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Why victory is so elusive for us

 
By all indications, the US and its Coalition partners have won the war in Iraq. Despite everything, and regardless of whether the US should have gone into Iraq in the first place, the US and its partners won the war.

Somehow we have trouble recognizing victory.

And what about Afghanistan? The last time Barack Obama called for victory in Afghanistan, as far as I can tell, was during the 2008 campaign. 

That prompted me to look at how the US military defines "victory." Going to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, the definitive Joint Chiefs of Staff keeper of the American national security lexicon, we search for an official definition of victory. 

The screenshot above, taken today, March 17, 2011, shows how the Pentagon defines victory: It doesn't.

See for yourself: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/

Something to think about as we send more of our people to kill and die.

Exclusive: New 'Strategic Influence' book is finally available

After years of anticipation, my anthology, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare is now available to the public.

The book won't be available in bookstores or on Amazon until October, but you can get it online through this blog.

Strategic Influence is the work of 13 scholars and practitioners in the fields of public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare. The book surveys the subjects from the American Revolution, through the Cold War, to present-day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We strove to make the book the best single volume on the subject. It's a combination of scholarly, personal narratives and the policy essays from some of the best minds in the business - some recognizable, some emerging. Here's the table of contents:

• The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers. J. Michael Waller, Institute of World Politics;
• What 'Strategic' Public Diplomacy Is. Carnes Lord, Naval War College;
• Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Carnes Lord;
• Cultural Diplomacy, Political Influence and Integrated Strategy. John Lenczowski, Institute of World Politics;
• Mediators of the Message: The Role of Religion and Civil Society in Public Diplomacy. Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation;
• Conducting a War of Ideas with Public Diplomacy. Robert Reilly, former director, Voice of America;
• Counterpropaganda: We Can't Win Without It. Herbert Romerstein, former director, Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, U.S. Information Agency;
• Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda. Andrew Garfield, Glevum Associates;
• The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful Template for Strategic Influence. Herbert Romerstein;
• Political Warfare: Means for Achieving Political Ends. Angelo Codevilla, Boston University;
• Political War vs Political Terror: Case Study of an American Success Story. John J. Tierney, Institute of World Politics;
• The Importance of Words. J. Michael Waller;
• Hearts and Minds Online: Internetting the Messages in the Infosphere. Hampton Stephens, World Politics Review;
• Toward a Theory of Low-Intensity Propaganda. Stephen C. Baker, Institute of World Politics;
• Red-Teaming Strategic Communications and Political Warfare. David Spencer, National Defense University;
• A Comprehensive Approach to Information Operations. Andrew Garfield;
• Synchronizing Rhetoric, Policy and Action. Juliana Geran Pilon, Institute of World Politics;
• An Immediate-Term Wartime Message Strategy. J. Michael Waller;
• Getting Serious About Strategic Influence. J. Michael Waller.

Strategic Influence is published by the Institute of World Politics Press. The original edition was published for restricted circulation in 2007. This edition was revised in 2009 but was not available until today, and will not be generally available to the public until October 2010.

The book is only available at present - as a paperback and as an e-book - by clicking here.

The Case for Calling Them Nitwits (The Atlantic)

Hats off to Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, who write in The Atlantic about what nincompoops many of our terrorist enemies are. In a piece titled, "The Case for Calling them Nitwits," Byman and Fair note, "They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine. Can being more realistic about who our foes actually are help us stop the truly dangerous ones?"

Some highlights from the article:

• "Even in the aftermath of the botched Times Square bombing earlier this spring, the perception persists that our enemies are savvy and sophisticated killers."
• "But this view of the jihadist community is wildly off the mark. To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled—people like Mohamed Atta . . . but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable. Acknowledging this fact could help us tailor our counterterrorism priorities—and publicizing it could help us erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding."
• "Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks—or attempted attacks."
• "If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea—sometimes rather graphically."
• "One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow."
• "Tawdry though this predilection for porn may be, it is not necessarily trivial. There is, after all, potential propaganda value in this kind of jihadist behavior. Current US public diplomacy centers on selling America to the Muslim world, but we should also work to undermine some of the myths built up around our enemies by highlighting their incompetence, their moral failings, and their embarrassing antics. Beyond changing how the Muslim world perceives terrorists, we can help ourselves make smarter counterterrorism choices by being more realistic about the profile and aptitude of would-be attackers."

It's great to see this view hitting the mainstream. Arguing that we should be tearing apart the terrorist enemy by mocking him, ridiculing him and pointing out his hypocrisies, has been a bit lonely. Or as Kim Jong-il says in  Team America, "so ronery and sadry arone."

(OK, someone has dared me to refer to the infamous infrared US military gun camera of an Iraqi local - civilian or insurgent is unclear - having inappropriate relations with a farm animal. Our military people have captured a lot of video of insurgents and terrorists engaging in such behavior. I won't embed the actual video on this site, though I did post a still on the top left. For the morbidly curious - and you know who you are - click here for a tasteless, crass, narrated version of the video. A less tasteless, more humorous version, set to music, is available here, to Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch," popularly known by the song's catchy refrain, "Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.")

Images, top to bottom: (1) innocent donkey being victimized by Iraqi targets, as seen through US military infrared gun camera; (2) Christmas underwear bomber Abdulmutallab, with his malfunctioning explosive underwear; (3) Taliban with mismatched shoes, being ridiculed on Pakistani military website; (4) Islamic radical who mistakenly sets himself afire after torching the American flag; (5) Kim Jong-il, as seen in Team America; (6) the Saudi butt bomber who failed to kill Saudi Arabia's counterterrorism chief but blew himself up with a pound of plastic explosives and a cell phone detonator jammed up his bottom.

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.

PSYOP food for thought from the US Civil War

If we were as tough against the Islamist extremists today as we were against, say, the Confederacy during the American Civil War, we'd have a heck of a PSYOP campaign going on.

Take a look at this Union Army PSYOP leaflet from the Headquarters of the Second Infantry Division for West Virginia, from April 1865. The enemy was making its last gasp, running guerrilla attacks on trains, killing local pro-government civilians, and murdering Union soldiers.

Brig. Gen. Samuel Sprigg Carroll, the Second Infantry Division commander (pictured) knew that pro-Confederacy locals made the attacks possible, and he held the locals responsible. His General Orders No. 18, issued in Cumberland, Maryland, on April 3, 1865, recognizes civilian involvement in the guerrilla attacks and declares a PSYOP plan to hold local civilians accountable.

Perhaps this has lessons for Coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan concerning how to  deal with locals who help the insurgents to attack military convoys and harm the local population, but some how I doubt we could do it legally or even morally. Nevertheless, here's the text of General Orders No. 18. I just bought an original copy from a historical documents dealer (click on image below to enlarge). Some food for thoughtful consideration and discussion from Brig. Gen. Carroll's declaration:

"I. The frequent raids upon the line of the B.& O.R.R. [Baltimore & Ohio Railroad] and attacks upon trains of the same, by gangs of rebel guerrillas, having demonstrated the fact that the movements of those parties are known to (if they themselves are not guided and encouraged by) the disloyal citizens residing in the vicinity of these raids and attacks, and it being held that timely information could be given by these citizens to our forces, by which such raids and attacks could be prevented; it is ordered that, hereafter, whenever such raids or attacks shall take place within the limits of this command, the property of all disloyal citizens, residing within an area of five miles (or such other distance as may be designated) south of the places of such raids and attacks shall be immediately burned.

"II. In case the property of any Union citizens residing within the limits of this command is destroyed or appropriated by the guerrillas, a levy for twice the amount in value will at once be made on the property of known disloyal citizens in the vicinity of such outrage, for the purpose of restitution to the Union sufferers.

"III. Whenever a Union citizen or soldier shall be murdered within the limits of this command, a rebel sympathizer, nearest resident to the place of murder, will be immediately hung, in retaliation for the murder of such Union citizen or soldier."

Hope this generates some ideas for our folks in the field. We need to balance our nice-guy work with some serious action against those who aid the enemy. This order isn't a model solution for today's problems with insurgents, but it should get us thinking about how to deal with civilians who are technically not combatants yet are still part of the insurgency and terrorism campaigns.

Below: A copy of Brig. Gen. Carroll's original orders. Click on image to enlarge.

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.