Best thing ive heard so far.

[jaguar]

The last person to say anything particularly new and insightful on the subject of winning wars was Sun Tzu, way back in 500 B.C. Here is a basic primer: "In war, it is of supreme importance to attack your opponent's Strategy. The next best thing is to attack your opponent's Alliances. Next after that is to attack your opponent's Armies. The worst thing is to attack your opponent's Cities."

This is basic, self-explanatory stuff that the U.S. military cannot seem to figure out. Their bazillion-dollar war machine has, in recent history, reversed those priorities. The result is always the same: massive overkill, unbelievable wasted resources and zillions of dead civilians. So we end up with expensive scorched-earth pyrrhic victories at best and defeat at the hands of Third-World countries at worst. With WWII analogies flying fast and thick we would do well to remember that the bombing of civilian targets in that war did absolutely nothing to help either side to win. Strategic bombing raids were meant to demoralize the enemy and weaken their capacity to wage war, but they accomplished neither of these things. They served only to strengthen the resolve of those who were attacked. And it looks like we may be about to see it again, only this time the results will be even worse, since a new generation of fundamentalist nutcases will rise from the ashes. The U.S. will find itself the target of daily attacks, just like Israel.

So let's go back to Sun Tzu and see if we can find a way to actually win. What is the enemy's strategy? Their goal is all-out global war between Muslims and the West. They seek to accomplish this by attacking civilian targets in the West, which will provoke the West to conventional war, which will polarize moderate Muslims and (so the enemy believes) bring the Muslim world together in Holy War against the unbelievers. Secondly, where are the enemy's alliances? They are seeking alliances with all Muslims. There are 1.2 billion Muslims on this planet. That's a lot of people they're reaching out to. Thirdly, what are their armies? They are small, tightly-knit, decentralized groups all across the globe. This makes their armies largely invulnerable to conventional warfare.

Now. How do we attack these things? We are unable to attack their strategy because too many in the West already see Muslims as the enemy, and too many Muslims are terrified of Western power over life and death. We are unable to attack their alliances for the same reason. We are unable to attack their armies because our intelligence community has no Arabic-speaking agents of Arabian descent. Conventional means are useless against their armies; we must attack them with spies and counter-agents. But we're so insular that we lack the means to get inside.

The key to victory on all these fronts lies in allying ourselves with the non-fundamentalist Muslims who are of course the vast majority. We must strengthen ties with the Islamic world and make friends with as many powerful and influential Muslims as we can. We must fight Islamophobia in our backyard. Practically all of the world's Muslims, even outside the West, see Osama bin Laden as evil, but many also see the United States as a frightening global tyrant. We must use the awesome power of our media to show them that they are right about the former and wrong about the latter. When Arabs are fully integrated into Western society, some of them will certainly wind up signing up for military duty or intelligence service duty. When we no longer fear each other, the enemy's strategy will be defeated. When Arab nations see the U.S. as an ally, the enemy will lose their potential allies. When the CIA and FBI have undercover agents of Arabian descent, we will be in a position for the first time to attack their armies and win.

If the U.S. government is serious about treating this matter as a war, they are going to have to start paying attention to real military strategy: the kind that wins wars. Not the kind that sells weapons.



-- Jonathan Moriarity

off salon

[Nothing But Net]

That's the best thing I ever seen you write! And the Arab-American community can prove themselves by assisting in this effort. Either through contacts back in the Middle East, or just gathering intelligence.

There is a $5,000,000 bounty on bin-Laden, if was Arab I'd probabaly go for it.

'Nuff said.

[jaguar]

Sorry i should have made it clearer.
I did not write that, its off salon letters. I just thought it was the best thing i've heard about this whole mess so far. If you think this is so dman good then why'd u say:

Nobody yet is sure if bin-Laden is responsible for the latest terror, but it doesn't matter!

Because if we do that all were gonna do is piss of the rest of the arab community and allign them with Bin laden, get the picture now?