PoliticalWarfare.org

Brilliant results: Chavez proves we can goad our adversaries into doing our work for us

All it took was to expose raw battlefield intelligence and let the facts speak for themselves. The release of the contents of captured FARC computers has forced Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez on the defensive and deliver an astonishing propaganda blow to the narcoguerrillas whom he has been backing.

The sweet results came in yesterday, when Chavez unexpectedly caved under international pressure and publicly gave the FARC a propagandistic heave-ho. Here's the point: Hugo Chavez can be pressured to sell out his friends! His comments are an enormous psychological blow to the 44 year-old guerrilla movement, which through various means has lost several of its top leaders recently.

In an information operation that cost practically nothing, Colombia and its US ally has goaded Hugo Chavez has run a crippling PSYOP against the FARC that we could never do on our own. All we (or most probably, the Colombians who aren't as reticent as we are to release intelligence to fight a good international political warfare battle) had to do was quickly declassify the material and set it out for the world to see. The rest was up to international public opinion, including some great diplomatic work, to set up Chavez to deliver the message that we and the Colombians could not.

Chavez is not a brilliant strategist. To the contrary. It's easy to set him up. He's an egomaniac and a bigmouth. He's a tactician. He can be outmaneuvered. And so it was proven in this case. This is an important lesson for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Here's the astonishing story, as reported from Medellin on June 10 by London's Daily Telegraph:

The Venezuelan president said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] were "history", and called on them to release their hostages and end a decades-long war with the government.

"Enough of so much war, it is time to sit down and talk of peace," he said. "The guerrilla has passed into history.

"You in the FARC should know something: You have become an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us," he said, referring to the United States. "The day that peace arrives in Colombia, the empire will have no excuses."

He directly addressed the organisation's leader, Alfonso Cano, to tell him to release their hostages "in exchange for nothing".

The comments were a complete change of tack for Mr Chavez, who earlier this year asked the European Union to take the FARC off its list of terrorist organisations and recognise it as a legitimate guerrilla army. . . .

What might have prompted the change in heart are the contents of computers seized from guerrilla camp bombed in March by the Colombian air force in Ecuador.

Colombia troops violated Ecuadorean sovereignty to carry out the bombing raid, but killed the FARCs top commander, "Raul Reyes", and seized his corpse and three computers.

They allegedly contain proof that Mr Chavez gave the FARC $300 million and was exploring the possibilities of supplying them with weapons.

Hawks in Washington have already called for Venezuela to be added to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism, on which Mr Chavez's close allies Cuba and Iran lurk. . . . Officially accusing Mr Chavez of supporting the FARC could involve applying economic sanctions, including a ban on dealing with Venezuelan companies, as is the case with Cuba. . . .

Mr Chavez comments are just the latest in a series of setback that have the FARC reeling and put them in their most vulnerable position in 44 years of fighting. 

Chavez further validates this blogger's long-held view that the US and its allies release as much raw battlefield intelligence as possible to the public, in order to expose their enemies, turn the propaganda tide, and put the bad guys on the defensive. As much for the Islamist enemy as for the FARC and others. I argued this last year in Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War.

Such an information warfare tactic helps the good guys win while saving lives and shortening the conflict.

Only a fool would think that Chavez will actually cut off the FARC completely. For now, that's almost beside the point; we must assume he will continue and we must continue to expose him. What our side must do now, though, is to pocket a pivotal political victory and drive that psychological stake through the hearts of the FARC and its ideological supporters around the world: Hugo Chavez has abandoned them, sold them out, and called them a threat to the progressive movement. The FARC is shaken. It's time to break the organization's will to fight, and then break its will to become a political force.

New torch and logo designs for Beijing Olympics

Our friends at the People's Cube have come up with new designs for the torch and logo of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Marking the continued persecution of Tibet, the spirited comrades at the Cube incorporate the horrific self-immolation of a Buddhist monk with the Olympic torch. They redesigned the official logo, which already incorporates a flame motif, with a fire exit sign.

As a bonus, they created a PRC "Official List of Easy People to Beat Up."

(Note: Click on the image for a popup that provides a clearer view.)

Shame and blame: Just the ticket

"I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools."

These aren't the words of a fringe anti-war politician here at home. They're from a Saudi man, a former al Qaeda terrorist and one-time Guantanamo detainee.

Khalid al-Hubayshi is living proof that former enemy combatants can have powerful psychological messages that can be used to undermine and demoralize al Qaeda and other extremist forces. From the perspective of the enemy a shameful, negative message that he is being defeated (and therefore is in disfavor with God) is more powerful than a positive message about the US.

The Washington Post interviewed al-Hubayshi in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the government apparently rehabilitated him from al Qaeda extremism (and presumably toward the regime's official Wahhabi ideology, but I'm getting ahead of myself).

Look at the excellent themes that emerge from al-Hubayshi's story:

• Al Qaeda doesn't help Muslims; it harms them. "I'm sorry we left Afghanistan with so much war and death. I wish we had built hospitals or schools," says al Hubayshi.
• Local Muslims blamed al Qaeda - not the United States - for the deaths inflicted during the war in Afghanistan. "On Sept. 11, 2001, Hubayshi said, he was training Chechen fighters in explosives in the eastern city of Jalalabad. In October, when the first U.S. airstrikes hit Jalalabad, the Afghans 'blamed us . . . and forced us out of the city at night. We slept by the river for two weeks.'"

• Al Qaeda's ideology is shaky. Al-Hubayshi said he was attracted to al Qaeda during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but by 2001 "the fight had changed from defending Muslims to attacking the United States. I wasn't convinced of his ideology. And I wanted to be independent, not just another minion in this big group." 

• Bin Laden is a liar who uses his people. "'What are my duties toward you, and what are your duties toward me, if I join with you?' Hubayshi said he asked. 'That you don't betray us and we don't betray you,' bin Laden responded, and offered him a plot of land, Hubayshi said." Read on.

• Bin Laden is a coward who betrayed his own fighters. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden dug in at Tora Bora to fight the Americans, and called his fighters into the mountain fortress. The Post paraphrases al-Hubayshi's story: "As the airstrikes moved closer, and with the United States' Afghan allies advancing, bin Laden decided to retreat and left one morning. His aides told 300 Arab fighters to make their way to Pakistan and surrender to their embassies. Pakistani authorities stopped the fighters near the border and handed them over to the US military, which sent them to Guantanamo Bay. Hubayshi remains bitter about what he considers bin Laden's betrayal: calling the fighters to Tora Bora and then abandoning them there."
• Bin Laden is no hero. "There was no dignity in what he made us do."
• "Jihad" does not mean to attack innocent civilians. "Hubayshi said he is sorry that Muslims carried out the Sept. 11 attacks because they targeted civilians: 'That was wrong. Jihad is fighting soldier to soldier.'"

There's a lot more in this story. This blogger has discussed problems with Saudi ideology before and will do so again, and has warned against viewing only the immediately violent extremists as strategic threats when subversive Islamist threats remain. But for the time being, let's just look at the example of Khaled al-Hubayshi and the opportunity it brings us to undermine the most immediate violent threat.

A sound psychological warfare effort emerges

The New York Times is reporting on a new military effort to exploit the enemy's ideological and cultural weaknesses in a new mode of attack.

This is an exciting development, because it shows adaptation of a much more sophisticated approach that a handful of psychological warfare experts have been promoting for years. The very report in the Times is almost a psychological operation in itself, revealing what is almost surely a tiny effort and magnifying it into something big - and playing on the paranoia inherent in ideological extremist movements.

While I don't claim credit for any of the developments, as others were working on them apart from my efforts, it's striking to see how the details in the March 18 New York Times article closely parallel the policy recommendations in my book, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War, and in the early drafts which circulated through the Pentagon and CIA since 2004. The ideas in the Institute of World Politics-sponsored book aren't new: They date from the times of the ancient Hebrews, Aristotle and Sun Tzu, and as the Times says, were practiced during the Cold War. But they're new to the war effort.

Here are some of the points in the article that the book advocated. The quotes are taken from the March 18 NYT story. The numbers in parentheses are the corresponding pages in the book.

• Sow confusion, dissent and distrust among the enemy. "To counter efforts by terrorists to plot attacks, raise money and recruit new members on the Internet, the government has mounted a secret campaign to plant bogus e-mail messages and Web site postings, with the intent to sow confusion, dissent and distrust among militant organizations, officials confirm." (65, 74, 130-131)
• Amplify voices of certain Islamic authorities. "At the same time, American diplomats are quietly working behind the scenes with Middle Eastern partners to amplify the speeches and writings of prominent Islamic clerics who are renouncing terrorist violence." (70-73, 122, 139)
• Plant seeds of doubt in terrorists' minds to exploit cultural shame and religious beliefs. ". . . if the seeds of doubt can be planted in the mind of Al Qaeda’s strategic leadership that an attack would be viewed as a shameful murder of innocents — or, even more effectively, that it would be an embarrassing failure — then the order may not be given, according to this new analysis." (123, 132)
• Fight the terrorists in their battlespace: Online. "Terrorists hold little or no terrain, except on the Web. 'Al Qaeda and other terrorists’ center of gravity lies in the information domain, and it is there that we must engage it,' said Dell L. Dailey, the State Department’s counterterrorism chief." (30-31, 144)
• Establish combat teams to exploit terrorist computers for propaganda purposes. "Some of the government’s most secretive counterterrorism efforts involve disrupting terrorists’ cyberoperations. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, specially trained teams have recovered computer hard drives used by terrorists and are turning the terrorists’ tools against them." (122)
• Make better use of captured intelligence to humiliate and demoralize the enemy. "Other American efforts are aimed at discrediting Qaeda operations, including the decision to release seized videotapes showing members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group with some foreign leaders, training children to kidnap and kill, as well as a lengthy letter said to have been written by another terrorist leader that describes the organization as weak and plagued by poor morale."
• Exploit local cultures and rhetoric against the enemy. "Even as security and intelligence forces seek to disrupt terrorist operations, counterterrorism specialists are examining ways to dissuade insurgents from even considering an attack with unconventional weapons. They are looking at aspects of the militants’ culture, families or religion, to undermine the rhetoric of terrorist leaders." (38-75)
• Amplify local voices to sow doubts and break the enemy's will. "For example, the government is seeking ways to amplify the voices of respected religious leaders who warn that suicide bombers will not enjoy the heavenly delights promised by terrorist literature, and that their families will be dishonored by such attacks. Those efforts are aimed at undermining a terrorist’s will. "'I’ve got to figure out what does dissuade you,' said Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Chiefs’ director of strategic plans and policy. 'What is your center of gravity that we can go at? The goal you set won’t be achieved, or you will be discredited and lose face with the rest of the Muslim world or radical extremism that you signed up for.'" (32-34, 138-144)
• Widen rifts between terrorists and their friends. "Efforts are also under way to persuade Muslims not to support terrorists. It is a delicate campaign that American officials are trying to promote and amplify — but without leaving telltale American fingerprints that could undermine the effort in the Muslim world. Senior Bush administration officials point to several promising developments. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, gave a speech last October warning Saudis not to join unauthorized jihadist activities, a statement directed mainly at those considering going to Iraq to fight the American-led forces. And Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, a top leader of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of Mr. Zawahri, the second-ranking Qaeda official, has just completed a book that renounces violent jihad on legal and religious grounds. Such dissents are serving to widen rifts between Qaeda leaders and some former loyal backers, Western and Middle Eastern diplomats say." (123)
• Peel away at the concentric rings of support around the terrorists. "'Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter,' [Pentagon special operations policy planner Michael G.] Vickers said. 'But if we can deter the support network — recruiters, financial supporters, local security providers and states who provide sanctuary — then we can start achieving a deterrent effect on the whole terrorist network and constrain terrorists’ ability to operate." (34-35, 76, 120-123)

Footnote: This is a very productive piece of journalism. I would be remiss in not pointing out that one of the co-writers, Eric Schmitt, was also a co-writer of the February 19, 2002 New York Times report that falsely branded the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) as a disinformation unit. That careless report was the product of a turf battle in which Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke leaked the false story to the Times with the intent of inflicting political damage on OSI and forcing it to be shut down. This is indeed what happened. Clarke has never been held accountable for this action (nor has Schmitt or the New York Times), which set back psychological and ideological warfare operations by three years or more.

Muslim pop artists lead youthful resistance to Islamist extremism

by J. Michael Waller
Serviam magazine, January-February 2008

Al Qaeda has identified one type of enemy that it can’t fight against: Muslim rock stars. U.S. intelligence discovered evidence that the terrorist group had considered murdering top Egyptian performing artists for being “infidels” but decided against it for fear of creating a youth grassroots backlash from Arabs.

That decision not to kill shows the sheer power of an underappreciated weapon in the war of ideas. Just as jazz and rock music were credited with fueling grassroots resistance to Soviet communism, popular culture is making a stand against Islamic extremism.

Pakistani superstar guitarist Ali Zafar illustrates the youthful resistance movement by posting two quotes prominently on his blog. “God does not change the condition of any people unless they themselves make the decision to change,” reads the first, taken from the Quran 13:11. The second is attributed to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “You will have to repent in this generation, not only for the words and actions of the bad people, but also for the appalling ‘silence’ of the good people.”

The 27-year-old Zafar, son of two professors at the University of Punjab, is unabashed about his Muslim faith and his conviction that, more than anyone else on earth, innocent Muslims are the greatest victims of Islamic extremism.

Last year Zafar joined seven other top Pakistani artists to cut a music video to rally young people against terrorism and the extremist Islamic ideology that drives it. The song, “Yeh Hum Naheen,” is in the Urdu language; the title means “This Is Not Us” or “We Are Not That.” Done in a low-tech Bollywood style that’s popular with the intended audience, the six-minute video was recently released in the United Kingdom after its smash success in Pakistan.

Waseem Mahmood, a Pakistani-British author and media consultant, conceived of “Yeh Hum Naheen” to be reminiscent of Bob Geldof’s Band Aid and Live Aid concerts. He says his British-born children were sick of how Islamic extremists were radicalizing young people and trying to mainstream militant distortions of Islam. The goal was to inspire a popular resistance to extremism.

The low-budget music video attracted an impressive number of top performers—eight of Pakistan’s top 10. The production was very much a family affair. The video is “consciously simple,” says Mahmood, whose adult children not only inspired the project but helped produce it. “For me the glamour of the video was in assembling the biggest star cast ever seen in Pakistan in one single shot, something that had never been achieved before,” Mahmood says.

At a time when the U.S. and British governments were flailing in their efforts to counter the extremist narrative around the world, Mahmood’s personal initiative made a big difference in a volatile nation. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes dismissed the performance when briefed on it, and did nothing to promote it.

The market showed how badly the State Department misjudged the cultural message. “Yeh Hum Naheen” went platinum in Pakistan and was such a hit that EMI Records re-released it with English subtitles for the Pakistani diaspora in the U.K., and Mahmood is planning an Arabic version.

Resistance in World’s Largest Muslim Country

Meanwhile, the most popular rocker in the world’s most populous Muslim country had already been building a cultural resistance movement of his own.

“Pop culture is helping to rescue an entire generation of young Muslims from extremists who seek to turn them into ‘holy warriors’ and suicide bombers,” according to the LibForAll Foundation, a North Carolina-based nonprofit founded and chaired by American telecom executive C. Holland Taylor. “LibForAll’s mission is to encourage the growth of peaceful, tolerant and free societies—built upon a foundation of civil and economic liberty and the rule of law—in order to reduce religious extremism and discredit the use of terror worldwide.

“Our primary focus is on supporting moderate and progressive Muslims in their efforts to promote the culture of liberty and tolerance, while preserving the positive values of local, native traditions throughout the entire Muslim world.”

Taylor, who speaks fluent Indonesian, teamed up with two of the most culturally influential leaders in Southeast Asia: a senior statesman and a superstar pop singer likened to Bono of the Irish band U2.

The statesman, Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, was the first democratically elected president of Indonesia, who for years has led the world’s largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, which claims nearly 40 million members. Wahid has been resisting the aggressive and militant strains of Arab-inspired Islamism, from the subversive Muslim Brotherhood to openly pro-terrorist Wahhabi Islamism, promoting peace, tolerance and brotherhood with people of other religions.

The performer, Ahmad Dhani, plays an edgy guitar as leader of Dewa (pictured), the most popular rock group in Southeast Asia. Like Bono or Geldof, Dhani is a thoughtful artist with an activist global vision. Attracted by Taylor’s ideas, he serves on the board of LibForAll.

Armed with his own studio and multiplatinum popularity across Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, Dhani and Dewa took on the terrorists after widespread atrocities against Muslims and Christians in the eastern Indonesian provinces of Maluku and Sulawesi in 2004. Dhani, whose band includes Muslim and Christian members, satirized the killers, an Islamic terrorist group allied with al Qaeda called Laskar Jihad (Warriors of Jihad) in an album titled “Laskar Cinta” (“Warriors of Love”). The album had no title track, so in late 2005 he recorded a single with the same name, which EMI Records released in early 2006 on Dewa’s smash-hit album, “Republik Cinta” (“Republic of Love”).

EMI also bankrolled the production of “Yeh Hum Naheen.” One of the four largest recording labels in the world, the British company and its subsidiaries have signed on a variety of big performing names in various genres, from Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and the Kingston Trio to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Kraftwerk, R.E.M., and Iron Maiden.

“Dewa” means “god” in Javanese and Sanskrit. Rolling Stone said of Dhani and his band, “Armed with big dreams and a name laden with significance, they moved forward, not realizing how enormously their decision to form the band would affect their lives in the years to come.”

Dhani and Taylor designed the Indonesian performance campaign-style to motivate people. “This musical campaign has been endorsed by key Muslim theologians, who are joining with pop culture celebrities and other like-minded leaders in the fields of religion, education, entertainment, government, business and media to encourage people of good will of every faith and nation to unite as ‘warriors of love,’ and to reject all forms of religious hatred and violence,” according to LibForAll.

“Warriors of Love,” which became #1 on MTV Asia’s Ampuh hit program in early 2006, was written to promote what Dhani calls “the values of spiritual love, freedom and tolerance,” using lyrics inspired by verses from the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

“Hey there, all you lovers of peace,” the lyrics call, with a youthful twist that delightfully seizes back the militants’ narrative. “Watch out, watch out and be on guard—for lost souls, anger twisting their hearts, for lost souls, poisoned by ignorance and hate. . . . Warriors of Love, teach the mystical science of love, for only love is the eternal truth and the shining path for all God’s children everywhere in the world.”

Not surprisingly, Islamic extremists have condemned Dhani, a devout Sufi Muslim, as an “infidel” and “Zionist agent.” Militants took the musician to court on allegations of defaming Islam, and, according to LibForAll, “sought to ban his use of rock music to promote a spiritual and progressive interpretation of Islam that threatens the appeal of their own Wahhabi-inspired extremism.”

Militants threatened Dhani’s family, forcing the performer’s wife and children to flee their home. They also threatened to burn music stores carrying his albums. Their attempts not only failed, but prompted a public backlash against their cause.

“Competent Public Diplomacy”

“Muslims themselves can and must propagate an understanding of the ‘right’ Islam, and thereby discredit extremist ideology. Yet to accomplish this task requires the understanding and support of like-minded individuals, organizations and governments throughout the world. Our goal must be to illuminate the hearts and minds of humanity, and offer a compelling alternate vision of Islam, one that banishes the fanatical ideology of hatred to the darkness from which it emerged,” Wahid wrote in an essay for the Wall Street Journal last year.

The newspaper’s powerful editorial page has been a strong supporter of the Indonesian project. “LibForAll is itself a model of what a competent public diplomacy effort in the Muslim world should look like,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens in a profile of Taylor. The American businessman “has engaged influential and genuinely reform-minded Muslims—as opposed to the faux ‘moderates’ on whom [President George W.] Bush lavished praise at the Islamic Center [in Washington]—to articulate and defend a progressive and tolerant version of Islam.”

The foundation has accomplished far more than any U.S. government-sponsored action in the war of ideas. “In its brief life, LibForAll has helped turn back an attempted Islamic takeover of the country’s second-largest Muslim social organization (with 30 million members), translated anti-Wahhabist books into Indonesian, sponsored a recent multidenominational conference to denounce Holocaust denial, brought Mr. Dhani to Colorado to speak to U.S. military brass and launched a well-researched ‘extremist expose’ in order,” the Wall Street Journal says of Taylor, “to get Indonesian society to consciously acknowledge that there is an infiltration occurring of radical ideology, financed by Arab petrodollars, that is intent on destroying Indonesian Islam.”

Even though Undersecretary Hughes met with Dhani, heaped praise on him and proclaimed, “people like you are exactly what we need,” the State Department failed to provide the multiplier effect the artist could have used to magnify his freedom message. Taylor told the Wall Street Journal, “She then asked us whether [Dhani] would be willing to work with the State Department, whether he’d be willing to travel and whether there was anything she could do for him,” says Taylor. “We answered all three questions affirmatively. Since then there’s been a vast silence.”

A New Internationalism

Pakistan's Amazing Pop Talent “Yeh Hum Naheen” is more than a song—it’s a musical movement with some incredible talent. Here are the profiles of some of the performers. more >>

In contrast to the State Department’s indifference, Pakistanis and others worldwide have caught on and say they want more. “I have been inundated with messages of support and congratulations from young Pakistanis around the world who have thanked me for standing up and giving voice to their sentiments,” says Waseem Mahmood. “The response from the international music industry has been equally humbling—major stars, many of whom I have idolized myself, have contacted me to say how much they loved the song and video and would like to collaborate with us on an English version. I guess that we must have done something right!”

Serviam spoke with Taylor in Indonesia just hours after the December 27, 2007, assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Taylor had heard of “Yeh Hum Naheen,” but his foundation had had no contact with the Pakistani performers or producers. When told of the planned versions in Arabic and English, Taylor suggested a performance in Indonesian.

LibForAll and the Yeh Hum Naheen group had long had plans independently to internationalize their musical movement across language and culture. Now Pakistani and Indonesian artists work together with the goal of starting a worldwide Muslim popular cultural movement for religious tolerance and against Islamic extremism.

The LibForAll Foundation seeks out partners in the developing world and supports the activities of those committed to civil, economic and religious liberty. “We believe that the rule of law, an honest and competent judiciary/public administration, free trade, freedom of conscience, free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, the sanctity of contracts and universal education are key to civil and economic development, and to the creation of just, prosperous and tolerant society,” the foundation says in its credo statement.

The foundation’s strategy is based on an “indirect approach” designed to reduce religious extremism and terror by rendering them socially unacceptable, and repugnant, to people and cultures throughout the world.

LibForAll’s patron and senior advisor in Indonesia is His Excellency Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesia’s first democratically-elected president and the longtime head of the world’s largest Muslim organization, the Nahdlatul Ulama, with nearly 40 million members. For more information, contact: LibForAll Foundation, 3524 Yadkinville Road, No. 357, Winston-Salem, NC 27106 USA. info@libforall.org. or visit www.libforall.org.

War of ideas? What, me worry?

Top Bush Administration national security officials practically admit that they are doing nothing to wage the war of ideas against Islamist extremists.

In a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-CT) asked the nation's top security and intelligence chiefs about what they are doing to counter enemy propaganda at home and abroad.

The answer, as Bill Gertz reports in the Washington Times: "Not much."

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told the Senate that the FBI is doing nothing to combat enemy propaganda (even though the Bureau routinely did such things since before World War II). All it's doing, he said, is "outreach" to Muslims here at home so they "understand the FBI" and address the "radicalization issue," he said, according to Gertz.

National Counterterrorism Center chief Scott Redd acknowledged in the hearing that the "war of ideas" is one of the "four pillars" in American war strategy, but said there is no "home office" for that pillar in this country.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell "said the intelligence community does not conduct any battle of ideas against terrorists in the United States unless there is a foreign connection," Gertz writes. Fair enough. But is it acting on a comprehensive strategic level, or are the efforts still piecemeal?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, reports Gertz, "also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas. The department's incident management team, he said, is focused on civil rights or civil liberties — not fighting terrorists' ideology." Not even when the ideology threatens citizens civil rights and civil liberties.

Pointed critique proposes solutions for Iraq IO failure

In a blunt but productive critique of Coalition information operations (IO) in Iraq, an IO practitioner offers a way out of the mess.

Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) Senior Fellow Andrew Garfield writes in the Middle East Quarterly that US-led efforts to communicate with Iraqis have been unimaginative, disorganized, largely irrelevant to the target audiences, slow to anticipate or respond, and often wasteful of funds and resources. The bottom line, he argues, is that current IO strategy is not supporting the warfighters in Iraq. The enemy is running IO circles around us.

My read on Garfield's article is that our IO policy is getting our guys needlessly killed.

The "insurgents," Garfield says, have mastered various forms of political and cultural communication, from high-profile images and videos of their attacks to the simple stuff like grafitti, art, poetry, songs, leafletting, publishing and multimedia productions.

While US-led forces should reign supreme in all those areas - and monitor the enemy's visual imprint to diminish its psychological presence - the effort fumbles. "The slow speed of the U.S. military's clearance process—typically it takes three to five days to approve even a simple information operations product such as a leaflet or billboard—creates an information vacuum that Iraqis fill with conspiracy theories and gossip often reflecting the exaggerations or outright lies of insurgents and extremists," Garfield says.

The insurgents, terrorists and militiamen are adept at exploiting TV cameras to project their message globally, while "US authorities handicap themselves. US military lawyers fear 'blowback' to US domestic audiences, which they interpret as a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibited domestic distribution of propaganda meant for foreign audiences. As a result, US commanders forbid coalition authorities to openly engage on the Internet. The decision has ceded this key tool to the Iraqi insurgents," he adds.

Indeed, the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 pertains only to the State Department. Congress narrowly defined the law to pertain exclusively to State and to what became the US Information Agency, which has since been absorbed into the State Department. Military lawyers and PAOs who invoke Smith-Mundt to limit Defense Department information ops are flat wrong. This blog published an alert about Smith-Mundt last May.

Garfield identifies wastefulness in US-funded information operations: "While the coalition has spent a hundred million dollars on advertising in Iraq, the strategy of re-awarding huge contracts to advertising firms who spend tens of millions of dollars on nationally-broadcast radio and television commercials but who cannot demonstrate effective audience penetration is questionable. Local Iraqi firms have designed the most effective commercials at a relatively low cost. For example, one commercial showing the impact of an improvised explosive device on an Iraqi family cost only $15,000 to make. However, most coalition advertisements, perhaps one hundred times more costly, lack resonance and relevance among ordinary Iraqis, even as they saturate the airwaves."

Some US-funded ads, he says, have done more harm than good. Lack of IO coordination is another problem: "There is an interagency process meant to coordinate the coalition's information campaign but, in reality, this becomes a forum for information sharing rather than a mechanism for command and control."

Garfield calls for "a single command authority" to "guide and supervise all information and psychological operations and public affairs staff," rather than have the current competing structure with many chiefs and little grand strategy.

A slow message approval process has killed excellent initiatives. Senior officials, Garfield writes, "take days if not weeks to clear information operations products, even excellent products developed by Iraqis for their own ethnic groups." Approval of an advertisement for a newspaper in an Iraqi city like Fargo, North Dakota, requires passing through a colon of staffers, lawyers and senior officers up to the three-star level. Garfield proposes a quick approval process modeled after that of private news organizations.

Garfield provides a mother lode of observations and ideas to fix the current chronic IO problem in Iraq. Everyone in the IO community should read and debate it. To read the article, click here.

Brilliant. Finally.

It was just two words, but they were said at the right time and by the right person. Their simplicity ordinarily would earn no accolades. But my expectations are so low that the words sparkle of brilliance.

Osama bin Laden is "virtually impotent." That's how a senior White House official responded to news of the terrorist's recent video. Twice. The official is a woman.

It's a remarkable recovery for an administration that has branded bin Laden like no other - and persists in doing so this very week. President George W. Bush couldn't resist telling reporters that he'd seen the bin Laden video and offering his opinion about it. Bad move - the statement confirmed that the al Qaeda leader had won peer status with the President of the United States, and reaffirmed bin Laden's branding campaign; he is one of the few in the world who can make a video and get near-instant comment from the American president.

So what a nice rhetorical kick in the البيض for a female American official to say that the video shows that bin Laden is "virtually impotent." 

White House homeland security adviser Frances Townsend (pictured) said it twice on Sunday - on Fox News Sunday and CNN's Late Edition. She said it as if taunting bin Laden. "This is about the best he can do," she said. "This is a man on the run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes."

Way to go, Fran. Rather than make bin Laden look ten feet tall, we should be tearing him down to size. Looks like someone at the White House gets it.

On enemy propaganda, Pentagon tells it like it is

Three cheers for Under Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman! With top White House officials acting like henpecked husbands as they quaver in fear of upsetting the Senate Armed Services Committee majority, the Pentagon policy chief tells it like it is.

He told a very prominent and very aggressive senator that her campaign rhetoric "reinforces enemy propaganda."

It's about time the administration took on the people who are trying to do to Iraq what they did to South Vietnam: run their mouths without a care about how they might play into the enemy's propaganda strategy.

Edelman told presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that her cut-and-run talk was helping the enemy. "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," Edelman said in a June 16 letter obtained by the Associated Press.

The cut-and-run rhetoric opened the way for the Hanoi communists to conquer South Vietnam. It rewarded Hezbollah for killing more than 240 of our servicemen in a single Beirut attack. And it gave Islamist thugs the confidence that by brutalizing the dead bodies of our Army Rangers on CNN, we would become demoralized and quit. Just as it is encouraging the Islamist terrorists to murder our servicemen every day in Iraq with roadside bombs.

"Such talk," Edelman warned Clinton, "understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."

If the Senate majority party is working as hard as it can to force us to withdraw, then why should our nominal Iraqi allies cooperate with us? And why should the enemy let up its made-for-TV attacks?

Calling Edelman's comments "at once outrageous and dangerous," Clinton's office says the senator is going to complain to Edelman's immediate boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Keep it up, Secretary Edelman. Don't let the growing number of bed-wetters in the administration slow you down.

Masterwork: RFE/RL briefing on Iraqi insurgent websites

Here's a real masterpiece of research that deserves a lot of attention: A 70-minute briefing on the insurgent and terrorist websites in Iraq.

It's relevant scholarship at its finest. I received a sneak preview of this presentation last spring, and thought it so important that I arranged a live briefing for senior-level policymakers in Washington prior to the report's completion. Now it's available to the public.

"The greatest strengths of the Iraqi Sunni-based insurgency's media strategy - decentralization and flexibility - are also its greatest weaknesses," according to a report released June 26 by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

"The book-length report, Iraqi Insurgent Media: The War Of Images And Ideas by RFE/RL regional analysts Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo, provides an in-depth analysis of the media efforts of Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the majority of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq," according to a release.

The 26,000-word report and a 70-minute audio briefing are available by clicking here. It's true to the highest standards of the old RFE/RL Research Institute and is one of the most relevant pieces of work to help win the war. I can't recommend this report highly enough.