Yesterday, I heard Glenn Reynolds on the Hugh Hewitt Show, and he uttered one of those lines that sounds so provocative and intelligent that, when you first hear it, you find yourself instantly agreeing, before you've even analyzed its relative truth.
He said, "The War on Terror is an information war, disguised as a military conflict."
See what I mean? That sounds so friggin' intelligent, you just wanna go belly-up intellectually, and crown Glenn Reynolds King of the Blogosphere, don't ya?
I think Mr. Reynolds was impressed with his line as well, because, shortly thereafter, he repeated it, in what sounded like a rather self-satisfied manner. Hey, but let's give the guy a break. We're all vain, aren't we?
So, anyway, this got me thinking about something I have been pondering recently:
Are we really engaged in a War on Terrorism? Or, are we engaged in a true military conflict with an enemy who relies on a new kind of Special Forces ("terrorists") because they know they can not field a standard armed force?
Before you answer, think about two things,
1) The standard definition of terrorism is,
"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
2) A standard military force seeks to kill its enemy, until the enemy has lost the will to fight, and thus, cedes it ground.
So, what is this, a war on terror, or a standard military conflict?
10 comments:
None of the above. This is a War Against Radical Islam, or the War against Jihad. "War on Terror" is too limiting a moniker to be useful or accurate. And calling this a 'standard military conflict' is inappropriate, because this is not a conventional military conflict. This is not WW2, and we can't fight the last war.
Information warfare is but one theater in this conflict. It could arguably be the most important one, but it is by far not the only one. This conflict must be waged using all the tools at the disposal of a nation-state, including (but not limited to) law enforcement, the courts, education, international aid, information and disinformation, finance and economics, espionage, and direct (military) action.
anti-jihadist put it well. This is a war against the islamofascists.
I was reading this with great interest until I got to the end, which came way too soon. There is so much more to say on the subject and thankfully The Anti-Jihadist summed it up nicely. This is a war against radical Islam, or more finely put, Islamic terrorists. We fight it any way we can to win, because defeatfor the USA is not an option.
Anti-Jihadist,
Good comment. Thanks.
The thing I have been pondering is whether possibly we need to dispense with the whole notion of terrorism altogether. Glenn Reynolds seems to think, and I believe many people would agree with him, that the Islamofascists are using terrorism to send us a message.
I don't think they are trying to communicate anything. I think they just want us dead. They want to beat us just like any army would.
In other words, this idea that terrorism is anything different from warfare is a distinction without a difference, in my opinion.
The problem with the word terrorism is it conjures in the minds of people a form of warfare which works at a lower level than real warfare.
I don't think it does. The Islamofascists would use any weapon they could get their hands on. They don't want to simply scare us. They want us dead.
Islam is a mind-control cult. To control minds you must prevent the spread of information that would liberate those minds and so undermine the cult. Hence the massive effort by Muslims to silence the critics of Islam by all means at their disposal - legal or illegal.
They have had considerable success in silencing the MSM, and it's only a matter of time until they turn their attention to the internet and try to censor the blogosphere.
The internet ensures that the information aspect of this war is far more sophisticated and powerful than in previous wars (Low tech stuff such as Axis, Allied and Soviet propaganda radio broadcasts)
So keep on blogging - the Muzzies hate it.
this war is jihad. global jihad.
the enemy are jihadis.
we ALSO fifth a fifth column at home: the msm/left/doves.
against this domestic foe, we fight an information war.
should readL we also FIGHT a fifth column...
Yes, I agree with you there. The information war is on the home front. And, to a lesser extent, we are attempting to fight an information war within Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. The purpose of that Information War is to spread the news of Freedom and Human Rights.
But, that is not the primary goal of our war, of course. The primary goal is to destroy Islamofascism.
the key front in the info war there: we need to stop them from poisoning the minds of their youths: close/bomb madrassas and shut mosques which teach/preach hate.
"The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
If that's the definition of terrorism you're using, then we should definitely abandon the word, because (dickering about the word 'unlawful' with regard to Iraq notwithstanding) that applies to a lot of our own foreign policy, whether well-intentioned or not. ("Is that terrorism or gunboat diplomacy? Intimidation and overthrow or 'pressure' and 'regime change?'")
Not to be an ass... just saying that if you define terrorism that broadly, then you're painting us Good Guys into a nasty corner, and if we're all terrorists, then nobody's a terrorist anymore.
(If you're going to use good labels, label the differences!)
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