PoliticalWarfare.org

Why it's important to show the evidence of bin Laden's death

[This is a copy of my essay that appeared in BigPeace.com on May 3, 2011.]

Some people will never believe the facts, no matter how effectively presented. But for those of us who are convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead, it’s still imperative that the U.S. government show the forensic evidence.

Evidence is important for several reasons. Survivors of al Qaeda attacks worldwide need and deserve closure. Americans and citizens of other coalition countries invested a fortune in hunting bin Laden down, and they deserve to see the result. Citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Arab countries – civilizations where conspiracy theories that sound bizarre to American ears are treated seriously – need to know that this particular report of bin Laden’s death is indeed true. Our friends need to be reassured. Our enemies must have no doubt that Americans will stop at nothing to hunt down those who attack us.

It would have been important to place the al Qaeda leader’s body on display for all the world to see – just as it was vital to show Iraqis that their chief tormentors, Saddam Hussein and his sons Uday and Qusay, were indeed dead. But now that bin Laden’s body has been sent to the bottom of the Arabian Sea, the most convincing proof is gone.

The war against international terrorism is, above all else, a war for information and public opinion. The United States has waged the intelligence and military dimensions of the war as brilliantly as humanly possible. One cannot say the same about the information and public opinion side.

The U.S. government’s delay in providing physical proof of bin Laden’s death risks turning a brilliant American victory into a public relations setback. ABC News is reporting that, from America to Pakistan, everyday people are demanding proof. Already, conspiracy theorists are arguing that bin Laden isn’t really dead, while serious people who simply ask for proof of death are branded as “deathers,” a takeoff from “birthers” of presidential birth certificate skepticism.

Providing the world with proof is a diplomatic and national security question, not a partisan political one.

Some who have seen the proof say that it’s gory, but should be made public. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is one of them. “I met with the national security advisor today,” Graham told a local radio station on May 2.  “It was an impressive operation. Every American should be proud of the way this was conducted.  I want to make sure the case is closed on Osama bin Laden. And I think it would help to release information proving that this was in fact Osama bin Laden.”

Bad information policy can damage a perfect military success

As is the case with much of the US military, the intelligence collection and analysis and the precision execution of special operations forces carried out the bin Laden termination flawlessly. The operation was simply breathtaking in all its forms – a textbook case of how to do it right.

In another way, though, the operation suffered from the same flaw as the military and intelligence community in general: poor strategic thinking from the top in terms of the informational effect of actions on the ground.

President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John Brennan, said he recognized the need to provide physical proof. “We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to try to deny that we got Osama bin Laden,” Brennan told AP. But that was a statement after the fact. Nothing indicates that the administration planned an information policy on par with the brilliantly planned and executed mission itself.

Religious burial customs take precedence over providing proof

The decision to bury bin Laden at sea within 24 hours of death was planned in advance. Not so with the information side of the operation. As of the early hours of May 3, the White House still had not made a decision about how to portray the evidence to the public. Here is how the Washington Post described the situation:

"US personnel washed, wrapped and prayed over the body of Osama bin Laden before dumping it off an aircraft carrier and into the Arabian Sea. But even as the Obama administration worked to avoid offending Muslim sensibilities over the manner of bin Laden’s burial, it stopped short of releasing visual or forensic proof that he had, in fact, been killed.

"John Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, said the government had not decided when or whether it would make public photographs taken of bin Laden after he was gunned down at his hideout in Pakistan. He suggested that officials were still balancing whether the images were more likely to inflame public sentiment around the world or to erase doubts that bin Laden was really dead."

Handing conspiracy theorists a ‘gift’

The legalistic American bureaucratic mindset, which is satisfied with photographic and laboratory DNA evidence, ignores political and cultural realities at home and around the world – to say nothing of the speed at which conspiracy theories spread across the Internet.

As international euphoria about the end of bin Laden recedes, the United States will find that its decision hastily to dispose of the body may have unintended and undesirable consequences.

“Conspiracy theorists are an ingenious bunch, but at the moment the White House is making this ridiculously easy for them,” wrote religion writer Damian Thompson in London’s Telegraph.

“Within hours of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s Pakistani compound, the CIA had used 21st century technology to get ‘a virtually 100% DNA match’ on the dead man. But something out of another century may come back to haunt Washington: the Al Qaeda leader’s burial at sea,” reported the Los Angeles Times.

In Thompson’s words, “It’s inconceivable that America would announce the death of its deadliest enemy without offering evidence that would convince any reasonable person; I’m surprised that it hasn’t been produced already. Moreover, why did it allow bin Laden’s body to be dropped into the sea? Is the US really so sensitive to Islamic burial practices that it is prepared to hand conspiracy theorists such a gift?”

Here’s how the Associated Press treated the matter: “the mystique that surrounded the terrorist chieftain in life is persisting in death. Was it really him? How do we know? Where are the pictures? Already, those questions are spreading in Pakistan and surely beyond. In the absence of photos and with his body given up to the sea, many people don’t want to believe that bin Laden — the Great Emir to some, the fabled escape artist of the Tora Bora mountains to foe and friend alike — is really dead.”

The administration’s lack of preparing the infospace for bin Laden’s death has invited unhealthy skepticism about the United States and its mission. A headline from the May 2 Washington Post reads, “Reports of bin Laden’s death spurs questions from conspiracy theorists.” The Los Angeles Times ran a similar headline: “Bin Laden’s sea burial fuels conspiracy theories.”

This problem was easy to foresee. Word of bin Laden’s death, debunked over and over, has circulated one way or another for years. The failure to provide immediate physical proof of the real thing has allowed fakers to fill the information vacuum. According to Sky News, “The release of a photograph purporting to show bin Laden’s corpse – which was later confirmed to be a fake – added to the confusion.”

The responsibility to show proof of death

Responsible voices are already questioning the hastiness of the disposal of bin Laden’s body, and are calling for the U.S. to show the public proof that the al Qaeda leader is indeed dead. After all, President Obama himself reportedly didn’t want to bomb bin Laden’s compound, for fear of not being able to prove that bin Laden had been killed.

The president himself wanted proof – not only for his personal knowledge and for the military necessity, but because he knew that the American public and the world needed to know the facts.

That’s what some of us are asking to see.

Sir Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the United States, said in London’s Telegraph, “I can’t conceive the US president would go out to make a statement to the world that Bin Laden is dead without being able to produce evidence that he is dead. I think we will see some evidence – DNA or photographic – to prove there is not still some phantom Osama bin Laden riding the Tora Bora mountains.”

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said in a thoughtful observation reported by the Los Angeles Times, “Unless there’s an acknowledgment by people in Al Qaeda that Bin Laden is dead, it may be necessary to release the pictures — as gruesome as they will undoubtedly be, because he’s been shot in the head — to quell any doubts that this somehow is a ruse that the American government has carried out.”

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.

Government propaganda campaign to make public submit to strip searches

A US government propaganda campaign aimed at the domestic population is in the works.

The perceptions-and-behavior-modification campaign is designed to neutralize the American public's opposition to the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) move toward electronic strip-searches and invasive groping of airport passengers.

Caught off-guard by the widening public backlash to the excessively intrusive "security" procedures at the nation's airports, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to disarm the public of its opposition.

(Photo: A Muslim TSA guard, wearing sharia-compliant head covering, gropes a Catholic nun during a "security" search at a US airport.)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano isn't off to a very good start, saying that the electronic strip-searches and the invasive groping of passengers who refuse a strip search are necessary because of the Nigerian terrorist who arrived in the United States with explosives in his underwear in December 2009.

However, what Napolitano did not say was that the CIA had specific advance warning of a possible terrorist attack by that very individual - in the form of an urgent face-to-face meeting that the terrorist's father requested with the CIA station in Abuja - and that the CIA and TSA failed to ensure that the terrorist was placed on the TSA's no-fly list.

Because of that government failure, the TSA is now forcing the entire traveling public to submit to electronic strip searches, be groped in the breasts, genitals and buttocks by TSA personnel, or be arrested or fined.

Napolitano began the propaganda campaign against the American public with a November 15 op-ed in USA Today. Starting off with the example of the Christmas bomber and the need for a "layered approach" to screening terrorists (without mentioning the CIA's failure at the outermost layer), Napolitano says the strip-search machines are necessary, safe and preferred:

"As part of our layered approach, we have expedited the deployment of new Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) units to help detect concealed metallic and non-metallic threats on passengers. These machines are now in use at airports nationwide, and the vast majority of travelers say they prefer this technology to alternative screening measures.

"AIT machines are safe, efficient, and protect passenger privacy. . . .

"All images generated by imaging technology are viewed in a walled-off location not visible to the public. The officer assisting the passenger never sees the image, and the officer viewing the image never interacts with the passenger. The imaging technology that we use cannot store, export, print or transmit images." (Emphasis added)

Much of Napolitano's points are of debatable accuracy or truthfulness, and a lot of the public isn't buying her argument, or her euphemisms such as "pat downs." (I've been through the "pat downs" and think the term "heavy petting" is more accurate.)

It's propaganda time

So now, the government finds itself having to launch an aggressive propaganda "public education" campaign to manipulate public perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Here's what AP is reporting right now:

". . . airports have been urging the government to engage in an aggressive public education campaign regarding the new screening, said Debby McElroy, the [Airports Council International-North America] executive vice president.

"'TSA is trying to address a real, credible threat, both through the advanced imaging technology and through the pat-downs,' McElroy said. 'We think it's important that they continue to address it with passengers and the media because there continues to be a significant misunderstanding about both the safety and the privacy concerns.'"

The government's domestic propaganda campaign is just beginning. As far as Homeland Security is concerned, we must submit - or else.

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.

Spy hunter says WikiLeaks should be treated as espionage case

(My article reposted from BigPeace.com)  One of the nation’s highest-ranking former spy hunters says that the individuals responsible for the theft and publication of tens of thousands of secret military documents should be prosecuted under federal espionage laws.

The Obama Administration is pursuing the disclosure of more than 90,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks.org as merely the mishandling of classified information – a far less serious offense than espionage.

Administration supporters say that the leak was not espionage. But one of the country’s most successful counterintelligence officials argues the contrary – and says that legal precedent proves it.

“We have an excellent precedent in the case of Samuel Loring Morison,” the naval intelligence analyst who compromised top secret U.S. imagery intelligence capabilities, says Kenneth E. deGraffenreid [pictured], who as Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive from 2004-2006 was the nation’s second-ranking counterintelligence official. Morison served a two-year sentence on conviction of espionage for having compromised U.S. secrets – not to a foreign intelligence service, but to a British publishing company.

“The Morison case was an espionage case. Morison was charged with espionage because he provided classified information to a foreign power,” deGraffenreid tells BigPeace.com. It doesn’t matter that the foreign power was a private media company housed in one of the most solid and reliable American allies: “Morison stole U.S. secrets and provided them to Jane’s, the British military publisher. It was like taking U.S. defense secrets and laying them out in the street in front of the Russians.”

Morison was convicted in1985 of taking only three classified images and providing them to Jane’s, where he was a contributor to the annual reference work, Jane’s Fighting Ships, about the world’s navies. Manning, and perhaps others, provided at least 90,000, and perhaps more than 100,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Morison said he had a policy motive, to leak the satellite imagery of the construction of a Soviet nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, in order to convince the public to increase defense spending. By contrast, Manning, as an active-duty soldier, is reported to have stolen the classified files and provided them to WikiLeaks in order to undermine the war effort.

“If you’re trying to hurt the United States, that’s part of the crime. That’s why it’s espionage,” deGraffenreid says. “If you put this stuff out on the Internet or in the New York Times or the Guardian, any sentient being knows that the bad guys – the Taliban, the Russians, the Chinese or al Qaeda – can read the secrets. It doesn’t matter if he says he didn’t mean for them to get the information because he was just trying to influence U.S. policy.”

DeGraffenreid was White House Senior Director of Intelligence Programs and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan on the National Security Council from 1981 to 1987, and an architect of the successful decapitation of the Soviet KGB stations in the U.S. after the “Year of the Spy” in 1985. During the administration of President George W. Bush, he served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and later as Deputy National Counterintelligence Executive.

WikiLeaks is an international website operated by Julian Assange, an Australian citizen. As such, those who provided the documents to WikiLeaks should be charged under the Morison precedent, according to deGraffenreid. Under that precedent, it does not matter that Assange does not work for the Australian government or that Australia is a staunch U.S. ally.

The prime suspect in the leak is reported to be Private First Class Bradley Manning, age 22, of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. Manning is an intelligence analyst with a top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI) security clearance who served in Iraq, but used military computers to download classified information concerning Iraq and Afghanistan. He is presently under military detention at an Army facility in Kuwait, where he is suspected of leaking military combat video to WikiLeaks.

Army investigators are treating Manning as their main suspect in the much larger document leak, but have not officially named him or made the formal allegation. An investigation is underway. Manning’s military-appointed lawyer routinely refers media inquiries to Army public affairs in Baghdad, which is not commenting on the documents case.

News organizations howled at the Reagan Administration’s prosecution of Morison and decried the conviction as a blow to free speech, but the conviction was not overturned and now serves as a precedent to prosecute the WikiLeaks case, deGraffenreid says.

According to deGraffenreid, the national secrets that Manning and perhaps others provided to WikiLeaks is almost beyond comprehension. “If you’re providing 100,000 files, at some point quantity has its own quality about it. One is compromising so much material that it’s devastating. This is what happened when John Walker provided the crypto key for 20 years to the Soviets. He simply allowed the KGB to read so much that it’s not even possible to do a serious damage assessment.”

“Morison was probably more confused than malicious, in terms of motivation,” says deGraffenreid. The spy’s defense was that he was trying to impress editors at Jane’s, where he was angling for a job after retiring from the U.S. government.

“Morison was doing the wrong thing, and it was appropriate that he was tried and punished. But Manning is actually mal-motivated. In terms of scope, what he is alleged to have done is far worse than the Morison case, because he was trying to undermine the war effort. If we are at war and a soldier is helping the other side, if that isn’t espionage, then what is it?”

Adding to the confusion of the case is the fact that espionage laws – and the public’s perception of spying – haven’t kept up with technology. “If he had stolen a single document and gave it to someone with the intention that it spread to our enemies or potential enemies, it would be seen as espionage. But because it’s on the internet, somehow there’s a failure to identify this for what it is,” says deGraffenreid, who is now a professor of intelligence studies at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC.

Like our counterterrorism laws were in 2001, U.S. espionage laws are obsolete and need to be modernized, deGraffenreid says. “Most U.S. espionage laws were written during World War I, and they sound archaic if you read the legislative history. They still sound a little archaic. Not a few people in government fear that if they use the espionage laws on the books, some left-wing judge would strike them down. When I was in government we had to back off putting the blocks to people because Justice Department lawyers didn’t believe in what they were doing or that the espionage laws could be sustained.”

Morison was convicted in 1985 under a World War I-era statute. With the support of mainstream media organizations, he appealed his conviction. In 1988, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his appeal. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case later that year, thus upholding the statute and the use of the espionage statute in unauthorized disclosure. President Bill Clinton pardoned Morison on January 20, 2001.

“One has to be childishly naïve to think when you put this out for the whole world to read, that terrorists and hostile foreign intelligence services would not read it, and that that doesn’t matter. The fact is that the bad guys got these U.S. military secrets. It’s the same as if the perpetrator went into a safe and took secret and top secret documents and physically handed them to a foreign national. Had Manning done that, it would have looked exactly like the espionage cases for which others are serving life sentences. But the fact that he allegedly transmitted electronic files, it looks different.”

There is also the idea that the theft and publication of classified documents is somehow legitimate under whistleblowing principles to expose alleged wrongdoing. “Most of the people who commit espionage use weak defenses, like whistleblowing. Those defenses don’t work. If some of the documents contain top-secret codeword material applicable under what is called the comment statute – United States Code 18, Section 798 – it doesn’t matter who you give the information to. If you give it to someone who’s unauthorized, it’s an espionage crime.”

The federal investigation of the WikiLeaks case is being handled by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, not by military counterintelligence or the FBI, which handles civilian spy cases. “You need the Criminal Investigation people, but it’s far easier in the bureaucratic culture to go after someone for mishandling classified information than espionage,” he adds, reflecting on his tenure as the nation’s Deputy Counterintelligence Executive. “The moment prosecutors start an espionage case, a lot of the military lawyers and generals turn to jelly. It’s very hard to push these things in such bureaucratic cultures.”

DeGraffenreid says there is a big difference between mishandling classified information, which is what the U.S. appears to be pursuing against Manning, and espionage. “The punishments are much lighter for mishandling classified information. If you and I were obligated to protect information and we lost it, or were negligent and allowed the janitor to pick it up, that’s ‘mishandling’ classified information. Espionage is different: you are illegally distributing the classified information on purpose to aid a foreign entity or government.”

Judges and juries tend to be harsher on spies than federal prosecutors are, says deGraffenreid. “Most juries convict on espionage and most judges throw the book at spies who get convicted. Often the judges hand down stronger sentences than the government asks for.”

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."

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.