The Army and Marine Corps have released a new counterinsurgency manual, the first such document in a generation.
In The New Yorker (unposted; 12/18/06), George Packer talks to some of the people helping to reshape US strategy and tactics for what one of those experts, Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, calls a "long war" in which information is the vital weapon.
Kilcullen argues that proclaiming a "war on terror" is a mistake, because it lumps together unlike enemies when we should be "disaggregating" threats and addressing the particulars of culture, local politics, etc., in each situation. A similar argument is made by another Pentagon consultant, Montgomery McFate, against the use of terms like "Islamofascism."
Packer: "By speaking of Saddam Hussein, the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, the Taliban, the Iranian government, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda in terms of one big war, Administration officials and ideologues have made Osama bin Laden's job much easier."
Unfortunately, we've spent the last several years blundering our way through the war. Packer: "McFate saw Americans in Iraq make one strategic mistake after another because they didn't understand the nature of Iraqi society." McFate points to de-Baathification, for example, as a key element in launching "the tribal insurgency."
Kilcullen: "It's now fundamentally an information fight. The enemy gets that, and we don't yet get that, and I think that's why we're losing." Packer says one serious mistake in the larger information war was Bush's appointment of a political operative, Karen Hughes, to a critical information post.
The change in mindset preached by Kilcullen has yet to penetrate the highest level of the Bush Administration, writes Packer.
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