true political warrior, Mark put me on talk radio shows across America, from small-town studios to giant syndicates of 200 stations, plus MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. He loved getting us on the airwaves, even if it meant dragging us out of bed early on a Saturday morning.

On the night of October 12-13, Mark drove to Syracuse University with his five year-old daughter Samantha - the little girl was his life - for a much-anticipated homecoming event.

Just outside the city on the New York State Thruway, Mark's SUV crossed the median and struck an oncoming car head-on. Both Mark and the other driver died. Samantha survived with a broken pelvis and other fractures, and was put into an induced coma. She is expected to recover.

Mark was buried on October 18. He was 42 years old. He is survived by Samantha, his parents, and his sister.

Raised in New York state, Mark earned a communication degree from Syracuse, and pursued a career in broadcast and print journalism with the Metronews radio network and United Press International. He moved into the public relations field, serving as a publicist for politicians and policy experts, and as a political campaign strategist. He is widely credited with being one of the most influential figures in the electoral victory of George W. Bush in the state of West Virginia. He worked for Creative Response Concepts of Alexandria and Key Bridge Communications in Arlington at the time of his death.

Thank you, Mark. You did so much for us, and never asked anything in return.

Réquiem aeternam dona eis, Dómine. Et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Resquiescant in pace.

Russian propaganda campaign starts to pay off as US relents on missile defense

Russian leader Vladimir Putin's pressure campaign against a US-built missile defense system for Europe is bearing fruit.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates' announcement today that the US might delay activation of the system showed the Kremlin that its old-style intransigence still works in pressuring the West. Gates' statement, according to the New York Times, was "clearly seeking to mollify Moscow."

This is a terrible move. The Bush Administration seems to have learned nothing from dealing with the Russians. Precedent shows that when Moscow succeeds in delaying a US decision, it will follow with a campaign to push harder to isolate the US from its European allies and ultimately cause Washington to cancel its program.

President Bush has set himself up to become another Jimmy Carter, who got the US into a similar fix in the late 1970s by delaying his decision to deploy the enhanced radiation warhead (ERW, often inaccurately called the "neutron bomb") to deter against a Soviet armored invasion of Western Europe. Carter's delays allowed the Soviets to mount a political warfare counteroffensive within NATO that pressured the president to cave.

The American political position in Eastern Europe is already weakened with the expected change in the government of Poland, which is less pro-American and less anti-Russian than the incumbent. This will give the Kremlin another wedge against the United States.

The US isn't helping things with its lame defense of the anti-missile system. While warning about the danger that a nuclear missile-armed Iran presents, the White House now says that the missile defense system, to be based on Poland and the Czech Republic, can be delayed until Iran does something that looks threatening.

At the same time, everyone knows the Bush Administration is being either disengenuous or naive by continuing to insist that the Russians pose no missile threat to Europe. Indeed, Bush has maneuvered himself into another corner; in order to "prove" that we don't think Russia threatens Europe, the administration now wants to invite the Kremlin to be part of our missile defense system.

Meanwhile, Moscow's threat to reprogram its ICBM force to target European cities still stands, and we pretend not to notice. Ditto for Russia's ongoing strategic nuclear missile modernization program that is proceeding apace, as we look the other way. 

New twist: Lawyers for terrorists sue Blackwater

When Blackwater CEO Erik Prince said that the Center for Constitutional Rights lawsuit against his company is "politically motivated," he was right.

The Center for Constitutional Rights heralds itself as a civil or human rights group, but over the past four decades it has established a firm track record of providing legal assistance, propaganda support, and direct action for terrorists and political extremists who murdered FBI agents and police officers. Its leader is a William Kunstler protege named Michael Ratner (pictured).

Another lawyer in the suit is representing an organization that the US Treasury Department has designated as a fundraising operation for al Qaeda.

I wrote about the terrorist lawyer connection in the October 17 New York Post. The op-ed, titled "Lawyers for Terror," is available here.

The suit is said to be on behalf of ordinary Iraqis whom Blackwater security guards allegedly wounded or killed in the September 16 shootout in Baghdad. The question is, of the million-plus lawyers in the United States, how and why did ordinary Iraqis align themselves with American lawyers who support terrorists? 

TSA's great new terrorist posters

Having written about some silly Homeland Security media at Dulles International Airport in Washington, it's only right that I take note of an excellent poster in other airports.

The poster reminds us why law-abiding travelers have to go through the huge hassle (and expense, if you look at your airline ticket receipt) of going through lengthy, cumbersome and often embarrassing security processes. Affixed to the waist-high corral posts in the security lines, the full-color wanted posters contain the pictures and names of some of the world's most notorious wanted terrorists. I don't have an image of them yet, but they are similar to the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" poster, featured above, released in December 2006.

Those who traveled to Germany in the 1980s will recall the ubiquitous "TERRORISTEN" posters featuring the mug shots of Baader-Meinhof terrorists. Today's US posters are smaller, but similar. If they're at Dulles airport I didn't see them, but I have noticed them at Reagan National Airport in Washington, and in other parts of the country. To those responsible for the poster - and for not caving in to the sensitivity police - Nice job!

Sleazy setup, Geraldo-style

Geraldo Rivera's evil "twin" is his brother Craig, producer of his bottom-feeding Fox News show. Craig played a dirty trick yesterday in his segment on Blackwater USA, the company that provides security for the State Department in Iraq.

Craig wanted me on the show, he said, to talk about the history of private security contractors (PSCs) in America. He had read my September 28 essay in RealClearPolitics.com about how PSCs have been the part of our history since Captain John Smith landed in Virginia in 1607, and Captain Myles Standish was hired to protect the Pilgrims on their Mayflower voyage to establish Plymouth Colony in 1620.

After a pre-interview over the phone yesterday (September 30) he mentioned that Geraldo had a family conflict and wouldn't be doing the show, and that a stand-in, a former prosecutor, would take his place. He asked if I could speak about some of the legal questions surrounding Blackwater and PSCs in Iraq and that I'd probably be asked on the show.

All well and good. What Craig Rivera didn't say was that I'd be up against the mother and brother of one of the Blackwater men, Jerry Zovko, whom extremists murdered and mutilated in Fallujah in 2004. And apparently he didn't tell them that they would be facing someone else, either.

It was a setup. The Blackwater segment came at the end of the show, following prurient segments on child-rape porn and other sensationalistic garbage. It opened with Craig's heavily biased (and factually inaccurate) video about Blackwater. Even so, I thought it would still be a good segment to talk about on the show. Instead, in a separate studio were Jerry Zovko's mother and brother who were there to tell their story - not discuss the history of PMCs.

So when the hostess asked me her first and only question - about legal accountability for Blackwater and other PSCs - the subject deteriorated on takeoff. I mentioned that the firms are now accountable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to the Attorney General, and to the State Department under what I take are very tightly written contracts. I added that such accountability isn't good enough for those who stand to make millions from suing Blackwater. Had I been allowed to finish, I would have blamed a California trial lawyer, not family members, as being the war profiteer.

But I couldn't get that part out because the brother of the dead Blackwater guard started yelling. He appeared to think that the Geraldo producers had set up his mother and him. He was visibly very angry. Who could blame him? It was clear that Craig Rivera hadn't been truthful with the Zovkos either when inviting them on the show. The hostess made a displeased comment, cut off the program, and that was the end of it.

All in all another sick Rivera stunt, setting up the family of a dead man. I sympathize with the Zovko family.

To view the video of the segment on Geraldo at Large, click here.