PoliticalWarfare.org

White House surrenders Iranians to the regime

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.

Fear of public opinion might prompt Obama to help Taliban survive

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.

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

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?

Squandering the presidency's political prestige

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."

Taliban targets German public opinion to oust Merkel government

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'

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.

Israel Defense Forces make good use of YouTube

Taking its case to the world through an accelerated use of intelligence for persuading the world about its cause, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) now has its own information-packed video channel on YouTube.

Since December 2008, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has run IDFNADESK, a YouTube channel, showing IDF videos of Hamas operations, IDF counterterrorism operations, interviews with IDF officials, and other multimedia. The channel contains dozens of videos and other IDF links.

Some of the videos are in Arabic and contain English subtitles; others are narrated in American-style English.

The IDF public affairs website is idfspokesperson.com.

Word is traveling around the Internet today that YouTube has told the IDF that it would pull at least one video from the IDFNADESK site, allegedly due to not enough people logging in. This claim is difficult to believe because IDFNADESK is the #2 most subscribed YouTube channel in Israel, with more than 2.3 million channel views since December. The video in question, about an operation against Hamas and narrated by an Arabic-speaking IDF officer, has been viewed more than 354,000 times.

IDFNADESK has spawned some opposition video sites as well, showing how the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is well under way online.

Criminalizing criticism of war criminals

The Russian regime is endorsing the criminalization of speech that criticizes Josef Stalin's military strategy and tactics during World War II. It's part of an official campaign to glorify the totalitarian Soviet past in order to legitimize the chekist mafiocracy's grip on economic and political power.

The repression is aimed not only at Russian citizens, but at foreign dignitaries, including presidents of other countries who criticize Stalinism and the Soviet invasions and occupations of countries across Central and Eastern Europe.

The proposed legislation, called "Against the Rehabilitation of Nazism," is modeled after anti-holocaust-denier laws in democratic European countries, Russian regime officials say.

John Wendle, Time magazine's Moscow correspondent, writes, "Liberals in Russia fear the law may punish and silence new - and possibly more accurate - interpretations of the country's history and solidify the government's control of the past. But the real aim of the law may be to provide the Kremlin with another rhetorical tool with which to attack governments of former Soviet Republics and Eastern Bloc countries that have increasingly moved towards the West."

Russia's history of World War II remains steeped in Stalinist propaganda, with the very name - Great Patriotic War - a holdover of what Stalin called the war after Hitler betrayed him and invaded the USSR in June, 1941. Stalin and Hitler started World War II together, with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 23, 1939, but this does not appear in the official Russian history.

Since 2009 marks the 70th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin pact to invade and occupy Central and Eastern Europe, it would be a good time to remember the real history of the war - and encourage the Russian government to do the same.

Seven years after 9/11: The world isn't convinced that Al Qaeda did it

Here's some food for thought: Seven years since the 9/11 attacks, large numbers of people around the world do not believe Al Qaeda was the perpetrator. An increasing number believe that the US was behind the attack so it could justify an invasion of Iraq.

That's the startling result of a poll of 16,000 people in 17 countries. WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted the poll, which asked who was responsible for the terrorist attacks in 2001. The Voice of America carries the story.

The results lead to two major conclusions. First, the credibility of the United States is at an all-time low. Second, a lot of people are extremely gullible and willing to believe anything.

Of people in the 17 countries surveyed, majorities in only 9 believed Al Qaeda was behind the attacks. Among the 17 countries, an average of 46 percent blamed Al Qaeda, and 15 percent say the United States government did it. That's twice as many as those who pin the blame on Israel.

"I think it is very striking, given that even bin Laden has publicly made statements affirming that al-Qaida was behind the September 11th attacks," WorldPublicOpinion.org Director Steven Kull tells the Voice of America.

"In Turkey, 36 percent have this view [that the US did it], Turkey, one of our allies. Palestinian territories, 27 percent have this view. In Mexico, 30 percent have this view, and perhaps most surprising of all, in Germany, 23 percent have the view that the United States was behind the 9/11 attacks," Kull says.

"Some people backed themselves into the belief, saying, 'Well, the US had an interest in this, therefore it is clear that it must be the case.' And that interest that is suggested is that the US was looking for an excuse to go to war with Iraq," according to Kull.

A lot of Muslims are still in denial. Muslims are the most likely demographic set to blame the United States, saying that the attacks were morally wrong and contrary to Islamic belief.

"So it is very hard for them to accept that a Muslim could do such a thing. At the same time, they do feel some resonance with many of the things that bin Laden says, so they feel some conflict about this," Kull said. "They are basically using a kind of defense mechanism to deny the strong evidence that al Qaida was behind 9/11, as a way of resolving the kind of internal conflict they feel."

"Broadly, I think what this tells us is that there is a lack of confidence in the United States around the world. It is striking that even among our allies, the numbers that say al-Qaida was behind 9/11 do not get above two-thirds, and barely become a majority. So this is a real indication that the United States is not in a strong position to, in a sense, tell its story. The American narrative is not as powerful in the world today."

Tanker war heats up

Interests relating to an enterprise partly owned by Russia is heating up a propaganda campaign aimed at the American public, and it's highly misleading.

The French-German-Russian aerospace consortium EADS has spent millions marketing an Airbus in the US as a next-generation aerial tanker for the US military.

It's a phony campaign. The propaganda effort tries to obscure the fact that the proposed KC-45 tanker is indeed a European aircraft, designed and manufactured by EADS of France, a company allegedly built on French industrial espionage against American aircraft manufacturers and subsidized by the French and German governments, and partly owned by the Russian government.

The North American subsidiary of EADS has teamed with a brand-name US partner, Northrop Grumman, and erased the Airbus name from the modified A330 airliner to make it look American. The plane will be assembled in Alabama of French, German and Spanish components.

Northrop Grumman's own online info page about the KC-45 admits the A330 part, but conveniently omits any reference to Airbus or EADS.

A domestic propaganda campaign has transformed the Airbus A330 tanker into the "Northrop Grumman KC-45." Northrop Grumman has been flooding Washington airwaves with ads touting the American-sounding aircraft. New, scrappy ads that trash Boeing are now being run in the name of a front group claiming to represent workers in Alabama (where the KC-45 would be assembled).

I'm no apologist for Boeing, but only note that the US aircraft giant has passively sat while a French-German-Russian conglomerate has horned in on its business with a grotesquely misleading campaign that can only be called deception and fraud.

(The "I am EADS" illustration, by the way, is a parody of part of the EADS propaganda campaign that sought to portray the company as an American firm.)