In the wake of the flawlessly executed rescue operation that liberated fifteen hostages (including three Americans and the cause celebre Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt), who had been held in the jungle, in chains around their necks, by the Colombian terrorist group FARC for more than five years, Charles Krauthammer describes the hard problems facing the world that have only hard-power solutions:

Everyone knows it will take the hardest of hard power to remove the oppressors in Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan and other godforsaken places where the bad guys have the guns and use them. Indeed, as the Zimbabwean opposition leader suggested (before quickly retracting) from his hideout in the Dutch embassy — Europe specializes in providing haven for those fleeing the evil that Europe does nothing about — the only solution is foreign intervention.

And who’s going to intervene? The only country that could is the country that in the last two decades led coalitions that liberated Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Having sacrificed much blood and treasure in its latest endeavor — the liberation of 25 million Iraqis from the most barbarous tyranny of all, and its replacement with what is beginning to emerge as the Arab world’s first democracy — and having earned near-universal condemnation for its pains, America has absolutely no appetite for such missions.

And so the innocent languish, as did Betancourt, until some local power, inexplicably under the sway of the Bush notion of hard power, gets it done — often with the support of the American military. “Behind the rescue in a jungle clearing stood years of clandestine American work,” explained The Washington Post. “It included the deployment of elite U.S. Special Forces … a vast intelligence-gathering operation … and training programs for Colombian troops.”

Upon her liberation, Betancourt offered profuse thanks to God and the Virgin Mary, to her supporters and the media, to France and Colombia and just about everybody else. As of this writing, none to the United States.

The United States will get no thanks. Nor should the United States expect any thanks in this political and geopolitical climate.

Nevertheless, the United States should continue to do this kind of job.

Anybody disagree?

Glancing at Memeorandum this morning, these two entries caught my eye:

International Herald Tribune:

U.S. says exercise by Israel seemed directed at Iran  —  WASHINGTON: Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  —  Several American officials …

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Buck Naked Politics, Danger Room and Pat Dollard

–

Discussion:

Damozel / Buck Naked Politics:   Is Israel Gearing Up for an Attack Against Iran?

Noah Shachtman / Danger Room:   Iran Attack ‘Rehearsal’ in Israeli War Game

Drillanwr / Pat Dollard:   Israel Is Drilling … Its Military … For Someone

ABCNEWS:

EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Poised to Strike?  —  Officials Say “Sleeper Cells” Activated in Canada  —  Intelligence agencies in the United States and Canada are warning of mounting signs that Hezbollah, backed by Iran, is poised to mount a terror attack against “Jewish targets” somewhere outside the Middle East.

Link Search: Ask, Technorati, Sphere, Google, and IceRocket

+

Discussion: Hot Air, The Jawa Report and Counterterrorism Blog

And it underscored the importance of  this point made by Jennifer Rubin [e.a.]:

John McCain amidst the turmoil of Barack Obama’s public financing reversal is trying to make sure voters don’t forget Obama favors habeas corpus rights for Osama bin Laden. Today he put out a statement castigating his opponent for not coming clean on whether he favors executing bin Laden and what type of proceeding he would favor. …

I suspect if McCain is going to make any headway here he will have to make a major communications push, with speeches and ads, to explain why Obama’s position reveals him as unfit on national security. The media is already turning to other issues and is not inclined to spend the time to explain to the American people what parade of horribles will occur now that we have terror suspects flocking to federal courts.

The media is indeed turning to other issues, as is its wont. And we are being anesthetized—or, rather, are choosing to anesthetize ourselves—by a “news” diet that entertains us by constantly giving us new stories (rather than important news) to focus on for a while.

And if you’re Barack Obama, you take this as an opportunity to distract the media (and its easily distracted audience) with a makeover for your wife while you prattle on in an unclear and inconsistent way about national security…emphasizing punishment over crime prevention.

This didn’t get much play, did it?

Rudy Giuliani: Obama Wants USA to Be on Defense Against Terrorism

On a conference call this morning Rudy Giuliani continued his attacks on Barack Obama’s national security policy.

“I describe the difference as one being on offense and the other wanting to be on defense,” former New York City mayor and one-time GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani just said on a conference call with reporters.

It should get a lot of play, because it’s the fundamental issue of our time—how to provide national security while preserving our freedoms and our way of life (as a symbol and model for other nations to emulate).

Don’t be misled: Distractions can be useful for Mr. Obama, as they can for all politicians—including his hard-to-warm-up-to opponent.

How to use Rudy Giuliani effectively:

The McCain camp, sensing an opening, has deployed Rudy Giuliani to turn up the the heat on Barack Obama’s praise of the Supreme Court’s case granting Guantanamo detainees habeas corpus rights and praising the 1993 trial of the world trade center bombing as the model for handling these prisoners.

Giuliani and McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann held a conference call this morning to continue the debate. The Mayor stressed repeatedly that it was a “very, very important” debate and this emphasizes his frequently made point during his campaign that Obama is on “defense” and McCain on “offense.” He said that this is not the politics of “fear,” but the “politics of reality.” He explained that Obama’s advisors’ comments that Osama bin Laden would deserve habeas corpus rights is “startling.”

Tracking down and punishing terrorists after the fact is good, but it doesn’t protect our national security. The point is to get them before they do their dirty deeds.

Philip Klein, writing at the American Spectator, cites the 9/11 Commission’s findings on this matter:

But even allowing for the successes of law enforcement officials in bringing Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef to justice for their role in the 1993 bombing, the 9/11 Commission Report was crystal clear about the limits of the old strategy.

“An unfortunate consequence of this superb investigative and prosecutorial effort was that it created an impression that the law enforcement system was well-equipped to cope with terrorism,” read the report.

“Neither President Clinton, his principal advisers, the Congress, nor the news media felt prompted, until later, to press the question of whether the procedures that put the Blind Sheikh and Ramzi Yousef behind bars would really protect Americans against the new virus of which these individuals were just the first symptoms.”

The prosecutions, according to the report, led to “widespread underestimation of the threat.” …

“The process was meant, by its nature, to mark for the public the events as finished — case solved, justice done,” the investigation concluded. “It was not designed to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come.”

More on this from the New York Sun’s Eli Lake.

Here’s what I think: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The evidence is scant, but it’s there:

 

Ali Yussef / AFP/Getty Images

Children jump and run as Iraqi troops arrive in their neighborhood to distribute food rations in the impoverished Sadr City district of eastern Baghdad. Iraqi troops poured into the Baghdad Shiite bastion of Sadr City three days ago for the first time in eight weeks, without resistance from militias who have fought deadly street battles with US forces.

Iraq violence falls to four-year low, U.S. says

The military says crackdowns by the Iraqi government are working, and that the number of attacks has dropped to about 300 a week from 1,600 in June.

The other day in the Times, Bill Kristol quoted a Marine helicopter pilot:

“I was in Iraq from the 2nd to the 12th this month. In my current job I go over there twice a year for two weeks to collect lessons learned and fly a few sorties …

“The biggest deal for me was the fact that even after we have pulled out thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops, peace continues to hold in Anbar. In fact, I was shocked by two things when flying over Ramadi and Fallujah. First, the streetlights are back on. It is crazy to see Iraqi cities lit up completely, and since they are all on grid power now, you don’t see the crazy black/brown outs when you fly over and the generators pop like you would back in 2005/6. The power now seems to extend even into the suburbs and light industry on the edges of the major cities as well.

“Second, there are people, regular civilians, walking the streets at night. That was very unusual and got the visitor (me) laughed at when I told our terminal controller that I had personnel walking down a street on the radio.”

Most people would mock such “progress,” and of course they’re right to. No one who refers to it as “progress” would ever consider living under such conditions. It’s the height of arrogance to claim this resumption of some normalcy in some pockets of Iraq as a success. It is only a small half-step up from the hell unleashed by the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the “coalition of the willing’s” occupation of an alien country ruled by tribal passions, located in a region little understood by those who made war on it.

This ignorance is evident from what the locals in Basra have told NYT reporter Stephen Farrell, who also reports on progress but (wisely) never uses that word [e.a.]:

With the death squads in hiding and Islamist militias evicted from their strongholds by the Iraqi Army, few doubt that this once-lawless port is in better shape than it was just two months ago. …

Two months after Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered the military offensive, residents of Basra talk of feeling safer, if not yet entirely safe, after years of oppression by armed gangs and “enforcers” of Shariah, or Islamic law. In the four years that British troops patrolled here, from 2003 to late 2007, the outlaws emerged and preyed on musicians, alcohol sellers, Christians, unveiled women, academics — anyone not embracing their extreme vision of Islam.

Now the shops and restaurants in Basra are open later, and alcohol is back on sale, discreetly. The government’s troops seem to have quelled Moktada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other militias. …

In the inevitable post-mortems, a principal question has been whether the multinational troops in southern Iraq, led by the British, should have rid the city of its gangsters long ago. …

But Iraqis are asking why it didn’t happen years ago …

Aside from the fact that it’s ridiculously impertinent and impudent and nervy for Iraqis to ask why, during the hell on earth that was this war in its early years, the coalition didn’t save them from sharia sooner, it turns out that cultural and demographic differences have played a big role in the outcomes in different parts of Iraq:

[In Basra], mafia-style Shiite gangs rose in an overwhelmingly Shiite town; up north, Sunni and Shiite factions waged civil war in divided cities like Baghdad and Baquba.

This is exactly the kind of thing that the coalition forces didn’t know before launching the war.

There’s also the little matter of cultural differences between the British and the Americans:

“I have been very frustrated at the British,” said Brig. Gen. Edan Jaber, a police commander in Basra. He said the British “gave a high priority to their own security” and “were not forceful with the cases they faced in the street.”

It is a common criticism. “The Americans go in with huge force and hit hard, not like the British,” one Iraqi soldier complained.

And then there’s the cultural difference between Iraqis and free Westerners—the one you’re not allowed to say in public in the West without being accused of being a neocon or a warmonger. That same Iraqi soldier elaborated on his complaint, and made an observation [e.a.]:

““The Americans go in with huge force and hit hard, not like the British. Our people need a powerful force, not a weak one. We had just left Saddam Hussein behind. How could anyone be soft after that?”

That’s a good question, particularly as it relates to electoral politics in America in 2008, where one (presumptive) candidate consistently appears soft and the other one doesn’t.

It’s not a bad idea, and Ross Douthat gets that part:

[N]early every pronouncement from Osama bin Laden or his imitators contains something that might be laughable, if it weren’t in deadly earnest.

There’s the incessant nostalgia for the Crusades, heavy-handed enough to embarrass Sir Walter Scott, and the Risk-board view of geopolitics, epitomized by the oft-cited aspiration to reconquer “Al-Andalus” (known to most of us as “Spain”) for Islam. There’s the blinkered understanding of American politics, as when Bin Laden criticized George H.W. Bush for “installing” his sons as governors of Texas and Florida, and seemed to suggest (depending on the translation) that he might make a separate peace with any American state that didn’t vote for George W. Bush. And of course, there’s the consistency with which Al Qaeda and its fellow travelers greet perceived insults to Islam with threats and actions that seem designed to, well, vindicate the offending parties.

When a Danish newspaper published cartoons portraying Muhammad as an assassin and a terrorist, Islamists responded to these outrageous insinuations by inciting their co-believers to … assassination and terrorism. When the Pope stirred up controversy by suggesting that Islam might be less compatible with reason and philosophy than Christianity, he was answered with a burst of (no doubt rigorously reasoned) acts of violence committed on behalf of the faith he had insulted. Now, just in time with Easter, he’s been answered with al Qaeda’s idea of inter-religious dialogue as well.

But ridiculing this by ridiculing in-earnest and exquisitely effective Nazi propaganda, as Douthat does, seriously misses the mark:

If Hitler’s Germany hadn’t turned Europe into a charnel house, many of the elements of National Socialism — the clumsy anti-Semitic propaganda, the philosophical pretensions, the ranting speeches, even the uniforms — would seem almost deliberately comic, like bits and pieces from a Monty Python sketch.

This could only be written by someone who absorbed the evils of Nazism via pop culture, and who therefore has a limp response to it. He suggests that OBL should go ahead an make Pope Benedict’s day:

Here’s hoping that His Holiness enjoys a quiet chuckle while he puts the Swiss Guards on high alert. There’s nothing wrong with laughing at evil, so long as your bodyguards are packing heat.

Something tells me that the West will need to do a little more than “pack heat” against OBL and those he continues to inspire. But I do salute the effort to look for a handle on OBL that makes the threat he poses accessible to those he is intimidating through his demagoguery.

In other counterterrorism news, today the New York Times writes about the Dutch anti-Islamist provocateur Geert Wilders [e.a.]:

Of the Netherlands’ 16.5 million residents, a million are either Muslim or of Muslim descent. Many of them are so-called guest workers from Morocco, Turkey and other Islamic countries who came here decades ago to work in factories and stayed to raise families of their own.

Occasionally, conflicts arise between mainstream Dutch society — which supports gay marriage and legalized prostitution, for instance — and the often more conservative Muslim minority, and Mr. Wilders has successfully mined the unease between them.

This somehow leaves the impression that Wilders is someone acting for his own (political) benefit. And later on, the Times writer spells out [e.a.]:

Since no one has actually seen Mr. Wilders’s film, some here have started wondering if it is as fake as his hair color, a clever publicity stunt devised to prove his point that Islam and freedom of speech cannot coexist.

Mr. Wilders disabuses him of the notion:

“I get in so much trouble, both privately and politically, that if I would do it for publicity reasons, I would be a fool,” he said.

It’s pretty obvious to me that Wilders is doing it for publicity reasons—that is, to publicize the dangers of Islamist extremism to Western societies.

If that makes him a fool, let there be more such brave “fools.”

A new message from Osama bin Laden puts Europe on notice again, and as Reuters reports the story, “security analysts and officials” don’t seem particularly alarmed.

LONDON (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden’s latest message shows that he sees Europe as fertile soil for al Qaeda, especially at a time of tension between free speech and Muslim values, but is unlikely to signal an imminent attack.

Security analysts and officials say there is no evidence that bin Laden’s statements contain coded instructions to al Qaeda operatives and he has no track record of delivering warnings immediately before an attack.

No biggie, Reuters suggests, but notes a new twist:

But Wednesday’s message was striking in its focus on Europe as opposed to the United States, whose President George W. Bush earned only a passing reference as “your oppressive ally who … is about to depart the White House”.

It’s hard to see why Reuters is surprised by OBL’s stated target, considering that his new grievance is specifically against Europeans:

In the latest message, issued on the Prophet’s birthday, bin Laden said the [Mohammed] cartoons were “part of a new crusade in which the Pope of the Vatican had a significant role”.

The reference was part of a familiar bin Laden strategy to paint Islam and Western, Christian-rooted societies as being in a state of war with its origins dating back to the Middle Ages.

One European security official explained Al Qaeda’s tactic according to Al Qaeda’s mind-set [e.a.]:

“It’s the logic of the crusade. The Pope, in the imagination of the Islamists, may appear as the head of the crusade, which is clearly absurd but may have meaning for some Muslims and the Islamists. I do think it may indicate the Pope is a target,” said Claude Moniquet, head of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center.

He said the Pope’s presence in Rome was one factor making Italy a target for al Qaeda. Other European countries in its sights included Denmark, because of the cartoons row, and the Netherlands, where right-wing politician Geert Wilders is set to release a video next week that is expected to condemn the Koran.

By the “logic of the crusade,” OBL targets anyone who displeases his perverted notion of Islamic justice. This is the Al Qaeda ideology: global vigilantism in the name of Allah.

But OBL has his vulnerabilities, as Wretchard notes:

 The rule of thumb in a fistfight is when you land a blow which makes your opponent yell, hit him there again. And the louder he yells the more you hit him in that particular area. Osama Bin Laden has just said “ouch”.

And here’s one of the things that hurts [e.a.]:

What makes the Mohammed Cartoon attack on radical Islam so potent that Bin Laden himself must oppose it, is two things. First, anyone can make fun of radical Islam. Second, the Cartoons are aimed at the weakest point of the Jihad: its sources of authority.  …

The real message of organized nihilism is that “everything is permitted” except to make fun of nihilism itself. Every act is lawful in radical Islam: to bomb markets, kill children, lie, cheat and steal. Everything: except to publish the Mohammed Cartoons.

Are we in the West going to let OBL or Al Qaeda write the rules about what is and is not permissible to say in public in our societies?

Stay tuned.*** 

—————–

*** As long as American commentators like Joe Klein continue to misunderstand the nature of the threat and to make absurd claims—such as the assertion that there is a distinction between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the “real” Al Qaeda—we’re not going to get too far:

As it now stands, McCain believes that Iraq, where 150,000 U.S. troops are chasing after 3,500 Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia terrorists, is the “central front” in the war against terrorism–and he is on the record opposed to taking military action against the real Al Qaeda, which is actively working to destabilize Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and may be planning the next 9/11 in the mountains of Waziristan.

The next 9/11 is not the only thing threatening the West. One day perhaps more people threatened by Al Qaeda and other fanatical Islamists will understand that.

Visit the Georgetown Bookshop site to order your poster.

Whether the Dutch politician Geert Wilders stumbled into this tactic or meticulously planned the maneuver, he seems to have found a way to challenge both Islamist extremists (of all denominations: Sunni and Shia) and complacent Westerners, who seem not only willing but eager to give up the freedoms their forebears fought to attain for us all.

Der Spiegel describes how one man has been able to spark a “global panic.”

In late November 2007, Wilders announced that he was working on a film that would depict “the intolerant and fascist nature of the Koran.” Spokespeople from the Dutch interior and justice ministries expressed their concern about the project, but they also stressed that they had no power to dissuade the parliamentarian from going through with his plan or to prevent the film from being broadcast.

Since then, a film that no one has seen and of which no one can say that it will ever exist has become a daily topic of discussion and speculation in the Netherlands. Wilders is fueling the debate by occasionally announcing how far along the project is.

Predictably, this roused the ire of those it was intended to provoke—first of all the Dutch establishmen:

This triggered a panic in the Netherlands that could only be likened to the dread leading up to a massive storm. The Dutch ambassador in Malaysia warned that protests could lead to “dozens of deaths.” Dutch ambassadors in Islamic countries were instructed to increase security measures and distance themselves from the Wilders film, while counterterrorism experts at home began making preparations for the day of the broadcast. …

In early March, a few hundred Afghans demonstrated against the Wilders film in the northern Afghani city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where they burned Dutch flags and called for the withdrawal of Dutch NATO units from Afghanistan. This prompted NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to express his concern that broadcasting the film could have an “impact” on the troops stationed in Afghanistan.

It was when the fear had spread from the Netherlands and into the heart of the EU that Wilders struck his first rhetorical blow [e.a.]:

[T]he Dutch foreign minister asked the EU to support the Dutch position. He said that the Dutch believe in freedom of expression, but are against portraying all Muslims as extremists. At the same time, the “terror alarm” in the Netherlands was raised to its second-highest level. The government of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende appealed to Wilders to abandon his plan to broadcast the film. On the one hand, Balkenende said, “constitutional freedoms must be defended, while extremism and terrorism must be fought.” On the other hand, he continued, “we must consider the consequences of our actions and may not endanger the things that are valuable to us all.”

Wilders reaction was clear. “The cabinet is falling onto its knees before Islam and capitulating,” he said, characterizing Balkenende as “an anxious man who has chosen the side of the Taliban.”

But the fear of Islamist retaliation—blowback—had taken hold in the EU [e.a.]:

Hans Gert Pöttering, the president of the European Parliament … called upon the media to impose a “code of behavior” on itself and not to publish anything that could be perceived as “derogatory” by members of religious groups. He also warned the Dutch not to “make a contribution to violence because of our freedom.” These clear words of appeasement, which the chief EU parliamentarian directed against the victims and not the perpetrators of violence, urging the former to be on their best behavior, were – as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote — the result of “anticipated fear” and sounded “dangerously like self-censorship.”

Wilders, who lives with around-the-clock protection because Islamist websites have called for his beheading, hasn’t yet released his film, and the internet is the only channel left open to him. Nevertheless, he has achieved one goal [e.a.]:

The truth is that the “provocateur” has already achieved his goal. Wilders has managed to portray the Dutch and the Europeans as cowards, shouting “we capitulate!” before the battle has even begun. …

They behave as if they want to protect the members of all religions against insults and abuse, all the while overlooking the fact that it is usually the members of one religion who respond aggressively whenever they are accused of having a propensity for violence.

Wilders could not have achieved more if his film had been shown.

Indeed.

And I note that Osama Bin Laden—remember him?—has been inserted into the global conversation again. This time he’s threatening the Europeans:

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden denounced the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Muhammad and warned Europe that retaliation would follow in an audio message released late Wednesday.

Even if the message is canned, as all the reports suggest, it’s a timely reminder.

Whatever you think of him and his methods, Geert Wilders has exposed the West’s vulnerability to (and seeming desire to capitulate to) blackmail through Islamist-extremist terrorism.

Sometimes all you have are educated guesses, because so few facts are known or confirmed or confirmable—as in the case of the most gratifying assassination of the notorious Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyeh. 

Nasrallah blamed Israel, and then declared war. Israel rejected his attempt to assign blame.

Some educated guesses about whodunit to him.

This is some of what he done to us:

Sir Alan West, Britain’s new security minister, redefines Britishness for the 21st century:

“Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone,” he said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. “I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.”

It will be interesting to see how a “start snitching” campaign*** cast in this light—i.e., yes we’re British, but this is war—goes over in Britain. While this is the same country whose population accepts the presence of millions of surveillance cameras for security and other law-enforcement purposes, West’s exhortation is yet another acknowledgment that Britain is on a war footing at home.

———–

*** I last wrote about snitching in mid-June.

Douglas Farah reports on an uptick in media offerings from al Qaeda, which, like everyone else these days, has to struggle to remain relevant in a merciless 24/7 media environment and with an audience that has the attention span of a flea:

This past week has been interesting for the sudden re-emergence of the high-profile al Qaeda/salafist propaganda machine, showing a broad range of Islamist actions to demonstrate the movement is alive and well, and triumph is inevitable.

We get the publishing [of] a slick web zine, the “Voice of Jihad,” after a two-year hiatus, including directions from Osama bin Laden to attack oil facilities; a Zawahiri interview blasting Bush for fairly current events; the release of videos by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, supposedly showing attacks on Coalition forces; and, as Evan Kohlmann finds new video releases by Al Qaeda in Iraq, including the biographies of foreign troops killed there.

As Farah notes, al Qaeda is focused on media. These recent propaganda efforts are impressive compared to previous grainy videos from the group. This speaks to the group’s determination to communicate and spread its message globally. Which it has so far done quite successfully:

Much of what is said in this recent spate is entirely propaganda, but it cannot be dismissed as irrelevant. It shows those who visit the jihadi sites that the Islamist movement is alive and well, capable of delivering messages and combating the enemy on a sustained basis.

Then Farah veers into my favorite topic—message creation.***

Any insurgent group, fighting in an asymmetrical context for the long term, has to develop a narrative to justify itself, comfort its often-beleaguered members and attract new members. …

In this case the narrative is that Islam is on the rise, the West is in retreat, and that Allah has already granted victory to the faithful. All that is lacking are more willing recruits.

And this is where we move into the counterterrorism territory suggested by both anthropologist David Kilcullen and “Enlightenment fundamentalist” Aayan Hirsi Alik, who have both said that potential jihadis must be turned away by appealing alternatives before they sign on to the extremists’ seductive agenda.
Farah writes:

What must be developed is the counter-narrative, one that resonates, explains the weaknesses and defeats, and can help drive away new recruits.

It is hard, but not impossible. Multiple insurgencies have faced, and suffered from, effective counter-narratives that were culturally appropriate and accessible to the right population.

It is not clear we have a counter-narrative, in part because we still do not agree 1) one who the enemy is and 2) that we really are in a war.

The last point is depressing but true. I want to know more about the counter-narratives Farah is talking about. And I wish I could see evidence that others were paying attention to this subject, of paramount importance.

Meanwhile, tomorrow’s NYTimes leads with a story that says reports of al Qaeda’s death have been greatly exaggerated:

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.

In light of their recent calls on followers to hit oil installations across the world and to be sure to film their actions, I think it’s safe to say they want to put on a really good show.

——–

*** I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Frank Rich (among many others) is wasting his brain cells developing new crackpot conspiracy theories to explain the behavior of Bush & Co.  Today, for example, he writes:

Let’s not forget that the White House’s stunt of repackaging old, fear-inducing news for public consumption has a long track record. Its reason for doing so is always the same: to distract the public from reality that runs counter to the White House’s political interests.

I wish these brilliant analysts would spend just a fraction of their time deconstructing the other characters populating the world stage—you know, the ones who are causing real trouble for us. We need a guide to understanding their behavior, too.

Which is more effective—hate-speech laws or the race-tinged animosities broadcast across the Sceptr’ed Isle in Celebrity Big Brother? The Sun tabloid isn’t waiting around for anyone to pass a law or do a study. It addresses race and class issues head-on, if shockingly.

Graham Dudman, the Sun’s managing editor, writes:

We all need to take a stand against racism, which is why we at the Sun have put the issue on the front page.

The idea of this front page was that it was intended to shock. We knew some people would find it offensive that we had used these words. But we had the permission of the children concerned, and their parents, and went ahead after full consultation with Trevor Phillips and the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR).

The point is that, whether we like it or not, this language is in our playgrounds and on the street every day. And it is absolutely wrong. What starts with this kind of racist name-calling is that people are getting marginalised. And that breeds extremism, which leads ultimately, as we saw with 7/7, to young people being willing to cause mayhem and kill innocents by blowing themselves up.

Not everyone is buying, of course:

What then, to make of today’s Sun front-page? On one level, it deserves to be welcomed and applauded. Any message which points out the values and life that we share, that prejudice based both on background and on the colour of our skin is completely unacceptable, and that children especially are often the ones that suffer the most from the unkindness and closed-minds of their peers ought to be celebrated, especially coming from a paper with such a poor history both of promoting forgiveness and tolerance. It’s just that I don’t believe the Sun means it, and there are also far more sinister undertones beneath its apparent road to Damascus-type conversion.

Such as?

[T]he very reason for the Sun running this on their front page has to be related in no small measure to the decision of Shilpa Shetty to sell her story to [the Sun's rival] the Mirror.

Ah, the pressures the free market.

Except: there is something to be said for it, of course. And for pop culture as well, as the brilliant Charles Paul Freund noted in 2003:

A different sort of conflict broke out this summer in the Middle East — one involving reality TV [an Arab American Idol clone called Superstar]. While it offers more evidence that the region is in the grip of a liberationist pop culture frenzy (see “Look Who’s Rocking the Casbah,” June), it also demonstrates that even the region’s pop fandom can fall prey to conspiracy theories and divisiveness. …

Supposedly, the entire Jordanian army had been ordered to vote for Jordan’s contestant. Supposedly, Lebanese leaders had failed the nation by not mobilizing support for Zein. Supposedly, Syria, which controls Lebanon [not anymore, of course --ed.], had exerted itself to control Superstar as well.

And that was a good thing, said Freund, because:

as fan-based cultural identity grows in the region, it expresses itself in terms of the area’s traditional nationalist or sectarian divisions, engendering group enmity and suspicion. The effect of commercial culture, however, is to dissipate conflict by lowering the stakes. Modernist identities (drawing on such influences as fandom) are fluid and changeable; the resulting communities of interest are numerous and temporary. Zein’s fans have now contented themselves with creating a Web site in his honor.

Superstar’s winner, by the way, was Diana Karazone, the singer from Jordan.

Commercial culture dissipates conflict by lowering the stakes—that is a brilliant insight on Freund’s part and a useful one when you throw it into the mix with what Aayan Hirsi Ali and David Kilcullen have to say.
And then you start to think about things in a different way: the aura of rock stardom that, for example, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah has created for himself and his movement: he seems to be seeking (and gaining) fans more than converts.

And then you start to think about the description “[r]ising al-Qaeda star Abu Yehya al-Libi” that Abu Aardvark used (with good reason) the other day when describing a propaganda video.

And then you remember back when France was threatening to ban head scarves in the public schools, Jeremy Harding suggested that maybe somehow the French were less culturally evolved than the British when it came to manipulating cultural “signs”:

In Britain, we know how to nurture an ironic infatuation with signs of difference, status and style. Maybe the flummery and camp of our political institutions and our enthusiastic approval of layering and posturing have helped us to achieve our multiculturalism. That we got usefully from Black Rod’s tights to Ali G’s tracksuit (probably via Dad’s Army) is not going to help us understand the French position, whose Jacobin demand for the transparent citizen is something we recoil from.

And then your head explodes.

And this is when the title of the post says it all (sorta):

“Enlightenment fundamentalist” Aayan Hirsi Ali:

Q. Have you seen any ideology coming from within Islam that gives young Muslims a sense of purpose without the overlay of militancy?

A. They have no alternative message. There is no active missionary work among the youth telling them, do not become jihadis. They do not use media means as much as the jihadis. They simply — they’re reactive and they don’t seem to be able to compete with the jihadis. And every time there is a debate between a real jihadi and, say, what we have decided to call moderate Muslims, the jihadis win. Because they come with the Koran and quotes from the Koran. The come with quotes from the Hadith and the Sunnah, and the traditions of the prophet. And every assertion they make, whether it is that women should be veiled, or Jews should be killed, or Americans are our enemies, or any of that, they win. Because what they have to say is so consistent with what is written in the Koran and the Hadith. And what the moderates fail to do is to say, listen, that’s all in there, but that wasn’t meant for this context. And we have moved on. We can change the Koran, we can change the Hadith. That’s what’s missing.

Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen*** (interviewed by George Packer for “Knowing the Enemy“):

When I asked him to outline a counter-propaganda strategy, he described three basic methods. “We’ve got to create resistance to their message,” he said. “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.” Bruce Hoffman told me that jihadists have posted five thousand Web sites that react quickly and imaginatively to events. In 2004, he said, a jihadist rap video called “Dirty Kuffar” became widely popular with young Muslims in Britain: “It’s like Ali G wearing a balaclava and having a pistol in one hand and a Koran in the other.” Hoffman believes that America must help foreign governments and civil-society groups flood the Internet with persuasively youthful Web sites presenting anti-jihadist messages—but not necessarily pro-American ones, and without leaving American fingerprints.

Kilcullen argues that Western governments should establish competing “trusted networks” in Muslim countries: friendly mosques, professional associations, and labor unions. (A favorite Kilcullen example from the Cold War is left-wing anti-Communist trade unions, which gave the working class in Western Europe an outlet for its grievances without driving it into the arms of the Soviet Union.) The U.S. should also support traditional authority figures—community leaders, father figures, moderate imams—in countries where the destabilizing transition to modernity has inspired Islamist violence. “You’ve got to be quiet about it,” he cautioned. “You don’t go in there like a missionary.” The key is providing a social context for individuals to choose ways other than jihad.

———–

*** I wrote about Kilcullen here.

She’s barely out of the gate and, as expected, Hillary Hatred is in full flower.*** Because I’m not a politico and therefore am not in the habit of obsessing about the (alleged) deep meaning behind each and every word that comes out of a potential candidate’s mouth, it is fascinating to see the thinking of someone who does do that kind of parsing.

For example, Matt Stoller,was a big fan of James Webb’s direct, uncomplicated “progressive populist message” in response to the State of the Union, is deeply unhappy with Hillary’s “mushy, untrustworthy glop.” +++

A progressive populist message would work in bringing us huge national majorities and a mandate for massive change. Still, if this is so obvious, why are we only hearing populism, or even a pale attempt at populism, from John Edwards (and Tom Vilsack)?

On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense. It’s a winning message, so why not use it? Well, it’s a winning message, alright, but only for the public. And right now, Presidential candidates are tailoring their messages for elite donors, and the rich don’t really care about inequality or Iraq. They care first and foremost about preserving the status quo, because in the status quo they are, well, rich. That’s a problem, because if your message is targeted towards the top 1% of the country, you’re leaving 99% of the country out of the conversation.

By far the worst example of this disturbing trend among 08ers is Hillary Clinton, who is rolling over donors and trying to prevent a primary from even happening by scooping up mindshare among elites before anyone else can organize. When you hear that you aren’t credible unless you can raise several hundred million dollars, realize that this is an idea planted by these elites to entrench their power, and not something that is falsifiable. It bears saying that it’s quite probable that don’t need $100M to run for President - Kerry didn’t lose the General because of a financial disadvantage, and he didn’t win in Iowa because of a financial advantage. The ‘only credible with $100M’ idea is another and more sophisticated version of the electable or inevitable meme that hurt us so badly in 2004. It’s something that Hillary Clinton wants us to believe is true. Whether it is true is a different story. [emphasis mine]

How do you “scoop up mindshare“?

How do you do it “before anyone else can organize“?

Can you teach it? Can you bottle it?

I hope so, because it sure would come in handy in the fight against global jihad, which David Kilcullen has talked and written about. The insight that struck me is that young Muslims increasingly choose the path of jihad because there are no compelling alternatives. And he says a big part of the West’s job is to create equally compelling, attractive alternatives for these young men. (At least that’s my takeaway—and I’m particularly interested in how the media helps make both jihad and its [future] compelling alternatives so attractive.)

Could some Democrats please give me an indication that they are starting to think about how to “scoop up” disaffected Muslims’ “mindshare before anyone else can organize”?

——————-

***I am not among her fans, but I am no longer among her detractors. The Eight-Year National Psychodrama drove me crazy, but time heals all wounds. Hillary has grown, and so have I. Life does that to you—or, rather, it should do that to you. If you haven’t examined your feelings about Hillary Rodham Clinton (or anything or anybody else) in the last 6-8 years or if you haven’t examined your opinions in the last 30 years, may I kindly suggest that it’s time to look inward.

At any rate, I will consider her on the merits when it comes time to cast my vote. Believe me, I had to grow (and the world had to change, too) in order to get to that point.

+++For those of you who, like me, are not politicos, Stoller elaborates on his anti-Hillary stance. It’s worth following along if you want to understand one split in the Democratic party:

In fact, everything that Hillary Clinton is doing is designed to make us think that she cannot be stopped, to pull the plug on money for others so she can get through the nomination without having to be clear on Iraq or populist in orientation. She is desperately fighting against having to do what Jim Webb did so well - spell out plainly the irresponsibility of political and economic elites. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a strategy. Or maybe, and this is what I believe, she sympathizes with the elite class more than the public, believing that the public are sheep who can be easily manipulated. She herself hasn’t lived in anything close to the real world since 1991. …

Ironically, though she is popular among some base voters and most progressive elites, few activists, bloggers, or local politicians actually want Hillary as the nominee. Local politicians are desperately afraid she will hurt downticket candidates all over the country. Progressives know she hasn’t dealt with Iraq, and will cripple the Democratic Party badly as Iraq gets worse in 2007 and 2008. And political junkies know that she has done very little that is substantive in the Senate except grant Bush the power to go to war and pander on flag-burning and video games. Politically, Hillary has passed out enough favors and kept every group atomized and fearful enough to make her seem both unpalatable and inevitable. That is why her camp is claiming that they are in the netroots primary, when they are simply not.

I believe her tending to an elite audience and ignoring the concerns of various activists explains the loathing of Hillary Clinton within a certain piece of the progressive base. I’ve noted before how one slice of primary voters is pretty similar to the netroots. This loathing isn’t based on the right-wing slime machine, though often progressives unwittingly slip into discussions about things like ‘electability’. It’s a loathing that is more ‘gut’, more about conflicting identities. Chris has noted this with his excellent series of about a year ago on class stratification between the activist class and the elites. Hillary Clinton is an establishment elitist, and we are opposed to this institutional baggage.

Demographics aside, one way to theorize about our ideology is that we have seen and rejected the triangulating model of politics. It’s not that Clinton wasn’t a good President in the 1990s, it’s that he failed to enact anything that outlasted him. He got nothing done on, say, global warming, and failed to establish a firm post-Cold War framework that Bush didn’t detonate in five minutes. More relevantly, the Clintonistas performed horribly in the 2000s, acting as lobbyists and warhawks, and just generally working against progressives until they realized they couldn’t overtly beat us in the PR game.

So it’s not surprising that the Hillary Clinton campaign is working to convince the DLC that she’ll do the 1990s over again, only this time with an extra helpings of the strategies that failed. …

I asked anti-Clinton people if there were ways that Hillary Clinton could get your support. A few argued that if she apologized for her war vote they would consider her, but surprisingly, a number of people said, flat-out, no. I’m beginning to understand why. There is almost no common ground between progressive activists and elitists like Hillary Clinton. Either you are in the elite stream of discourse, the place where health care can be debated without anyone in the room fearing the risks of being uninsured but where the fear of your client losing his business model is real, or you are with the plebes who are worried about their personal health care. You are either angry about being lied to about Iraq, or you are one of the unapologetic liars. We’re on one side. The elites are on the other. We can’t handle someone who enabled the war and now won’t be straight with us on Iraq after four years of watching our America slowly die. It just isn’t possible anymore for us to be in the same conversation because there is nothing to discuss. I won’t be that surprised if Clinton wins the nomination, but what she needs to fear is if the various entities that loathe what Hillary Clinton stands for start talking to each other. Right now, there’s a reticence to criticize Senator Clinton because of the legacy of the right, and because we don’t like to go after Democrats. I doubt that reticence will continue as the candidates attack each other. Hillary Clinton is a tragic figure, …

Sadly, Newsweek Baghdad correspondent Mike Hastings lost his about-to-be-fiancee in Iraq last week.

Andrea Parhamovich— “Andi” to her friends—was killed in an ambush in Baghdad. A 28-year-old civilian consultant working for the nonprofit National Democratic Institute, she was in a convoy when gunmen opened fire; Al Qaeda-linked Sunni insurgents claimed responsibility.

Reflecting on her death in an e-mail to his Newsweek colleagues, Hastings wrote [emphasis mine]:

“We all take risks over here, and we know the risks. It’s part of the job. But killing a soldier or getting whacked as a war correspondent is one thing—still tragic yet somehow more acceptable—but killing a civilian here to help is just despicable. Shouldn’t have happened. Is it worth it? Good question, don’t have an answer really. I hope it is, have my doubts, but more so, I hope she isn’t forgotten. She wanted to be here, to be a part of history. She loved the adventure and the romance of it all. She loved helping people, making a difference. She loved politics; her heroes were Joan of Arc and Empress SiSi of Austria. (In other words: strong independent women. Like I said, she was a handful.)

“America could not have asked for a better face, a better representative in Iraq. She’s the best and the brightest of her generation, the best of what our country stands for, and she was killed by truly evil people with a bankrupt ideology. I sound like Bush, but I think we can sometimes forget how bad these guys are.”

Well, not to put too fine a point on it… but yes.

Am I taking a cheap shot? Sure. I don’t care. I hope a bit of what Hastings and his Newsweek colleagues learned from this terrible, bitter experience will stick.

On this theme, writing in City Journal, Hitchens contemplates Mark Steyn’s obsession with

the general apathy and surrender of the West in the face of a determined assault from a religious ideology, or an ideological religion, afflicted by no sickly doubt about what it wants or by any scruples about how to get it.

Many of us share this obsession. Hitchens asks:

How does one respond, in other words, when an enemy challenges not just your cherished values but additionally forces you to examine the very assumptions that have heretofore seemed to underpin those values?

That is the question, isn’t it? Since 9/11 and up until now, liberals have consistently disappointed by falling back on Frantz Fanon:

[Liberals] cannot shake their subliminal identification of the Muslim religion with the wretched of the earth: the black- and brown-skinned denizens of what we once called the “Third World.” You can see this identification in the way that the Palestinians (about 20 percent of whom were Christian until their numbers began to decline) have become an “Islamic” cause and in the amazing ignorance that most leftists display about India, a multiethnic secular democracy under attack from al-Qaida and its surrogates long before the United States was. And you can see it, too, in the stupid neologism “Islamophobia,” which aims to promote criticism of Islam to the gallery of special offenses associated with racism.

This kind of thinking is old, tired, and simply not good enough. Hitchens again:

Islamist suicide-terrorism has mutated into new shapes and adopted fresh grievances as a result of the mobilization against it. Liberalism has found even more convoluted means of blaming itself for the attack upon it. But at least the long period of somnambulism is over, and the opportunity now exists for antibodies to form against the infection.

Still:

The Islamist threat itself may be crude, but this is an intricate cultural and political challenge that will absorb all of our energies for the rest of our lives: we are all responsible for doing our utmost as citizens as well as for demanding more imagination from our leaders.

So I take my cheap shots where I can get them in order to preserve energy for the long fight ahead.

Austin Bay links to Michael Totten’s most recent report from Lebanon (if you haven’t been reading Totten’s blog and series, you should do so).

On the subject of Hezbollah’s “Divine Victory,” Bay says:

Our enemies are masters of media manipulation. But “information victories” without on the ground success are thin facades.

I agree that “information victories” are thin facades. They are better, however, than no victories at all. What’s more: score enough of them that are “sticky” (per Malcolm Gladwell) and you can actually change a narrative. That makes “information victories” very important in a hearts-and-minds war such as the one that Hezbollah continues to wage. We shouldn’t underestimate their importance.

It is dispiriting to watch various jihadi and Islamist groups, in the West and everywhere else, manipulate the media again and again. It is way past time for the West to start scoring some “information victories” of its own—particularly in the (seeming) absence of “real” victories.

We cannot afford too many “information victories” for jihadis and Islamists. l

Apparently, Kevin Drum believes pro-war hawks have been so completely discredited that after we leave Iraq, the United States will have a “non-war-based foreign policy”:

I agree completely with [Pam] Hess about one thing: there are national security questions involved here, and I wish the national media would spend more time seriously talking about them. The big one is: once we leave Iraq — as we will — and decide that invading other countries is not generally the right way to fight jihadist terrorism, what strategy will take its place? Conservatives really, really don’t want to talk about what a non-war-based foreign policy would look like, and it seems to scare off all but the hardiest mainstream pundits too. It just seems so dovish, doesn’t it? But it’s time to start anyway.

Knock yourself out, Mr. Drum! And then brush up on 4G war: it’s all the rage.

By the way, this guy explains it right, but he comes to the wrong conclusion.

[G]uerrilla wars are fought in the moral sphere. This means that the side that can hold together its moral cohesion the longest, while simultaneously fragmenting its opponents, will come out the winner ….

So far so good.

From this grain of truth, the US government/military reached (primarily due to hindsight bias re:Vietnam) the conclusion that moral conflicts are won through propaganda.

Well…partly

In other words, the side with the better propaganda machine wins the war.

Um, no.

The side with the better propaganda wins the war.

We are failing on that score so far, and the solution is not, as blogger John Robb suggests, to end the propaganda campaign and become utterly transparent. That is beyond ludicrous, particularly when the enemy is so skillful at propaganda.

The solution is better counterpropaganda—subtle and utterly opaque counterpropaganda. It will happen, and much of it will come from the culture rather than from the heavy-handed unskillful hand of government. For now, the culture is lagging behind. It is shedding its 30-year-old skin. It hasn’t caught up to the reality of 21st-century war. That will change.

Through counterpropaganda, says George Packer in a long, fascinating recent piece in the New Yorker, “Knowing the Enemy.”

Packer spends a long time with social scientist David Kilcullen, who, for the benefit of the United States government, has set out to reframe the unhelpful paradigm “war on terrorism” into something called the “global counterinsurgency,” the better to understand what—and whom—we are fighting.

Kilcullen has plotted out a “ladder of extremism” that shows the progress of a jihadist. At the bottom is the vast population of mainstream Muslims, who are potential allies against radical Islamism as well as potential targets of subversion, and whose grievances can be addressed by political reform. The next tier up is a smaller number of “alienated Muslims,” who have given up on reform.

Some of these join radical groups, like the young Muslims in North London who spend afternoons at the local community center watching jihadist videos. They require “ideological conversion”—that is, counter-subversion, which Kilcullen compares to helping young men leave gangs. (In a lecture that Kilcullen teaches on counterterrorism at Johns Hopkins, his students watch “Fight Club,” the 1999 satire about anti-capitalist terrorists, to see a radical ideology without an Islamic face.)

A smaller number of these individuals, already steeped in the atmosphere of radical mosques and extremist discussions, end up joining local and regional insurgent cells, usually as the result of a “biographical trigger—they will lose a friend in Iraq, or see something that shocks them on television.” With these insurgents, the full range of counterinsurgency tools has to be used, including violence and persuasion.

The very small number of fighters who are recruited to the top tier of Al Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups are beyond persuasion or conversion. “They’re so committed you’ve got to destroy them,” Kilcullen said. “But you’ve got to do it in such a way that you don’t create new terrorists.”

So much for the “who.” Now here’s the how.[emphasis mine]

“We’ve got to create resistance to [the radical extremists'] message,” he said. “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.” Bruce Hoffman told me that jihadists have posted five thousand Web sites that react quickly and imaginatively to events. In 2004, he said, a jihadist rap video called “Dirty Kuffar” became widely popular with young Muslims in Britain: “It’s like Ali G wearing a balaclava and having a pistol in one hand and a Koran in the other.” Hoffman believes that America must help foreign governments and civil-society groups flood the Internet with persuasively youthful Web sites presenting anti-jihadist messages—but not necessarily pro-American ones, and without leaving American fingerprints.

Kilcullen argues that Western governments should establish competing “trusted networks” in Muslim countries: friendly mosques, professional associations, and labor unions. (A favorite Kilcullen example from the Cold War is left-wing anti-Communist trade unions, which gave the working class in Western Europe an outlet for its grievances without driving it into the arms of the Soviet Union.) The U.S. should also support traditional authority figures—community leaders, father figures, moderate imams—in countries where the destabilizing transition to modernity has inspired Islamist violence. “You’ve got to be quiet about it,” he cautioned. “You don’t go in there like a missionary.”

The key is providing a social context for individuals to choose ways other than jihad.

Read the whole thing. It all makes sense.

And, yes, it will be a very long war.

Channel-surfing, I just came upon the propaganda film Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West on Fox.

This is the point at which I start to sound a little wobbly about propaganda. Or, more precisely, counter-propaganda. ‘Cause that’s what it is. A very strong dose.

Blech.

Seriously, folks. Reuters is reporting that Israel is using nanotechnology to fight terrorism—in an unusual way:

Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The flying robot, nicknamed the “bionic hornet”, would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said.

It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a “bionic man” and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers.

Israeli deputy prime minister Shimon Peres delivers his opinion matter-of-factly, as usual.

“The war in Lebanon proved that we need smaller weaponry. It’s illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicidal terrorist. So we are building futuristic weapons,” Peres said.

Is it true or is it disinformation?
Never can tell!
That’s our new world, and welcom