Of course, this outlook overlooks what has been a central tenet of al-Qaeda's strategy -- to draw the United States deeper into the Middle East in order to exhaust America financially and militarily, to keep the U.S. locked in this conflict until it suffers a devastating strategic defeat much as was done to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But to military COIN theorists, like Petraeus and Boot, al-Qaeda's scheme is outside the scope of their analytical ability.
The Information Battlefield
So, in the minds of the totalitarian-oriented COIN theorists, the war is really about information and the battlefield is everywhere. According to this doctrine, "Insurgent support activities include ... communications. These support activities sustain insurgencies and allow for both military and political actions. They are enabled by an insurgency's ability to generate popular support. ... These networks can include support from other nations or from population groups outside the country."
This paranoid viewpoint is, of course, not unprecedented. Indeed, it has been common for authoritarian systems to label dissent against their war policies as support for insurgents or other "subversives." This attitude has been a common denominator of nearly all despotic military regimes from Hitler's Germany to Pinochet's Chile to modern Egypt under a variety of military rulers: dissent equals treason.
In fact, the COIN Manual cites as an example the case of the Tamil Tigers and the alleged support these insurgents received from civilians of the Tamil diaspora following ethnic riots against the Tamil people that drove many to flee Sri Lanka. According to the manual, this global diaspora then became a major part of the Tamil Tigers' "propaganda network," a statement that would be a bit like charging German Jewish emigres pre-World War II of being part of an American "propaganda network" for telling the truth about conditions in Germany.
FM 3-24 does acknowledge that a prerequisite for an insurgency is "Motive" but adds that grievances alone are not sufficient to spur an insurgency. It takes leaders "to build a compelling narrative that links grievances to a political agenda and mobilizes the population to support a violent social movement. ... When grievances mobilize a population, they are a root cause of an insurgency. ... The presence of a foreign force can be the root cause of an insurgency."
While all that is well and good -- and would apply to almost all political uprisings including the American Revolution -- the lessons drawn from this current obsession with "counterinsurgency" veers off into some dangerous directions. Behind it is the assumption that virtually all insurgencies -- at least those not initiated by Washington -- deserve countering.
Yet, sometimes, indeed often, insurgencies reflect the urgent desires of an oppressed people for justice, meaning that modern counterinsurgency warfare, as practiced by Gen. Petraeus and other U.S. strategists, can become just one more boot on the people's neck.
It also follows that the COIN's obsessive practitioners will begin to detect the enemy within the United States, since the information war is global and the counterinsurgency operation must protect itself against a loss of political will among the American people. Thus, a citizen who asserts that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was to blame for the Iraqi insurgency could be accused of enabling the insurgency, being part of the enemy's "propaganda network."
In counterinsurgency thinking, "external support" for an insurgency can be something as vague as "moral support."
The Insurgent "Network"
Another pertinent dynamic identified in the COIN Manual is "Organizational and Operational Patterns," which can be almost as ambiguous as "moral support." It is explained that "Insurgents may be organized into networks," a series of "direct and indirect ties from one entity to a collection of entities. " Insurgent networking extends the range and variety of both insurgent military and political actions. " Networks of communications, people, and activities exist in all populations and have a measurable impact on the organized governance of a population and, consequently, military operations."
So "networks" are not limited to insurgents inside the foreign nation where the insurgency is active; these "direct and indirect ties" can extend to all populations and include a variety of friendly, neutral and threat networks, each meriting its own treatment.
Individuals in a network are called "actors or nodes." Connections between nodes are links, and a link between two people is a "dyad." Understanding dyads is essential to understand the nature of an insurgency, per the FM 3-24's doctrine.
This is accomplished through "network mapping, charting, and social network analysis," which are "intelligence products that can aid in refined analysis and course of action developments." Intelligence collection for this purpose would be in the manner of total surveillance, electronically and digitally, as the NSA is alleged to be engaged in globally, including inside the United States.
So what does a counterinsurgent do when encountering a "network?" FM 3-24 prescribes the solution: attack the network.
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