WASHINGTON, D.C. --- The Army and Marine Corps tomorrow (Dec. 15th) will release a new counterinsurgency field manual that notes how insurgents use the media "to magnify the effects of their actions" and which suggests ways to defeat those efforts.
The manual is already in use in Afghanistan where U.S. units are employing the new tactics against Taliban forces that have started to mount large operations in the Pashto-speaking south, according to a reliable article in an American magazine.
Australian-born Lt.-Col. David Kilcullen, currently working at a high-level counterterrorism post in the U.S. State Department, is quoted as describing the Taliban as essentially an "armed propaganda organization."
"They switch between guerrilla activity and terrorist activity as they need to, in order to maintain the political momentum, and it's all about an information operation that generates the perception of an unstoppable, growing insurgency," Kilcullen told reporter George Packer of "The New Yorker."(December 18)
Kilkullen said when insurgents ambush a U.S. convoy in Iraq it's because "they want spectacular media footage of a burning Humvee." He adds, "It's now fundamentally an information fight. The enemy gets that, and we don't yet get that, and I think that's why we're losing." He said, "If bin Laden didn't have access to global media, satellite communications, and the Internet, he'd just be a cranky guy in a cave."
One of the questions raised by Packer's article, "Knowing The Enemy," is whether the U.S. can shift its heavy reliance on military operations to community support efforts and inform civilian populations about them. That time may have already come and gone.
The new field manual asserts, "...by focusing on efforts to secure the safety and support of the local populace, and through a concerted effort to truly function as learning organizations, the Army and Marine Corps can defeat their insurgent enemies."
The struggle in the Middle East increasingly appears to be an information battle to win public opinion. An Afghan villager, for example, has access to the Internet, e-mail, satellite phone, and text messaging and these tools are thought to be more easily exploited by insurgents than the Afghan government.
"In the information war, America and its allies are barely competing," Packer writes, because they are not the primary strategy but used to publicize military victories and no one in the battlefield areas hears the message. At times, the U.S. has relied on radio to get across a message that would spread quicker by floating rumors in Iraqi coffee shops.
The emphasis on military response does little to win friends in Islam, Packer writes. He quotes Frederick Barton, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank: "Hard power is not the way we're going to make an impression."
In Pakistan, Barton says, the U.S. since 2002 has spent $6-billion shoring up the Pakistani military and billions more on intelligence-gathering yet it has spent less than a billion dollars on aid for education and economic development in a country where Islamist madrassas and joblessness contribute to the radicalization of young people."
James Kuner, acting deputy of the U.S. Agency for International Development and a former Marine told The New Yorker that in Iraq and Afghanistan "the civilian agencies have received 1.4% of the total money," whereas classical counterinsurgency doctrine says that 80% of the effort should be nonmilitary."
Packer asserts, "There is little organized American effort to rebut the jihadist conspiracy theories that circulate daily among the Muslims living in populous countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria."
Bruce Hoffman, of Georgetown University, believes the U.S. must help foreign governments flood the Internet with persuasively youthful Web sites presenting anti-jihadist messages yet without leaving American fingerprints. He said jihadists have posted 5,000 Web sites that react swiftly and imaginatively to events. Adds Kilcullen, "We've got to co-opt or assist people who have a counter-message. And we might need to consider creating or supporting the creation of rival organizations."
"You've got to be quiet about it," Kilcullen said. "You don't go in there like a missionary." The idea is to offer an alternative to individuals to walk a road other than jihad.
The Pentagon currently is recruiting social scientists to serve in a new project called "Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain". The plan calls for sending five-person "human terrain" teams into Iraq and Afghanistan with combat brigades to serve as cultural advisers. The first teams are planning to leave next spring.
Sherwood Ross has worked as a publicist for Chicago; as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and workplace columnist for Reuters. He has also been a media consultant to colleges, law schools, labor unions, and to the editors of more than 100 national magazines. A civil rights activist, he was News Director for the National Urban League, a talk show host at WOL Radio, Washington, D.C., and holds an award for "best spot news coverage" for Chicago radio stations for civil rights reporting. He is the author "Gruening of Alaska,"(Best Books)and several plays about Japan during World War II, including "Baron Jiro," and "Yamamoto's Decision," read at the National Press Club, where he is a member. His favorite quotations are from the Sermon on The Mount.
that no external occupier can win any good relations with the occupied especially after bombing, killing, maiming and atrocities. I was also thinking that using the social 'scientists' as advisers in the military was an abomination. And now this is called 'information war?'
They did not come to us: we came to them. The 9/11 act was an act of a rogue or specifically constructed group and even that is not proven because there was no trial. As such all the names and definitions like ' Al- Qaeda, Jihadists, tribal violence etc. exist only in the shallow heads of those exact 'social scientists' who want to earn money on it. We have to leave. Leave from Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq. Then we need to hang all the consultants, 'social scientists' and all those people who were really responsible for that negligence which resulted in attacks on our soil as well as for Katrina disaster. If we do all that we most surely will score in the eyes of the whole world including the eyes of the Moslems. That would be a true respect.
by
Mark Sashine (50 articles, 19 quicklinks, 244 diaries, 3453 comments)
on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 2:21:27 PM
To win our fight we need to change our policy. Thinking that making up stories and pushing them through the internet is enough to win the information war seems to me wishful thinking. Can you for a second imagine a lebaneese family huging our flag after they lost their house to the Israeli bombarment in the summer, or an Iraqi singing the stars and stripes after spending exciting nights in Abu Gharib!
by
sameh abdelaziz (35 articles, 6 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 28 comments)
on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 8:57:00 PM
...money, and lives. Until such time as America is willing to understand that our way isn't the best, we will never make real inroads anywhere. Until such time as America understands the true cultural differences that keep us worlds apart from the people of the Middle East, we will always look like Johnny-Come-Lately clowns. DUBYA obviously lacks the intellectual capacity to understand these nuances, as do many others in key positions.
We cannot win that which is already lost. It makes no difference what batch of bullshit is offered up, we lost Iraq on day one. No information war, no increase of troops, no propping up puppet governments is going to change that, or put us into the win column. Perhaps this is the main reason why DUBYA fucked every business he touched. He didn't know when it was time to cut the losses. That time has passed. When is he going to get that message?
Blessed be!
Pappy
by
Pappy (61 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 860 comments)
on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 1:12:13 AM
It has been stated above, and rather eloquently, three times
..but it is important so Ill take a stab at it as well.
What this author, and the American military as well, fails to understand is that the myth of American superiority, of us always being in the right, always working for the good of the world is so much garbage!
This "information war" is murdering and torturing thousands upon thousands of innocents and this article dwells upon photo ops and language skills, oh my gosh. For most of the time we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq we havent even had enough folks who could speak the languages for goodness sakes, that alone should make it obvious that we do not give a fig for the truth or the rightness of things.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2377 comments)
on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 9:46:35 AM
Whether the author intended it or not, this piece is nothing more than pro-government propaganda. It blindly assumes the government line without considering the sobering fact that the war effort it examines, is both illegal, and based upon the most bald-faced lies! Having conveniently set these fatal flaws aside, the author attempts to convey the impression that we are losing the "information war" against so-called "Muslim Jihadists" who're supposed to be some kind of threat to us. When in actual fact we're actually ruthless occupiers, bent on conquest, but lying about our real intentions! No wonder we're losing the "information war"! Such an evil enterprise will always lose to a determined resistance, fighting for both national sovereignty, and freedom. One dosen't have to be a military "expert" to figure this out. It is the same old, same old, from Vietnam. Foolish, corrupt politicians, dupe the people into waging war on behalf of those special interests who they answer to. The people are just so much cannon fodder, whose memories are not supposed to be long enough, or astute enough, to remember the last time this foolishness was foisted upon them.
Like the Vietcong before them, the last thing Afghan and Iraqi fighters want, is to be destroying their own countries fighting U.S. invaders. They'd much rather be minding their own business in peace. The very same of course, can be said of our horribly abused troops. And please don't tell me about how "Muslims" attacked us on 9/11. Those officials who brought us that so far unproven, version of events, also happen to be bonified serial liars, and betrayers of their oath to defend the constitution. There is therefore, no valid reason to believe a word of it. If and when a proper investigation into 9/11 is conducted as stipulated by law, then we can determine who is actually responsible. Until then of course, our long suffering troops will only come home in peace, when the U.S. public finally realizes that aggressive war, is a racket, which only arises from criminal government. In other words, bad government and needless wars like the one we're currently mired in, go hand in hand.
by
Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments)
on Friday, December 15, 2006 at 10:34:27 AM
5 comments
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