When It Comes to The Battle of Ideas, The U.S. Has No General

[The Reaper]

Excellent analysis and commentary. Insightful feedback from LTG B as well.

We are losing hearts and minds, and failing to exploit our information advantage. It would appear that only kinetic solutions have appeal to our civilian leadership as well.

A Radio Free Europe type system of broadcast efforts, combined with support to moderate Muslim internet bloggers would be a good start.

TR


July 2007
When It Comes to The Battle of Ideas, The U.S. Has No General

By Stew Magnuson

“Our adversaries are way ahead of us in the use of the Internet and the use of the media,” said Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, undersecretary of defense of intelligence.

It was a stunning statement.

The United States invented the Internet. Its entrepreneurs in a few short years transformed the world. Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, YouTube — the list goes on.

Hollywood produces films that generate billions of dollars worldwide each year. Foreign audiences can’t get enough of them. Network television, Cable TV, 24-hour news channels — all born in the U.S.A.

The nation possesses enormous human capital as well. Every spring, America’s world-class universities produce legions of behavioral scientists, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, media specialists, film school grads and computer engineers. Its citizenry includes populations of moderate Muslims from every corner of the world.

But despite all of this, when it comes to fighting the ideology of radical Islam, the United States is getting its butt handed to it on a plate.

“The question is on a day to day basis, who is responsible for information operations for the United States government?” Boykin asked. “And the answer is ‘nobody’… There is no one in charge on a day to day basis.”

Although the message hasn’t sunk in with the general population, think tanks, academia and even some at the Pentagon will insist that all the bullets, fighter jets and high-tech sensors aren’t going to win the so-called global war on terror. Bombs can’t kill ideas. (Although they can kill civilians and their tragic deaths can deftly be used as anti-U.S. propaganda.)

The Quadrennial Defense Review spelled it out. The end of the war will only come “when extremist ideologies are discredited in the eyes of their host populations and tacit supporters.”

Thomas O’Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, is among those who are lamenting the nation’s lack of unity in countering the ideas of radical Islam. The enemy is adept at using information technology tools, he said at the conference. He criticized the U.S. and international media, but also laid some blame on the Defense Department.

He described a successful raid by Iraqi forces on a terrorist compound. Insurgents immediately posted a video of the aftermath that showed dead bodies inside what they said was a mosque. It was a prayer room in a house, not a mosque, he contended. There was plenty of evidence uncovered that showed the insurgents there had tortured Iraqi troops and weren’t innocent civilians as the propaganda video claimed.

U.S. Central Command responded to the allegations a day and half later, O’Connell said. By that time, the Iraqi units had already taken a “hammering” in the press, he said.

“We have got to do a better job of telling our story,” he said. “I think we make efforts. I don’t know if they’re efforts that are very well coordinated both on an international and a domestic level.”

The false mosque story was a tactical victory scored on the part of a nimble and sophisticated enemy. Strategically, the nation is losing ground in the larger ideological war. Al-Qaida and its sympathizers are creating their own “narrative,” in which their spin on world events is widely believed, two recent reports have pointed out. The terrorist group now has its own media production arm, dubbed As-Sahab, which serves as an information clearinghouse. Any U.S. public relations firm would recognize its methods.

A recent Senate hearing pointed to the lack of attention being paid to the issue.

On the same day U.S. Central Command’s chief, Navy Adm. William Fallon, sat before a packed Senate Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held the second in a series of three briefings on terrorism and the Internet.

Fallon attracted several television cameras. At the Homeland Security hearing, the room would have been half empty if not for the groups of high school students stopping by for 30-minute intervals. Reporters for the Associated Press and a handful of niche publications were present, but the hearing generated few headlines. Only three senators attended.

Testifying were a Georgetown university professor, a West Point officer and a representative of the Defense Department’s newly formed “support to public diplomacy office,” who had been on the job for three days.

The new office — serving the undersecretary of defense for policy — is tasked with “ensuring strategic communication and information are integral to policy making … developing and coordinating key themes within the Defense Department to promote policies,” and working with other U.S. government partners, particularly the Department of State … to design and facilitate whenever possible strategic communication policies and plans to effectively advance U.S. national security,” the new deputy assistant secretary of defense, Michael Doran told the committee.

The Internet is the “primary repository of the essential resources for sustaining the culture of terrorism,” Doran said. As far as spreading Islamic extremist ideology, the Internet functions “as a kind of virtual extremist madrassa.”

Attempting to shut down web sites is an exercise in futility, those testifying said. They will pop up in a matter of minutes somewhere else. Password protected chat-rooms are even harder to penetrate. The Internet is the ultimate terrorist safe haven.

Boykin said the solution to winning the war against extremists “is not killing or capturing every terrorist ... That’s a never-ending process. We’ll never be successful.”

That presumably also goes for the legions of al-Qaida sympathizers who sit at computers and contribute to the jihad through their technical and media expertise.

The nation must enter a new phase of its battle, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

“These myths and falsehoods must be debunked and discredited,” he said at the hearing.

And that means coming up with a compelling counter-message to the violent ideology spreading through the Internet and other means, he added.

Cilluffo came to the committee with a new report in hand — “NETworked Radicalization: A Counter Strategy.” About the same time, Rand Corp.’s Center of Middle East Public Policy released a similar report — “Building Moderate Muslim Networks.”

Both papers argued that the United States needs to do a better job helping Islamic moderates spread the word that extremists are harming the Muslim world and that their beliefs are based on false tenets.

The Rand authors pointed out that the United States does have some experience in this area. During the Cold War, the nation was in an ideological battle with communists, and it eventually prevailed. Comparing Bin Ladinism to communism isn’t always a perfect fit, but there are similarities. America’s cold warriors successfully built networks and coalitions of those who opposed the political ideology.

The anti-communists included those who disliked the United States, and that was okay, the report said, as along as they were on board with the idea of ending communist rule.

“The U.S. government and its allies need, but thus far have failed, to develop clear criteria for partnerships with authentic moderates,” the Rand study said. Despite numerous policy statements, speeches by President Bush and other documents, no consensus on how to identify and support partners in the “war of ideas” has emerged.

There are few existing moderate networks to engage with, the study noted, so they will have to be created. Possibilities include: liberal and secular academics and intellectuals; young moderate religious scholars; community activists; women’s groups engaged in gender equality campaigns and moderate journalists and writers.

U.S. funds should flow to members of these groups, Rand analysts recommended.

Credibility is the key. If the message is perceived as coming from the United States, then it wall fall on deaf ears.

The State Department is spending $700 million per year on the U.S. Middle East Television Network, better known as Al Hurra, which has been sharply criticized for failing to gain market share. Radio Sawa, part of the same effort, has gained an audience, but it is not clear whether either of them has been able to positively shape attitudes in the Muslim world toward U.S. policies, Rand said. Both stations are seen as proxies for the United States.

The ultimate goal, Cilluffo said, is the deconstruction of the al-Qaida brand. That’s “not to be confused with a public relations campaign to improve the image of the United States,” he added.

Rand said moderates must “reverse the flow of ideas.” The communists attempted to export their ideology into the West, but the United States and its allies turned the tide by infiltrating democratic ideas behind the Iron Curtain.

[The Reaper]

Some countries are more open than others. Strict regimes in the Middle East may not allow much meddling, but moderate, relatively open nations along the region’s perimeter are a good place to start. Indonesia, North Africa and Turkey, and nations with minority Muslim communities are potential spots to get a foothold, said the Rand report.

Now, all that’s needed is someone to take charge, or at least show some leadership.

If the United States is to help “reverse the flow of ideas,” who is responsible?

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, at the hearing asked the Pentagon’s Doran if anyone was in charge of countering extremist ideology.

Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, was his answer.

Hughes was a close political advisor to President Bush, tasked with reinvigorating the State Department’s public diplomacy sector, which had its post-Cold War budgets eviscerated by Congress.

But within the State Department, Rand analysts said, there is little consensus on what public diplomacy means. Is it changing opinions, garnering support for policies or marginalizing extremists? The sector gets short shrift there. And at the Pentagon, the public diplomacy office didn’t open its doors until more than five years after 9/11.

“This strategic uncertainty ensures suboptimal policy performance,” said the Rand study.

There is no “unity of command,” Boykin said, putting the leadership issue in military terms. “We’ve given up on that. What we do hope to achieve is unity of effort.”

All agreed that waging an effective war of ideas against radical Islam is not the responsibility of one department or agency. In fact, to wage an effective campaign, the effort should reach to the nation’s allies, Cilluffo said.

Meanwhile, Boykin said, “we are coming up short on the whole concept of inter-agency, government-wide information operations and how it’s applied against this ... global insurgency.”

Unfortunately, until the U.S. government gets its act together, the extremists will continue to beat America at its own game.

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Good post and I agree, however our problem as a nation is that we are not acting as a nation but as tribes with loyalities to various agendas totally in contradiction to common sense, facts, and the needs of our own national security. We have folks in our own government that in any other country would be shot as the traitorous clowns they are and folks standing behind the First Amendment essentially yelling fire in a crowed theater. When you cannot get your own citizens behind you how in the hell do you expect to get those on the outside looking in to support or believe you? Just my opinion.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Draft Roger Ailes!

[Tubbs]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

Excellent analysis and commentary. Insightful feedback from LTG B as well.

We are losing hearts and minds, and failing to exploit our information advantage. It would appear that only kinetic solutions have appeal to our civilian leadership as well.

A Radio Free Europe type system of broadcast efforts, combined with support to moderate Muslim internet bloggers would be a good start.

TR

I got to go to Turkey for a second time shortly after I had been in Iraq. In Turkey they have a custom where at luch time the shop owners, insted of closing invite their customers to share a portion of a meal with them. I had learned this on my first visit and this time I found myself in a tabacco shop full of older muslim men.
As I talked and shared food with these men the conversation invariably turned to Iraq (its hard for me to hide the fact that I am American as I've been told I look like your all American 1950's boy scout). At the end the oldest man there said to me that if muslim's saw more Americans like myself that we would have more support from the arab community. He said that I had made good points in a way that was respectfull to their sensativities. He said that the problem was they only got news from aljazeera and when they did see the American point of view it was in the form of sound bytes from people that offend them like Dan Rather (he actually mentioned his name). I agree with TR and I wonder why we are not doing something like this yet. It helped immensely during the cold war.

[Scimitar]

Being relatively new to the military and also for the sake of other non military types here I was hoping to gain a bit more understanding here. Sorry if this is some what of a naive question, I am also new to the US way of government and still on the learning curve of the way things tick here politically.

The article stated that there was no one officially in charge of the day-to-day 'counter' of extreme Islamic ideology.

Not being highly educated in the area I would have thought that this would have fallen under SOCOMs 4th PSYOP Group Command.

All mentoring welcome.

[nmap]

Colonel Moroney brings out a good point. A similar idea is considered in the book "Who are we" by Huntington. The book suggests that we no longer have attributes that clearly define an American versus someone who is not an American.

I wonder how we can speak with a clear voice when we lack consensus on a set of beliefs and standards. And if we appear unsure of the fundamental rightness of what we believe, convincing others may be problematic.

[jatx]

Originally Posted by nmap

Colonel Moroney brings out a good point. A similar idea is considered in the book "Who are we" by Huntington. The book suggests that we no longer have attributes that clearly define an American versus someone who is not an American.

I wonder how we can speak with a clear voice when we lack consensus on a set of beliefs and standards. And if we appear unsure of the fundamental rightness of what we believe, convincing others may be problematic.

This is crazy talk.

Americans agree about the right to own property, and worry little about the government taking it.

Americans agree about the freedom of each person to worship any God or no God in any manner they wish.

Americans agree that the benefits of education should be bestowed on both men and women, regardless of class, race, etc.

Americans agree that it is wrong to use violence to achieve political or economic power.

Americans agree that even the smallest of voices deserves the chance to make itself heard.

Most Americans still believe that our country has the duty to be a force for good in the world. We get in awful fights about whether or not we're living up to this mandate, but not so much about the mandate itself.

In case you weren't paying attention, our enemies don't share these beliefs.

[x-factor]

Jatx is right on the money. The core of the American identity and the product we need to be selling to the world is liberal-democratic society:
- tolerance
- individual rights
- rule of law
- free and mutually beneficial commerce
- impartial military and police

If you look at polling, these American values are widely accepted so the core appeal of America is still intact. We just need to stop getting shouted down.

[nmap]

Originally Posted by jatx

This is crazy talk.

It appears our perceptions are not completely in harmony. Perhaps we see different groups of people in our daily activities.

Hopefully, the passage of time will validate your views instead of mine.

[x-factor]

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pi...t=326&lb=btvoc

America's Image in the World

Testimony of Dr. Steven Kull

Director, Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)
Editor, WorldPublicOpinion.org

March 6, 2007 – 10:00 AM

Before House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

I would like to thank the chairman for inviting me speak today on world public opinion on the United States. For some years now, the Program on International Policy Attitudes has been studying world public opinion. We conduct focus groups and carry out large multi-country polls as well as in-depth polls in specific countries, especially Muslim countries.

As often happens in life I have some bad news and some good news. And as is often a good idea, I will start with the bad news.

You have probably heard that America’s image in the world is not particularly good these days. The most recent evidence of this was a poll that we conducted for BBC World Service together with GlobeScan in 26 countries around the world. Polling was conducted last November through January. The question asked was whether the United States is having a positive or negative influence in the world.

On average across the 26 countries polled, 30 percent say the US is having a mostly positive influence in the world while 51 percent say the US is having a mostly negative influence.

In 20 of the 26 countries polled, the most common view is that the US is having a mostly negative influence in the world. In four countries, the most common view is that the US is having a mostly positive influence and in two of them, views are evenly divided.

Views of US influence are consistently negative in Canada, Latin America and the Middle East. They are mostly negative in Europe, with the exception of Poland, which leans positive, and Hungary, which is divided. Africans in this poll and in others have the most consistently positive views of the US. Asian views are more mixed, but lean negative. Filipinos are very positive and Indians are divided, but all others are clearly negative.

It should be noted that this reaction cannot simply be dismissed as something necessarily engendered by a powerful and rich country. The numbers we are seeing today are the lowest numbers that have ever been recorded.

During the 1990s, views of the US were predominantly positive. Comparing 1999 State Department data and recent Pew data, favorable views of the United States have dropped in the UK from 83 percent to 56 percent, in Germany from 78 percent to 37 percent, in Morocco from 77 percent to 49 percent, in Indonesia from 75 to 30 percent, in France from 62 to 39 percent, from Turkey from 62 to 12 percent and in Spain from 50 to 23 percent. Only Russia has held steady.

These numbers are also not simply a reaction to the US decision to go to war in Iraq. Views of the US did go down sharply after the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003. But now, nearly four years later, they continue to move downward.

As part of the BBC poll, we have asked the same question about US influence over the last three years to a set of 18 major countries and have found that evaluations continue to move downward. On average, across the 18 countries, positive views of the US have slipped from 40 percent in 2005 to 36 percent in 2006 to 29 percent in 2007. Negative views have risen from 46 percent in 2005 to 52 percent in 2007.

There are a few countries that get lower ratings than the US. In a BBC poll that we just released this morning, Israel, Iran, and by some measures, North Korea, received lower ratings. However the US is rated far lower than France, Japan, Canada, China, India and Russia.

Overall these findings are largely consistent with other polls that have asked different questions. Some polls suggest more positive attitudes toward the United States per se. Polls that have asked respondents to rate their feelings toward the US as warm or cold on a 0-100 thermometer-like scale, find relatively more positive ratings. For example, 62 percent of Australians say the US is having a negative influence in the world, but their average thermometer rating is a relatively warm 60 degrees.

Views of the American people are also somewhat more positive than for the country as a whole. Europeans, Russians, Indians and Japanese all express quite positive feelings toward the American people. Views in Muslim countries are mixed but still noticeably warmer toward the American people than toward the US itself.

American movies and television programs get mixed reviews while American science and technology engender substantial respect around the world.

The aspect of US behavior that elicits the strongest negative feeling is how the US government deals with other countries. In a recent 14-country poll that we did with the Chicago Council, large majorities in 12 of them said that “the US is playing the role of world policeman more than it should be.” In a recent Pew poll of 16 countries, 12 said that the US does not take the interests of their country into account when making foreign policy decisions.

The BBC poll asked about six specific areas and found that majorities or pluralities in most countries disapprove of US foreign policy in all of them.

On average:
• 75% disapprove of the how the US is handing the Iraq war,
• 69% disapprove of US treatment of detainees in Guantanamo and other prisons,
• 68% disapprove of how the US handled the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon,
• 61% disapprove of US handling of Iran’s nuclear program,
• 58% disapprove of US handling of global warming or climate change
• 55% disapprove of US handling of North Korea’s nuclear program

The US military presence in the Middle East is exceedingly unpopular in virtually all countries. On average 69 percent believe the US military presence there “provokes more conflict than it prevents” while just 16 percent see it as a stabilizing force.

(Continued)

[jatx]

Originally Posted by nmap

It appears our perceptions are not completely in harmony. Perhaps we see different groups of people in our daily activities.

Hopefully, the passage of time will validate your views instead of mine.

If you don't think our country stands for a core set of beliefs anymore, perhaps you should ask yourself why you're here. Or don't you realize you're discussing this with people who've bled, are bleeding and will bleed for those ideas?

[x-factor]

(Continued from above)

So what is the good news?

The good news is that there is an abundance of evidence that the unhappiness with the US is not a rejection of US values. People around the world say that the problems they have with the US concern its policies, not its values.

Large majorities of Muslims also say this in polls that we conducted for the University of Maryland’s START center. Most Muslims reject the idea that there is a fundamental clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Values such as democracy and international law are more popular than the ideas of al Qaeda.

In focus groups that I have conducted throughout the world, the most common complaint I hear is not about American values but that the US is being hypocritical; that it is not living up to its values. Complaining that the US is hypocritical is a backhanded compliment. The implicit statement is that if the US were to live up to its values this would be something positive.

This support for American values has deep roots that go back to the period immediately after World War II. At that time US was so overwhelmingly powerful relative to the rest of the world that it would have been able to impose an American empire.

But it did not do that. Instead the US championed a world order based on international law and said that it too would be constrained by this system. It endorsed a system built around the United Nations that prohibited the unilateral use of force except in self defense, and respected national sovereignty. It promoted democracy. It promoted respect for human rights within countries and in dealings between countries. It promoted an equitable and open system of trade and free enterprise that did not favor the strong over the weak. And through its aid programs it sought to integrate poor countries into the international economy.

There is substantial evidence that the values and the ideas for world order that the US promoted have become widely accepted. In 66 out of 67 countries polled for the World Values Survey, most agreed that “Democracy may have its problems but it is still better than any other form of government.” In 30 out of 32 countries polled for BBC, most people said that the UN is having a positive influence in the world. In 19 out of 20 countries polled by GlobeScan, a majority agreed that “the free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on which to base the future of the world.” And there is no significant indication that support for these principles is in decline.

The problem is that of late there has been a growing perception that the US is not living up to its principles. In a recent poll we conducted we found widespread perceptions that the US is violating international law in its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo.

The US image as a promoter of human rights has diminished. In 1998, USIA found that 59 percent of the British and 61 percent of Germans said the United States was doing a good job promoting human rights. Today, 56 percent of the British and 78 percent of Germans say the US is doing a bad job.

Contrary to the United States’ history of largesse, a Pew poll found that in 38 out of 43 countries most felt that US policies were worsening the gap between rich and poor, .

But perhaps the most fundamental issue is whether the US is constrained in its use of force. This is why there is so much concern about the US invasion of Iraq.
The complaint about Iraq is not so much that US forces removed Saddam Hussein. Rather it is that the US did so without getting UN approval; that it did not follow the international rules that the US is perceived as originally promoting.

This has left many countries uneasy about whether the potential use of US military power is constrained by the international system. While it may sound strange to Americans, in many countries around the world people express strong fears that the US will use military force against them. In virtually every country asked about this in polls done by Pew in 2003 and 2005, majorities perceived the US as a military threat to their country. This was even true of Turkey—our NATO ally— and Kuwait—a country the US has defended. It may be hard for us to understand how overwhelming US military power appears to other countries and how easily they worry that the US might use it.

So in summary, the challenge we face in dealing with the recent upsurge in negative feelings about US foreign policy, is not that we need to convince people of the value of the principles the US has tried to promote in the world. The world is already pretty much convinced. This is a tremendous asset for the US.

What the world is looking for is reassurance that the US is constrained by the rules that the US itself has promoted; that it is still committed to the rule of international law, to limits on the use of military force, to respect for human rights, and to fairness in the world economic system.

Were people around the world to gain more confidence in US intentions and perceive the US as having a renewed commitment to the values we have successfully cultivated in the world, there are strong reasons to believe that attitudes toward the US could shift rather quickly in a positive direction.

Thank you very much for your attention.

March 04, 2007

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by x-factor

At that time US was so overwhelmingly powerful relative to the rest of the world that it would have been able to impose an American empire.

I don't think the Soviets were going to buy into that, and they had a lot more men in uniform than we did.

I think the polls you cited resemble push polls in that if you ask the question the right way, you can get or read whatever answer you want.

For example, of the 55% who do not like our NK policy, what percentage thought we should be tougher?

Furthermore, people in most countries do not get news from enough sources to separate propoganda from the real facts. At one time, most of the people in the world thought that slavery was a good idea. I am sure that at one point, the average German thought that the Nazis were goofd for the country and the world. I think we need to do a better job of telling people the good that we do and getting the real facts out there for them.

TR

[nmap]

Originally Posted by jatx

If you don't think our country stands for a core set of beliefs anymore, perhaps you should ask yourself why you're here. Or don't you realize you're discussing this with people who've bled, are bleeding and will bleed for those ideas?

It seems I did not communicate clearly. Please let me attempt to clarify.

My observation was that there is a growing divergence of opinion on a variety of issues within the U.S.

I am well aware that I am discussing this with those who have bled and are bleeding for those ideas. I have not disagreed with those ideals. I have the utmost respect for those who are, quite literally, protecting me. I wonder if you realize how refreshing and pleasant those ideas are to someone who sees them only rarely.

That said, wars can be lost politically - which is, I think, the essence of the original post. And if the attitudes of a subset of the American electorate are changing, it might be prudent to be aware of those changes.

As an example, please consider the Gallup poll at: LINK. It discusses a variety of moral issues - notice the disagreement on some fairly important issues. I've avoided anything mentioning the war in Iraq, since I perceive those matters are too raw - but mere observation of the existing political discourse suggests that the population of the U.S. does not speak with a single voice.

My observations are simply that - what I have seen and heard. No doubt others have their own observations. But please, don't become angry at the messenger - he's on your side!