Looked at from the strategic and operational level, we tend toward schizophrenia when it comes to IO in general and PSYOP in particular. The "split" in our IO and PSYOP efforts comes in our audience selection (or confusion).

Much of what we do is greatly influenced because it is targeted toward the greater "us" and not the greater "them." Consider the debate over kinetic versus non-kinetic. Tactically we seem to get the message that we cannot "kill" an insurgency in OIF or OIF. And because that is a contained environment, we can tailor our ROE and our operations to sustain such an approach.

But when it comes to the strategic and the operational, our two personalities show up very quickly. Consider the issues of rendition and strike operations; do the risks outweigh the gains? In considering such operations which IO/PSYOP audience are we really playing to?

Too often I believe we are playing to the greater "us" in that we have an audience we need to satisfy that we are indeed doing something; we internally derive a short term positive boost. It serves the greater "us" well in the short to mid-term. Does it serve the "greater them" or better put does it serve portraying and promotong our interests to the "greater them"?

Overall I would say we have not accepted we are fighting a global insurgency centered on ideology as its most obvious feature. It is not per se a "relgious war" as some would portray it; it is a cultural war. Our political culture (if there is an "our") has too many components for religion to serve as a primary motivation.

As for our enemies--by that I mean the central core of AQ salafists and wahabists--their very focus on that extreme form of Islam makes them aliens in their own lands.

The cultures and sub-cultures we are dealing with are no more amenable to salafist thought than they are to democracy as we practice it. They are our "targets" or objective. Understanding that and using it should be in our IO and PSYOP tool kit.

How we "target: that objective is critical. And our approach to it has to be strategic and long term. Here our internal IO and PSYOP campaign on ourselves gets in the way. We talk long war but we often seek immediate gratification.

Dr. Joe Nye writes on "soft power" and its role in foreign policy. I agree with much of what he has to say; you have brought up some of it on this thread in speaking of television. Music is another example; we can make jokes about Bono of U2 but he has served our greater interests well because rightly or wrongly he is seen globally as a symbol of Western conscience.

Now I sense that I am rambling...

More later
Tom