Strategy, Values and Ideas

[Schmedlap]

My question is this: Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before, not just in the recent past, but back to even biblical times.

To give a partial answer to the first part of the question, about fighting ideas with ideas...

I believe that we are successfully doing this now, fighting the ideas of those who wish to establish a so-called Islamic state based upon the most oppressive interpretations of Sharia law. We are helping those who have discovered how undesireable that idea is and providing them with our alternative idea. The Anbar tribes finally realized that living under the rules set forth by AQIZ were intolerable. The bankruptcy of the ideas put forth by the contrived Islamic State of Iraq were revealed. We offered an alternative idea - one of cooperation with a representative government and enforcing civil law. After trying out the ideas of AQIZ and MNF-I, I think the Anbar tribes now view our idea more favorably. The tribes in Salah ad Din, the outer ring of Baghdad, and Diyala are also being swayed after seeing the dramatic changes in Anbar and the benefits being reaped by the tribes, which is why tribal security forces (or whatever the current psuedonym is) are being stood up in those areas. They've seen oppression under AQIZ and self-determination made possible by self-government. Our idea is much more palatable.

[St. Christopher]

You are right to suggest that we are relying too much on "hard power" (bullets). The funny thing is that hard power is a COA that could work. Unfortunately, it would take a merciless application of "hard power" in order to achieve success. For example, we could completely destroy a village from which a bomb maker is from. If we razed three or four Iraqi villages, I submit that this would have an affect on the number of people volunteering to make bombs. We could say, "Bomb makers! If we catch you making bombs, we are not only going to kill you but we are going to kill your family, your friends, and your dog!" This is the tactic that Alexander and the Roman Legions used to pacify conquered populations, and it is effective to a degree.

Mike Scheuer has said before that this type of brutality is the only way to truly defeat the current threat. I also have a professor at JHU that likes to use the Roman example of not just burning the city to the ground and killing all the people, but poisoning the earth so no crops could ever grow there again -- hard power but with a brutally symbolic message to others who would contest the empire.

The problem with this approach is that the American public, rightfully so, would not tolerate these tactics thereby dismissing them as legitimate COA. Public support for military action is a form of "soft power"; and in the 21st Century, "soft power" has become a much more critical component of military operations. A state can have the most advanced weaponry, the best trained military, and the most vibrant economy, all forms of "hard power", but still be rendered ineffective without the "soft power" of public support. Once policymakers grasp, which I believe they are, the reality of the importance of "soft power", we will be better able to develop and implement defense policies.

That's pretty perceptive. "Policymakers" is the key to that thought-- most of them are still conventional thinkers and conventional warriors and would not understand the value of, say, buying all the ad-space on a particular TV station in a particular region instead of the latest F-22 heads-up-display gadget.

I would take your description a step further and say that there are very few folks in government today who understand the total requirement for all-out ideological combat. I keep getting laughed at every time a general asks me for suggestions, and I tell him to get his soldiers out of uniform and into local indigenous clothing, take away all their Oakleys, and make them pray five times a day on the streets.