Breaking Away: Jeff Block's Blog

Having recovered from a weekend of BBQ bloodlust, I’m ready to resume our discussion about winning the war on terror.  The fourth step in this process is for our leadership to clearly and simply articulate the vision.

1. What are we doing? 
2. Why are we doing it? 
3. Why is it necessary? 
4. What is our strategy? 
5. What will the outcomes likely be? 
6. What’s at stake? 
7. Who is involved (for good or ill)?

The American people aren’t stupid.  And every leader, if he’s to be followed well (to have his organization behind him), has to clearly paint a picture of where they’re going together … continually, so that everyone knows it readily off the top of their heads … even if they don’t agree with it.  Whether you like it or not, the President of the United States is the leader of the free world — the most powerful and influential man on the planet today.  And in this war on terror, certainly he leads.  Setting aside for a second what President Bush’s policies, ideas, strategies, plans for the war on terror are and whether or not they’re good ones, it would be hard to deny that he’s done a terrible job in communicating them.  I’ve said it before, “Stay the course” is not a plan.  It’s certainly not a well-communicated vision for the future.

We have an incredible responsibility as a nation.  Regardless of what some say, there is a war, and we didn’t start it.  But if we’re to finish it and finish it well, then we need the American people (as well as nations who are on the fence about whether or not to support us) to really get what we’re trying to do here — to believe in it.  I think Bush instilled that kind of trust and confidence right after 9/11, but not any more.  Just about everyone doubts him (the poll numbers make that clear), and I don’t blame them.  How can people not doubt him (and by proxy, our nation), when he barely ever sticks his head out of the oval office to give us a reason not to.  It’s not about whether or not he’s popular or about who’s getting elected for what, it’s about defeating a brutal enemy bent on destroying our way of life.  And the only way to do that in a free and open democratic society like ours is to “win the hearts and minds” of the people (yes, I used that incredibly charged political phrase on purpose). 

This, however, does NOT mean cow-towing to the huddled masses.  Farmer Joe and truck-driver Bob and CEO Fred absolutely DO NOT have all the information necessary to make good decisions about the war.  Neither do I.  On the contrary, the president and his cabinet and his military advisers have the best information there is, and many of them have amazing education and experience through which to interpret that information.  We do not.  I do not.  So, I’m not talking about getting the approval of the arm-chair quarterbacks before doing anything.  I’m talking about leveling with us (we’re the president’s boss), and helping us understand what our military and our diplomats are doing and why.

It’s also not about getting every nation on earth to agree with us.  News flash: They never will.  Most of the nations involved here have quite a bit of self-interest in play (including the US).  And many who claim to be our friends really aren’t.  So, I don’t really care what France and Germany and Russia think of us.  I’m amazed at how many people think that if we were just a little more well-behaved / politically correct, then somehow magically they’d start voting with us in UN Security Council meetings or sending troops into battle where needed.  Look at the joke of a commitment France made to the peacekeeping efforts in the recent Lebanon-Israel conflict.  So, France screamed really loud, and everyone said, “Ok, France, you lead — we’ll do it your way.”  And they responded by demonstrating their vast commitment to peace and freedom and helping other people in the form of 200 troops.  *rolls eyes*  So, I’m not particularly worried about what countries like France think.  I mean with friends like that, who needs Hezbollah.  But legitimate allies — like the UK or Australia — they need to understand (as well as the American people do) our vision for the future as we lead in this fight.  Without it, all that’s left is growing skepticism and confusion.

Here’s what I propose…  The President needs to get on television every week on Sunday night and gave a status report, in which he casts a vision of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and where we’re going.  If he did so, don’t you think the American people would be a lot more likely to be willing to follow him?  And it’d make it that much harder for the anti-Bush media here and around the world (and I can’t believe people still argue that the average US newspaper or television networks or certain magazines or certainly a number of state-run foreign media outlets lean liberal — but that’s another topic for another day) from having the only word to say about the war.  They spend SO much time focusing on the negative.  At least this way, there’d be a vehicle for some positive news and some hope for the future to make it out to people.  Of course, I’m not saying the Bush White House should just counter the mainstream negativity with positive-spin propoganda.  That’s not balance.  I’m saying that they should tell us what’s happening.  At least present their side.  And tell us how the mission’s going … WHERE the mission’s going.

As long as Bush gets on TV once a quarter and just says “I believe in freedom, now stay the course!”, then more and more of the American people (ill-informed, with no real understanding of the world and no real vision for how to play out our leadership role in it) will turn against the war and pound the “retreat now so nobody else dies” drum.  As long as the only voice in play is the New York Times (their four op-ed columns wrote over 150 columns about the war on terror and the Bush administration from Feb 2005 through Jul 2006, and of them ZERO were positive), then the whole world will continue to have no alternative but to see us how the newspapers paint us — as imperialist war mongers.  And that’s way too dangerous to be toyed with.  Only Bush, by getting over his fear — or disinterest, or whatever it is — of communication, can turn that around.

Technorati tags: war on terror, george bush, liberal media, world opinion

The second very important, very difficult, very long-term step in defeating the incredibly dangerous enemy we face as a nation is to seriously beef up intelligence.  And even though many (including President Bush) tout technology all day long as the answer to national security- and every other kind of problems, I’m not buying it.  We’ve got technology coming out of our ears, but we still can’t stop the insurgency in Iraq or secure the southern border or quell Iran’s or North Korea’s aspirations for nuclear weapons they can hand out to the highest bidder. 

The bottom line is that you can’t beat back evil until you’ve got boots on the ground blending in with it.  Until we have WAY more native- and extremely-well-trained Arabic-speaking operatives infiltrating every corner of the worldwide terrorist network, we’re never going to defeat it. 

• If we had a guy in the next cave over from Osama, he’d be dead right now.
• If we had operatives in even 20% of the terrorist cells in Iraq, we’d be twice as far into ending that horrific situation.
• If we had been inside Al-Qaeda 10 years ago, maybe there wouldn’t have been a 9-11.
• Etc…

Campus Watch, a fascinating site that watch-dogs the Middle East, published an amazing article on this topic back in 2003.  I think the following quote says it very well…

In the intelligence war, Islamists have a distinct advantage. Among the ranks of Islamist radicals are thousands who have studied in the United States, speak serviceable English, and can move with ease in American society. How many field agents of American intelligence can move at ease in the Islamist milieu? German and British universities once produced spies who could speak half a dozen Arab dialects and recite the Koran from memory. Today’s only superpower cannot recruit enough Arabic translators to handle routine intercepts.

Check out the entire article at:
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/921

We’re never going to win this war until we unravel this trend and reverse it.  First, we should spend whatever money is necessary to entice the best and the brightest in the Arabic community into the CIA.  I’m sure we’re already doing some of that.  Whatever efforts are in play there, let’s double them.  However, this isn’t the only action necessary.  Next we have to address the problem that nobody wants to do the work. 

Here’s the rub, and it’s two fold… 

1. Too many people think America is the problem, and
2. There’s a definite cross-section of the Muslim world that wants to play out a world domination kill-everyone-not-like-me scenario, who will hate America no matter what we do, because we represent freedom and they hatefreedom.  And of course they would.  Freedom means that people think for themselves instead of strapping bombs on and blowing themselves up for Allah.  (Ever notice that the leaders ordering the strikes are never the ones blowing themselves up.  Hmmm….)

The problem in recruiting the average Muslim today is that they not only don’t believe in America and in her cause of freedom.  Many of them think America is the evil player here, because they’ve been fed that garbage since before they could walk.  And it doesn’t help that there are so many others in America (stemming back to the Vietnam era) who agree and enforce their delusions.  Stack on top of all that the jealousy that exists around the world of this amazingly great nation, and it’s a lethal formula for breeding Jihadists around the world.  So, this has to be fixed.  I know many would advocate giving stuff to the terrorists and others who hate us until they like us more, but I just don’t see how that’s going to work with irrational fanatical killers.  Didn’t work so well the 1930’s.  I think we should learn from that lesson (*shoots piercing look at France*).  Let me unpack it…

Part of having the stomach to fight this war is to realize that can’t have our cake and eat it to — not all the time. You’re going to read this theme a couple of times in my top-ten series.  We’ve gotta be tougher.  This isn’t some game in the fantasy Utopian socialist dreamland that some want to live in.  This is war, and there’s a very real enemy that would dance in the streets if they could wipe out every single man, woman and child on this continent.  

As long as the ACLU is running around with the brevado and the power to call “unconstitutional” anything and everything that makes anyone in America (except white males and Christians, of course — nobody cares about them) feel a little bad, then we’re never going to be able to rally the power necessary to defend ourselves — let alone defeat a brutal enemy.  As long as there are cameras mixed in with Marines so that pundants halfway around the world can arm-chair-quarterback every single call made by every single battle commander, we’re just plain screwed.  As long as liberals can oppose every single program the US government has tried to put in place to fight terrorism since 9-11 just because it’s a Republican executive branch proposing it, and yet never propose any concrete alternative plans, then we’ll never be victorious.  As long as we care more about our own comfort and all the things we feel we’re entitled to, we’re making it a veritable certainty that one of these days Seattle or Philadelphia or Chicago is going up in a blaze of glory we’ll call “9-11 Two, The Cost of Enduring Apathy”.  (It’s okay though; I’m sure Michael Moore will throw together a great “documentary”.)

So, with that introduction rant out of the way, here’s what I think we need to do (and the ACLU is gonna love this)…  Instead of giving them things to try to make them happy in the hopes that they’ll like us more (they’re laughing at us, by the way), we need to drop the hammer on the troublemakers.  Both in America and in Iraq, we need to shut down the militants.  We already have hate speech and sudition crimes on the books.  We’ve gotta start putting them to work.  We do that by profiling the people that are plotting to destroy the free world, and cut off their access to brainwashing their public.  Unless we keep the poison out of the ears and eyes of the average Arabic-American teenager (or Iraqi teenager for that matter), we’ll never be able to recruit them into the service of this country (to whom they owe their freedom and prosperity).  And without better intelligence on the ground in Iran and elsewhere (the result of their service), we may not survive long enough to debate the issue. 

I’m sorry that means cutting off some “free speech” for a select few, but the truth is that it hasn’t been very free lately.  It’s costing us a lot, actually.  And the freedom to say and do what I want was never meant to come without responsibility and cost.  In other words, you don’t have the right to plot to overthrow your government.  If the local Mulla has told little Joey 74 million times by age 16 that America is the Great White Satan, then how effective do you think the FBI or the CIA will be at recruiting him at age 19 to spy on Ahmadinejad in Tehran or on the local Al-Qaeda cell in the Seattle? 

 And I’m not suggesting we start blanket-censoring people with divergent ideas.  This is about harmful and seditious speech.  We put everyday FBI agents (lots of them) on the ground in American masques, and if Fred the Cleric gets all “we hate America” and “death to the Zionists”, then Fred gets removed from his position of authority and thrown in jail.  I know it sounds ugly, but if we don’t stop the brainwashing (and frankly start a little brainwashing of our own in the right direction), we’ll never get anywhere.  Regulating it is important, I agree.  Not turning it into some kind of crazed witch hunt is too.  But playing with kid-gloves isn’t going to work anymore — in fact, it really hasn’t worked too well to date either.  If we don’t have the stomach to fight this war — which is based on an ideology of hatred and death — then again, we may not survive to debate it.  Take the gloves off in the propaganda arena, and though a few people will scream that their rights were violated, literally millions of lives could be saved in the process.

Summary:  Recruit more Arabic spies, and cut the head off the propaganda machine to make that possible.

Technorati tags: war on terror, spies, intelligence, fbi, cia, iraq, iran, masque, islam, propaganda

This is the cover letter for my new series of ten posts…  How to Win the War on Terror in 10 Easy Incredibly Difficult Steps.  I’m not a seer.  Not a general.  Haven’t even read SunTzu’s “The Art of War“.  Definitely not infallible.  But I’ve gotten so worked up listening to the news / talk radio in the last few months, that I felt I had to address this topic.  Plus, I’m counting on the folks reading this to school me up. 

I’ll share one step at a time, and build a comprehensive indexish list here as I publish each entry.  Ready…  Go…

First let’s get the long-term stuff started.  We should have been doing this stuff for decades, but we haven’t, so we have to start now.  Each of these will take a good 10 years to get in place…

• Step 1: Alternative Fuels
• Step 2: Better Intelligence

This next batch is the immediate phase; tactical moves we can make right now to start making a difference…

• Step 3: Pray
• Step 4: Cast the Vision
• Step 5: Cyber Warfare
• Step 6: Marshall Law in Iraq
• Step 7: Long-Term Economic Viability at Home
• Step 8: xxx

The last two are longer-term, but they can’t be started until the previous 6 steps are taken…

• Step 9: xxx
• Step 10: xxx

My 10 steps are all pretty clear to me already, so even before I’m done posting these (one every couple days), feel free to comment on what your 10 step plan would be to get us out of this mess we’re in with the war on terror.  Can’t wait for the great discussion I know this will engender.

Technorati tags: war on terror