PoliticalWarfare.org

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.)

A sound spanking for crybaby terrorists

Widow Beats Terrorist with Shoe

With women enjoying near-subhuman status among most Islamist extremists and the sole of the shoe being a cultural metaphor for dirt and shame, Iraqis have developed a way to punish terrorists.

That's right: Allowing a woman to beat terrorists with a shoe.

It might sound odd to American ears, but for Iraqis and others in that part of the world, it's perfectly appropriate. This video is old - aired on Iraqi TV in 2005 - but given the previous posting I thought it worth highlighting.

The woman identified three terrorists as the murderers of her husband. She is apparently at a police station, smacking them around with a shoe. The terrorists are sitting on the ground, appropriately stripped of their ability to terrorize, sobbing like crybabies.

Overall an appropriate use of humiliation to tear down the terrorists' stature a notch or two, which is probably why Iraqi TV aired the clip in the first place. Too bad we Americans are too squeamish about such things, whereby we've worked ourselves up so much that hurting terrorists' feelings is now considered a war crime.

A fake al Qaeda leader, a cross-dressing cleric, and a bunch of losers in the land of Sodom

It must be quite a letdown for Islamist fanatics to learn that one of their leaders in Iraq doesn't exist and that their chief "holy man" tough guy in Islamabad is a chicken who wears women's clothing.

Two more rogues in the parade of losers masquerading as moral leaders of the new revolution.

Remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian sociopath with a fetish for beheadings and who knows what else? Remember the captured video showing that he didn't even know how to fire a machine gun, and how his aide was such a nitwit that he didn't have the sense not to grab a recently-fired automatic weapon by its 400-degree heated barrel? There are plenty of these guys out there. We should be heaping shame and ridicule on them as generously as we fling lead and steel.

During a long standoff with Pakistani authorities in June and early July, Red Mosque leader Maulana Abdul Aziz (in picture) brainwashed young captive girls to want to become "martyrs." But when the going got tough and Pakistani forces moved in and drilled his terrorist brother, the "holy man" tried to sneak away among a group of women and children, dressed head-to-toe in a ladies' black burqa.

“Our men spotted his unusual demeanor,” a Pakistani security official told Arab News on July 5. “The rest of the girls looked like girls but he was taller and had a pot belly.”

This week in Iraq, US forces say they unmasked another phony: the leader of the "Islamic State in Iraq," an al Qaeda affiliate or subsidiary. The leader, who went by the name Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, passed himself off as an Iraqi nationalist. Over the past year, al-Baghdadi has managed to escape attack.

In fact, according to American forces cited in the International Herald Tribune, al-Baghdadi doesn't exist at all. He's an elderly actor named Abu Abdullah al-Naima who records audio messages in al-Baghdadi's name. The reason: to cover up the fact that the organization is run by foreigners.

Al Qaeda invented al-Baghdadi to head its Iraqi front organization, then devised a plan to have its foreign members in Iraq swear loyalty to him as an Iraqi. The supposed #2 al Qaeda figure, Ayman al-Zawahiri, reinforced the deception by referring to al-Baghdadi in his Internet videos.

So the pot-bellied Islamists are wearing women's clothing in Islamabad, and can't even get a real Iraqi to lead al Qaeda in Iraq. Which brings us to the last item of the day: These guys are a bunch of losers!

Why do we accord them the respect befitting a worthy adversary? Why don't our spokesmen apply more appropriate labels?  Why the morally neutral language applied to them? The Islamist enemy is scum. The leaders are cowardly cross-dressers, when they exist at all.

So why don't we apply the same labels to them as Margaret Thatcher did to the IRA? A commentator asks that question in - of all places - the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the Chronicle's July 20 edition, University of Pennsylvania philosopher Carlin Romano writes, "What might we argue in favor of calling terrorists names?

"Let's mention just one key goal: the education of the world's Muslim youth. Instead of hearing moral praise and encouragement for terrorism from jihadists, which then gets mixed in their minds with the nonjudgmental, tactical talk of Western officials and media, they'd have to absorb a steady stream of insults of terrorists' intelligence, morality, decency, and reasoning. Young Muslims would have to get used to hearing jihadist heroes described as savages, scum, and uncivilized losers, along with the reasons why. It would intellectually force them, far more than they are forced today, to choose between two visions of the world.

"We should not minimize the thirst for respect among terrorists and their potential sympathizers. When we treat terrorists only as tactical foes, as though we're too jaded for moral talk, we raise the self-respect of terrorists and their appeal to young people."

Chopping up such vermin with bullets and bombs is only part of the fight, but it won't win the war. A most potent companion weapon is words - the unvarnished truth. If we use the truth better and more creatively, we can defeat the enemy.

It looks like our military in Iraq has caught on. Its exposure of the fake al Qaeda leader is an encouraging sign to split the terrorists and insurgent cadres from their commanders. We can defeat this freak show. Let's support our warfighters' change in approach.

Spoof mocks congressional Iraq resolution

Supporters of President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq are fighting back on his opponents.

"Jihadists Against the Troop Surge," a spoof front group in New York, ran a poster today depicting the Democrat leadership in Congress as playing into the hands of the terrorists in Iraq.

The poster is the creation of the People's Cube, a political satire website.

Click on the image for a larger view of the poster. Click here for the direct link to the Al-Zawahiri poster and accompanying satirical story.

The People's Cube also ran a mock front page of the New York Daily News, headlined, "CONGRESS TO TROOPS: DROP DEAD."

Larry, Curly and Osama: Ridiculing terrorists as a weapon of war

by J. Michael Waller
Los Angeles Times, May 21, 2006

OSAMA BIN LADEN says he doesn't fear dying. He says he fears being humiliated.

So let's give it to him.

Bin Laden and others have thrived on the almost obsessive American focus on them as personal rivals. We give them the coveted "Enemy of the Great Satan" brand whenever our national leaders single them out by name.

What would happen if we ridiculed the terrorists instead?

Would young people still flock to become "fighters" and suicide bombers? Would they still leave on their doomed missions with tearful support from their mothers, fathers, grandparents and the pretty girls at home, blessed by a cleric who justifies murder as a noble sacrifice in Allah's name?

Terrorism is psychological warfare: to accomplish much with little by manipulating people's perceptions, emotions and actions. That's why the terrorists like soft targets — innocent civilians in a skyscraper or mosque — that have little if any military value. The killings serve to terrorize civilized society, Muslim and otherwise. Ridicule strips the terrorist of his power. If we stop being afraid, we turn the icons of fear into objects of contempt.

The U.S. military may be developing its war-fighting skills to do just that. Recently it shattered the seemingly invincible persona of Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose beheadings and bombings have terrorized Iraq and the world, by pairing his latest video release with captured raw outtakes.

The outtakes showed Zarqawi not as a fearsome fighter but as a confused, bumbling fat boy in American sneakers and a black ninja costume who couldn't figure out how to operate a simple machine gun. (And even if it wasn't simple, there was no way to know that from the outtakes.) For the first time ever, the world saw Zarqawi's weak side: a pudgy, vulnerable, even contemptible creature who can't fight like a real warrior.

To most Americans, ridiculing terrorists might seem trivial, even sophomoric, as a weapon of war. But dictators and terrorists, being unable to function in the free market of ideas, need propagandists to control (not merely spin) their public images. They require obedience or acquiescence — a fear factor that cannot long coexist with put-downs and snickering. (That's why, six months after taking power in 1959, Fidel Castro had signs placed in official buildings that read "Counterrevolutionary jokes forbidden here." One of the first publications he shutdown was Zig Zag, a humor magazine.)

Pride, honor and shame are profound in much of Arab Muslim culture. The Zarqawi video was devastating. That's why Iraqi television and other moderate Arab media gave it plenty of play.

The ancients of the Middle East understood the mortal power of ridicule. In the Talmud, the basis of Jewish law, the Hebrews proclaimed, "All mockery (leitzanut) is prohibited except for mockery of idol worship."

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, weaponized ridicule. From the third to fifth years of his annunciation as a prophet, Muhammad deployed warrior poets ahead of his invading armies to soften the targets through mockery and derision.

Back in simpler times, Americans reflexively ridiculed their enemies. In a 1940 episode of "The Three Stooges," Moe did a ridiculous impression of Hitler while Larry heiled as propaganda minister, and Curly dressed as Goering with his belly and buttocks festooned with medals.

When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the Army turned film studios into wartime propaganda mills. Humor about sacrifices at home and ridicule of the enemy were staples in Disney and Warner Bros. productions that starred Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny. (In fact, "Donald Duck in Nutziland" won an Academy Award in 1942.) To home audiences, the parody brought comfort and reassurance that, mighty as the enemy was, we could still defeat it.

In a January 2006 recorded message, Bin Laden signed off by saying: "I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed."

If he's not afraid to die, let's pour on the humiliation.

As long as the terrorists can make themselves look like fearsome winners — and as long as we inadvertently help them — they will always recruit followers. But nobody likes to follow a loser.

Related Links
Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism
USA Today features IWP research on weaponizing ridicule
PSYOPS by ridicule: New York Times says IWP paper got Pentagon review

PSYOP by ridicule: New York Times says Pentagon reviewed IWP paper

The New York Times reports that officials in the Pentagon and Iraq have reviewed an Institute of World Politics paper that called for a strategic psychological campaign of ridicule against terrorist leaders and other adversaries.

The IWP paper "has been circulating at the Pentagon and among military commanders with experience in Iraq recently," the New York Times reported in its May 6 edition.

The paper, titled Ridicule: An instrument in the war on terrorism, argues for the US to exploit information and intelligence to make terrorist leaders look weak and foolish in the eyes of their followers and would-be supporters, to undermine their authority and appeal.

The New York Times article, which was critical of such a strategy, reported, "'In Arab and Muslim societies, pride and shame are felt much more profoundly than they are in Western culture,' said J. Michael Waller, a professor at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington. 'To find video like this that can cut him [Zarqawi] down to size and discredit him is a real way of fighting terrorism.' A paper written by Professor Waller advocating the use of ridicule against the insurgents has been circulating at the Pentagon and among military commanders with experience in Iraq recently, according to several military officers."

Waller, who leads IWP's program on the study of public diplomacy and political warfare, has long argued for the US to emphasize psychology and political action as strategic weapons in Iraq and against terrorists and other adversaries worldwide.

In interviewing the author for the story, a Times reporter told Dr. Waller that officers on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and others in Iraq, said the paper helped inspire the recent release of raw video footage of Zarqawi. IWP is not making that claim.

In the video, Zarqawi is shown wearing American sneakers and a ninja costume as he struggled to operate a US-made machine gun (pictured). Zarqawi has assumed larger-than-life proportions in much of the world by controlling his image through the release of edited videos. The release of raw outtakes from al Qaeda's own propaganda video was intended to destroy that image.

Drafts of the IWP ridicule paper circulated in the Pentagon and in Iraq in January. The document is part of a series on public diplomacy and political warfare designed to advance IWP's curriculum in the strategic communication discipline.