Counterinsurgency Theory
Posted in Military by Peter W. Schramm
Ann Marlowe's short essay on the birth of counterinsurgency theory is worth a read. Note the emphasis on altering the perception of the population; the creation of reality, as it were, and why this
should be relatively easy for Americans.
2:07 PM / October 31, 2009
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We had a homeland security academic visiting our American Studies Center.. his trip partially supported by the Embassy here in Warsaw... his talk was about the war on terror and the role of rhetoric in this war of ideas. And after an hour of his reaccounting of the attempt by agents in our government trying to communicate our ideals to the Muslim world, but so terrified of terms like democracy, freedom, and even struggle... because the radical extremists have appropated these terms and poisoned their meaning.. he said that there was no way to speak to these people about whom we are without falling into the trap the radically set for us where our whole way of being is seen as hostile to a way of life that rest on being in obedience to God. Here I was just astonished that the speaker was oblivious to the key documents of our American political tradition which were doing the very thing he was looking for.... he was just ignorant of them.
Gosh the Mayflower Compact is something a Muslim could surely access.. so too the logic of the 2nd paragraph of the Declaration. Nothing in these texts would be contradicted by the Koran, or would contradict the fundamental teaching of the Koran... nor did they the Old or New Testiment. But being the typically American professor at an American State University.. he knew not such things. It was very much a sad experience.
Other than collect a government check i'm not sure what a homeland security academic does? The thing that kills me about the article is that it really suggests incompitence is the cause of these horrible wars. The author never asks or wonders if the wars were fought the way they were for a reason. If victory was not the primary objective, and if there are forces out there that would resists conventional warfare with its orgy of expensive bombs ect. Could have tied that in with all the praise for JFK and been called an old school crackpot.
Here is an article by former CIA officer Ray Mcgovern that deals with the same subject. https://www.infowars.com/kipling-haunts-obamas-afghan-war/