PoliticalWarfare.org

Washington Times likes my Iran idea

Defense Secretary Bob Gates recently did some more truth-telling when he appeared to say in a memo that the US lacks a strategy to deal with the threats posed by the mullahocracy in Iran. Before the New York Times leaked the contents of the memo on April 18, the Washington Times editors picked up on an extemporaneous talk on political warfare and psychological strategy I gave at the Institute of World Politics on April 15.

Here's the Times editorial, penned by James Robbins, and published April 16:

A counterrevolution in Iran may be the last, best chance for peace in the region, but it can only happen with American help.

J. Michael Waller of the Institute of World Politics argues that the best way for the United States to promote change in Iran is not via sanctions or military action but by helping the Iranian people overthrow the Islamic regime. After the proper preparation, "revolution could happen in a matter of days," he said at a briefing yesterday at the institute's Washington headquarters.

Iran is poised for radical change. The ruling mullahs are widely viewed as illegitimate and corrupt. The people are disaffected and increasingly willing to stand up to the government. The student movement has shown a degree of fearlessness in confronting the regime. And, perhaps sensing change in the air, the Revolutionary Guard Corps has begun to show cracks in its once-fierce loyalty to the Islamic state.

Mr. Waller says he thinks the United States could facilitate an uprising in Tehran with comparatively little effort. Washington could help the opposition communicate with inexpensive prepaid cell phones and proxy Internet servers and supply Flip video cameras and other means of recording and publicizing the course of the rebellion. Voice of America's Persian News Network could focus reports on regime misdeeds and spread inspirational accounts of insiders turning against the power structure in hopes that others might join them. Tehran's state-controlled media regularly ignore such stories, so VOA would report, and the Iranian people would decide.

Most important, the United States could supply strong moral support. A critical factor keeping Iranians from making a decisive move against the theocracy's religious leadership is a sense of doubt that America would back their play. A clear signal to Iranian dissidents that Washington would support a revolt would go a long way toward making it happen.

Mr. Waller contends, however, that the U.S. government is stymied by "a lack of imagination." The checkered history of American-backed coups, such as the one that brought the shah of Iran to power in 1953, have placed any discussion of destabilization off limits. But the type of political warfare Mr. Waller recommends is akin to what American politicians do on a routine basis. "Would [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton dig up dirt on a political opponent to destroy them?" Mr. Waller asked rhetorically. "Well, if so, she could also do it to the Supreme Leader of Iran."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is very sensitive to charges of corruption, yet he reportedly is worth $30 billion, a handsome sum for a humble cleric that must have been amassed through illicit means. The Supreme Leader also reportedly suffers from crippling bouts of depression that could be exploited to paralyze his ability to make decisions during a crisis. "Mrs. Clinton should [apply] the government-wrecking talents she picked up during the Watergate hearings to the Iran issue," Mr. Waller quipped.

Helping overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran would significantly advance U.S. interests in the Middle East. Iran is actively promoting violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Iran supplies anti-American insurgents with arms, materiel and intelligence support. The Islamic republic is directly and indirectly responsible for more American military deaths than any country since the Vietnam War and has yet to be called to accounts for it. The price of a destabilization operation is minuscule compared to the costs of American vehicles destroyed by Iranian improvised explosive devices and the rehabilitation of warriors wounded in those attacks. Unlike the sanctions President Obama is pursuing, this plan will get results.

Some members of the audience urged me to write about this idea in the mass media, so I'll get to work on it and see what happens. It's the best, lowest-cost, most humanitarian way to avoid a war to stop the mad mullahs from building nuclear weapons and to keep them from killing our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it's best for the people of Iran, most of whom have goodwill towards the United States.

COMOPS Journal picks up on ridicule as counterterrorism weapon

COMOPS Journal has picked up on the theme of using ridicule as a weapon against our terrorist and extremist enemies. The idea has been slow to take root, but it is gradually doing so in certain parts of the US government.

Kristin Fleischer writes in her COMOPS Journal article, titled "Ridicule as Strategic Communication":

"Although the suggestion that ridicule and satire are legitimate tools of strategic communication might receive some – dare I say it – ridicule, Waller’s argument is a good one. Ridicule and satire have a long history in warfare, and they have been deployed both offensively and defensively. In the U.S., ridicule was used in the Revolutionary War, both to mock the British troops and to raise the morale of the American fighters. In WWII, domestic use of ridicule targeted Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito."

Fleischer quotes from my 2007 monograph, Fighting the War of Ideas like a Real War and from this PoliticalWarfare.org blog, and also highlights the creative work of blogger Jarret Brachman who coined the term "jihobbyists" as a way of ridiculing armchair terrorists who do naughty things online.

COMOPS Journal is an online publication of the Consortium for Strategic Communication, an initiative of the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University.

The Taliban's Abu Ghraib

WARNING - GRAPHIC, DISTURBING VIDEO

There's no better way to take down an ultra-pious enemy than to prove that its leaders and members are depraved sociopaths. Here is one of the greatest vulnerabilities of the Islamist extremists who preach rigid morality but often act quite differently. Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan are exploiting that vulnerability to help the Taliban tear itself apart.

The target: The notorious Haqqani Network, based in northern Waziristan, Pakistan, and active in eastern Afghanistan.

The US has yet to exploit its full capabilities in this area, with terrabytes of damning captured videos under lock and key.

Fortunately, conservative clergy in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been so reticent. Key Taliban leaders - Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son, Siraj Haqqani - had their own personal pornography ring. The Haqqani Network offered free "medical care" to rural Afghan women and girls, and then Haqqani's people raped them on video. Other Taliban figures, including a physician, were involved.

Once discovered, the Haqqanis tried to cover up their crimes. They had all the women and girls murdered, as well as their physician. However, they couldn't destroy all the video evidence, which enemies recovered. A Pakistani mullah produced a DVD, currently being distributed in Afghan and Pakistani bazaars, to discredit the Haqqanis. Click here for a downloadable link to the video. Even though the worst scenes have been blacked out for modesty reasons, the videos are graphic and disturbing. All the women and girls pictured in the video are now dead. An English translation of the transcript is available here.

The video is of low production quality by Western standards, but is entirely appropriate for local standards. Making media products to discredit the enemy in rural South Asia is not an expensive undertaking.

Here's the payoff from a political warfare point of view: Under local interpretations of Islamic law, the Haqqanis and all others involved must be killed as punishment, with worse torments to follow in the afterlife.

The mullah called for a jihad against the "House of Haqqani" - the leadership of the Haqqani clan.

This is exactly the type of product the US and its allies should be producing as part of their information operations and psychological operations in the AfPak theater and around the world. The Taliban is mainly Pashtun, and many rural Pashtuns have peculiar depravities that, if more widely known, could turn many devout Muslims against the movement and compel conservative mullahs to issue edicts ordering the imposition of traditional Islamic punishments.

A properly run psychological warfare campaign along these lines would also stigmatize Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda due to their decade-old "adoption" by the Taliban - with the terrorists' new fascination with butt bombs as a case in point. The campaign should be designed to morally compel some of those sheltering the terrorists to betray them or hand them over to the mullahs for old-fashioned sharia justice.

Information Operations folks: A new blog is for you

A big welcome to the new Information Operations Institute (IOI) and its blog, IOblog.org, which debuted today.

IOI is run by my friend Joel Harding as a professional trade association for information operations, information warfare, strategic communications and public diplomacy. It's under the wing, so to speak, of the Association of Old Crows (AOC), otherwise known as the Electronic Warfare and Information Operations Association. 

Bookmark 'em all (and subscribe to their feeds, when they add the feature), especially IOblog.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Firepower culture will not bring us victory in Afghanistan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good news! New counterinsurgency manual de-centralizes PSYOP

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

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

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

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

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

New: Parody of al Qaeda training video - CAUTION

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

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

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

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

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

Getting serious about strategic influence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

US retreat from PSYOP helps Taliban gain 'psychological ground'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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