ignoring our way to victory (II)

[drewkitty]

When challenged to identify an alternative to the War On Terror, I quickly surfed back through my recent posts and found this gem, "Ignoring Our Way To Victory."

It occurs to me that I should probably go into detail.

What is a terrorist organization? A group of like-minded fanatical people who have decided that killing innocent people covertly aids their political, religious or ideological objective.

So how do we stop terrorists? One approach suggests that we find some of these fanatical people and kill them first. This approach, popularized by fiction such as "24" and the justifications for the invasion of Iraq, is commonly called the "War On Terror."

Out in the real world, however, terrorism is at its core a sociological phenomena. And I at one time, am ashamed to admit that I was a sociologist. So I should be able to give a detailed prescription for eliminating terror.

A terrorist organization consists of a collision of people, money and an ideology, typically built on a foundation of hate. This immediately opens three prongs of attack:

People, Money and Ideology

Each of these can be separated using criminological theory into three time axes: prevention, deterrence, and incapacitation.

This gives nine (9) strategies for our non-war on terror.

Non-War Strategies

[ ]	People	Money	Ideology
Prevention	Cultural Exchange	Charitable Alternatives	Public Relations
Deterrence	Criminalization	Asset Forfeiture	Effective Assertion
Incapacitation	Target Cells	Cash Rewards	Target Leadership

I can flesh out each of these at greater length, but I have to go now. Real life intrudes.

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Let me briefly outline several additional lines of strategy. Briefly because it promises to be a busy week.

On the defense side, we have such measures as counter-intelligence, target hardening, civil defense, building design, public education and responder training. However, much of this is locking the barn after the horse has been set on fire.

On the access control side, we have improved customs screening, better control over temporarily resident aliens, much better control over illegally present persons (i.e. "illegal immigrants"), and last but certainly not least, a revamping of our entire mode of thinking about security screening. We are not looking for guns and bombs and knives. We are looking for dangerous PEOPLE, and that means carefully conducted but quite explicit profiling. Get over it.

On the foreign relations side, we are concerned with building the relations between peoples of the world in a way that is favorable to America. This is almost the weakest side of our present effort, but the one in which we have the most potential to be strong. Ordinary American citizens are our greatest strength, whether they are host families in Kansas for little Ahmed or visiting Egypt and being goodwill ambassadors not between nations, but between people.

On the diplomacy side, we have direct relations between nation-states. These are worth considerable time and effort to invest in. Good relations equates directly to captured terrorists.

I won't touch the various forms of intelligence yet, except to note in passing that America is uniformly regarded by the other national intelligence services to be utterly incompetent in this most vital form of national defense -- with considerable supporting evidence.

Yes, there is still indeed a role for military operations. However many of them will fit under the dreaded rubric of "Operations Other Than War" for which many military forces are unsuited by training and equipment. The military police and Civil Affairs units need to be expanded immediately on an emergency wartime footing -- by draft if necessary. Other civilian equivalents need to be created; think of the Seabees under civilian command and control but carrying defensive weapons as necessary.

Direct military combat operations would be limited in objective and ruthless in execution.

Example: It is believed that there are WoMDs in a country in Africa. Therefore, we invade and take over.

WRONG. Start over.

Therefore, we assemble powerful and well-armed forces with adequate air cover and logistics support. These military units escorting WoMD recon teams demand access to any facility where WoMD is suspected, and set out to take physical custody of any person with knowledge, whether he is a lab tech or the head of a nation-state. If resisted, they immediately employ overwhelming force. If attacked, the attackers are themselves annihilated.

No attempt is made to interfere with or replace existing civil government (if any). This is not a humanitarian mission, this is a WoMD hunt and anyone standing in the way will be gunned down. Such side actions as may be prudent will be taken to support these forces (such as the incidental destruction of national air forces, seizure of ports, annihilation of enemy divisions, etc.) but these are clearly secondary objectives to be abandoned when no longer useful to the WoMD hunt.

Invading countries is so World War Two. Treating nation states as if they do not exist, sweeping aside their feeble attempts to interfere as we seize weapons of mass destruction . . . that is what we should do, the next time someone like Saddam is suspected of a pocket nuke or two. Lest we wait too long and allow another North Korea with nukes. One was too many.

If the Iraqis had overthrown Saddam themselves, perhaps they would realize what a precious and valuable gift freedom is.