Saturday, February 18, 2006
Introduction and Purpose
After a 9 month hiatus, I restarted an old blog with the intent of "posting more on local rural aspects". Instead , five of my first six posts were about the "cartoon war" and Islamist Militancy. That record reveals my primary current interest and motivates this new blog.
I believe we are in a serious global war with Miltant Islamists and have been for a long time. We are a uniquely powerful nation that vastly prefers peace to war. That national strength and character has induced us to ignore a plethora of the enemy's statements and hostile actions over the last three decades. With the attacks of September 11, 2001, the enemy's hostile intentions and our vulnerabilities can no longer be ignored.
Since then, we have had an amazing string of military and geo-political victories and, equally amazingly, we are on the brink of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The danger comes not from enemy military action but from loss of our national will and determination. The struggle for the national will is being conducted in the realm of information by American citizens and political partisans. It is not just an internal struggle; it is also the primary information battlefield chosen by our enemy in the hope of achieving its global objectives. The enemy wages information war by leveraging our freedom of speech and the partisan biases of much of our traditional media. They are smart to do so; it is their best hope.
America's military forces can not be defeated; America's will to fight can and has been overcome - most dramatically so in Vietnam. As then, now again, the traditional (or main stream) media and some political partisans cry "Defeat! Withdraw!"; and, wittingly or not, by their actions abet the enemy's goals. This is most obvious in the media's war reportage emphasizing the negative and avoiding the positive.
The antidote is to publish more of the good news as a counter-balance in this information war. Newsworthy facts are being reported from soldiers in the field and on the new media of blogs. Broadly disseminating that news and providing positive commentary on events and issues can help us wage and win this war.
Now that's a worthy challenge for a cold warrior who's grown too old to fight but not to talk and , perhaps, to persuade.
I believe we are in a serious global war with Miltant Islamists and have been for a long time. We are a uniquely powerful nation that vastly prefers peace to war. That national strength and character has induced us to ignore a plethora of the enemy's statements and hostile actions over the last three decades. With the attacks of September 11, 2001, the enemy's hostile intentions and our vulnerabilities can no longer be ignored.
Since then, we have had an amazing string of military and geo-political victories and, equally amazingly, we are on the brink of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
The danger comes not from enemy military action but from loss of our national will and determination. The struggle for the national will is being conducted in the realm of information by American citizens and political partisans. It is not just an internal struggle; it is also the primary information battlefield chosen by our enemy in the hope of achieving its global objectives. The enemy wages information war by leveraging our freedom of speech and the partisan biases of much of our traditional media. They are smart to do so; it is their best hope.
America's military forces can not be defeated; America's will to fight can and has been overcome - most dramatically so in Vietnam. As then, now again, the traditional (or main stream) media and some political partisans cry "Defeat! Withdraw!"; and, wittingly or not, by their actions abet the enemy's goals. This is most obvious in the media's war reportage emphasizing the negative and avoiding the positive.
The antidote is to publish more of the good news as a counter-balance in this information war. Newsworthy facts are being reported from soldiers in the field and on the new media of blogs. Broadly disseminating that news and providing positive commentary on events and issues can help us wage and win this war.
Now that's a worthy challenge for a cold warrior who's grown too old to fight but not to talk and , perhaps, to persuade.
