Thursday, June 24, 2004
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Oh Buddha!
Lyrics for the song Oh Buddha, recorded by the Imperials:
Well, Old Buddha was a man and I’m sure that he meant well
But I pray for his disciples lest they wind up in hell
And I’m sure that old Mohammed thought he knew the way
But it won’t be Hare Krishna we stand before on The Judgment Day.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son not Reverend Moon!
Well, I don’t hate anybody so please don’t take me wrong
But there really is a message to this simple song
You see there’s only one way Jesus if eternal life is your goal
Meditation of the mind won’t save your soul.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
Well, you can call yourself a Baptist and not be born again
A Presbyterian or a Methodist and still die in your sin
You can even be Charismatic shout and dance and jump a few
But if you hate your brother you wont be one of The Chosen Few.
Cause it won’t be a Baptist that’s sitting on The Throne
A Presbyterian or a Methodist that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be a Charismatic that plays that trumpet tune
So let’s all just live for Jesus ‘cause He’s coming back real soon.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
Well, Old Buddha was a man and I’m sure that he meant well
But I pray for his disciples lest they wind up in hell
And I’m sure that old Mohammed thought he knew the way
But it won’t be Hare Krishna we stand before on The Judgment Day.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son not Reverend Moon!
Well, I don’t hate anybody so please don’t take me wrong
But there really is a message to this simple song
You see there’s only one way Jesus if eternal life is your goal
Meditation of the mind won’t save your soul.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
Well, you can call yourself a Baptist and not be born again
A Presbyterian or a Methodist and still die in your sin
You can even be Charismatic shout and dance and jump a few
But if you hate your brother you wont be one of The Chosen Few.
Cause it won’t be a Baptist that’s sitting on The Throne
A Presbyterian or a Methodist that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be a Charismatic that plays that trumpet tune
So let’s all just live for Jesus ‘cause He’s coming back real soon.
No, it won’t be old Buddha that’s sitting on the throne
And it won’t be old Mohammed that’s calling us Home
And it won’t be Hare Krishna that plays that trumpet tune
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
And we’re going to see The Son, not Reverend Moon!
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
War on terror lacks coherent strategy
A damning editorial from retired General Montgomery Meigs, who was (among other things) the Army commander in Europe. I remember seeing him on tv spots on Armed Forces TV in Europe.
This editorial is getting less attention than it deserves. I had a link to the newspaper (Austin American-Statesman) but that link is now down. So I've just posted the whole editorial here. This was originally published on 13 July 2004.
The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib has dominated public attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, we have a greater problem. We do not yet have a strategy for the larger war on terrorism that offers the prospect of defeating our enemy.
The administration's statements that Iraq is the central front of the war on terrorism highlight the problem. Al Qaeda and its offshoots in the Muslim world existed before we entered Iraq, and they will continue after this campaign is over. Their great strength lies in their ability to exploit unrest in the Muslim world and to draw enthusiastic recruits into slowly proliferating, compartmented networks of disciplined, clever and lethal operators who want to undermine our will and attack our way of life.
These networks propagate in any area where governments fail to maintain public safety and general order. Remote, ungoverned corners of the world in Pakistan, Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and South America become their breeding grounds. Pressure in one area can gain only a local tactical victory, not a worldwide strategic one.
Information Age communication and transportation provide ready means for command and control and for infiltration that allow 21st century terrorists to change organizational forms at will. The ability to morph new structures in ever new locations while drawing recruits ready to join and die for the cause constitutes the strategic center of gravity of the terror webs of Osama bin Laden and emerging junior players like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Our campaign in Iraq has fixed our main effort on a secondary strategic objective, one fixed geographically. Bin Laden can afford to lose in Iraq. After planting our flag there, we cannot. We will not win the war on terror unless we attack the enemy's true strategic center of gravity.
Ironically, nation-building in Iraq draws attention and resources away from the effort to attack the wider effort that can hit the terror networks where it hurts them the most. Our presence in Iraq and our inability to foster progress in the Middle East fuel enmity in the Muslim world that spawns new recruits for the terror networks and bolsters bin Laden's image and that of his allies as modern-day Islamist warrior monks.
The failings at Abu Ghraib are only one symptom of the problem. Over the past year, we have seen several other serious missteps that highlight our strategic error. We fought Operation Iraqi Freedom with a force sized as much to prove a point about defense transformation as to achieve the strategic objective of a "democratic" Iraq. With the combination of air power and ground forces employed by the U.S. Central Command, we had enough units on the ground to defeat the Iraqi army. We did not have enough force to allow us at the end of the campaign immediately to provide a safe and secure environment across Iraq.
As a result, we did not do an adequate job of quickly apprehending the regime's hard-liners and pre-empting the Baathist "bitter enders" from going underground. Nor did we have the organizations in place quickly to begin fostering the economic development crucial to the growth of confidence, shared self-interest and public order needed for the growth of constituent government.
President Bush stated that fostering democracy in Iraq was our final objective of the campaign. His Defense Department did not promulgate or execute a coordinated and rehearsed plan for it.
The misadventure of Jay Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and the mistakes made by ambassador L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority put the effort on the wrong footing from the start. These mistakes include not putting a cleaned-up Iraqi army in action quickly to allow us and the Iraqis to get a hold on public security. We manned the provisional authority with officials too short on experience in the region and deployed them on tours too short to become effective in their work.
We also now have before us the question of whether a former darling of administration officials, Ahmad Chalabi, not only misled the administration with the intelligence he made available to provide a rationale for the war, but allegedly gave valuable information to Iran.
These mistakes were not our greatest folly, however.
Focused on transforming the way we fight campaigns at the operational level, the administration eschewed military advice, overcommitted the forces deployed and made the huge strategic error of not focusing national energies on the enemy's strategic center of gravity in the larger war on terror.
We have invested a huge amount of national treasure and energy in a war that distracted us from the main strategic threat of terrorism without first exhausting the possibilities of containment of Saddam Hussein in a way that kept important allies in harness with us. Our great irony lies in the fact that having invaded Iraq, we cannot risk the chaos that will emerge if we walk away precipitously. We must leave a stable situation behind us or risk emergence of another authoritarian regime, destabilization of the Gulf states and the economic implosion in world markets that would result.
So where to from here? The administration must do a better job of explaining in detail to the American people the threat we face. We will not win the war on terror in the normal strategic sense. The cycles of campaign will not correspond with our electoral rhythms.
With allies, with a combination of military and police force, and with aid and assistance to weak states at the brink of failure, we can slowly dry up the resources that terror networks need to survive and grow. With military and police acting on shared intelligence, we can track down the most obvious terrorists as they rise to leadership positions.
The best we can hope for will resemble our experience with the ultra-leftist Red Brigades, which sought to separate Italy from the Western alliance and slowly faded away in the late 1980s. We will never see a surrender ceremony and have the psychological relief it creates. The task that faces us will take time and patience. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld belatedly wrote last fall that it will be a "long, hard slog" that will try us all.
A unilateral approach will not work. Nor is a fascination with military solutions useful. Attacking the center of gravity of the terrorists' networks will require allies. In the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and South America, concerted action will require the perception by local constituents and their political leaders that we are the right partner and that our common cause is necessary and just. We cannot do this task alone. Speaking loudly and carrying a big stick frustrates our purpose.
Finally, we must change the way we think about the strategic problem. Defense transformation is as much a function of strategic thinking, political influence and military and police power as it is a function of new technology. Elegant technological solutions at the tactical level cannot make up for misguided strategic choices.
We have much to do in the war on terror, and we have not started well. Creating an Iraq with a democratic government is only part of a much larger problem of empowering Muslim moderates to confront Islamist radicalism. Progress to a solution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and stability in Pakistan remain crucial to this endeavor.
We must also deploy an information campaign that convinces Muslim communities of their own self-interest in drying up the terrorists' sources of recruits and funds. Allies willing to work with us under great risk bring invaluable capabilities, tools we do not have in our own inventory.
With shared intelligence and the coordinated, multinational efforts of law enforcement, combined task groups of military forces and special operations forces, we can run terrorist operators to ground. But the campaign will require our best effort, patience and an approach that brings the greatest number of friends along in what will be a long, frustrating campaign, the more so if we continue to operate without a coherent strategy.
This editorial is getting less attention than it deserves. I had a link to the newspaper (Austin American-Statesman) but that link is now down. So I've just posted the whole editorial here. This was originally published on 13 July 2004.
The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib has dominated public attention in recent weeks. Unfortunately, we have a greater problem. We do not yet have a strategy for the larger war on terrorism that offers the prospect of defeating our enemy.
The administration's statements that Iraq is the central front of the war on terrorism highlight the problem. Al Qaeda and its offshoots in the Muslim world existed before we entered Iraq, and they will continue after this campaign is over. Their great strength lies in their ability to exploit unrest in the Muslim world and to draw enthusiastic recruits into slowly proliferating, compartmented networks of disciplined, clever and lethal operators who want to undermine our will and attack our way of life.
These networks propagate in any area where governments fail to maintain public safety and general order. Remote, ungoverned corners of the world in Pakistan, Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and South America become their breeding grounds. Pressure in one area can gain only a local tactical victory, not a worldwide strategic one.
Information Age communication and transportation provide ready means for command and control and for infiltration that allow 21st century terrorists to change organizational forms at will. The ability to morph new structures in ever new locations while drawing recruits ready to join and die for the cause constitutes the strategic center of gravity of the terror webs of Osama bin Laden and emerging junior players like Abu Musab al Zarqawi.
Our campaign in Iraq has fixed our main effort on a secondary strategic objective, one fixed geographically. Bin Laden can afford to lose in Iraq. After planting our flag there, we cannot. We will not win the war on terror unless we attack the enemy's true strategic center of gravity.
Ironically, nation-building in Iraq draws attention and resources away from the effort to attack the wider effort that can hit the terror networks where it hurts them the most. Our presence in Iraq and our inability to foster progress in the Middle East fuel enmity in the Muslim world that spawns new recruits for the terror networks and bolsters bin Laden's image and that of his allies as modern-day Islamist warrior monks.
The failings at Abu Ghraib are only one symptom of the problem. Over the past year, we have seen several other serious missteps that highlight our strategic error. We fought Operation Iraqi Freedom with a force sized as much to prove a point about defense transformation as to achieve the strategic objective of a "democratic" Iraq. With the combination of air power and ground forces employed by the U.S. Central Command, we had enough units on the ground to defeat the Iraqi army. We did not have enough force to allow us at the end of the campaign immediately to provide a safe and secure environment across Iraq.
As a result, we did not do an adequate job of quickly apprehending the regime's hard-liners and pre-empting the Baathist "bitter enders" from going underground. Nor did we have the organizations in place quickly to begin fostering the economic development crucial to the growth of confidence, shared self-interest and public order needed for the growth of constituent government.
President Bush stated that fostering democracy in Iraq was our final objective of the campaign. His Defense Department did not promulgate or execute a coordinated and rehearsed plan for it.
The misadventure of Jay Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and the mistakes made by ambassador L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority put the effort on the wrong footing from the start. These mistakes include not putting a cleaned-up Iraqi army in action quickly to allow us and the Iraqis to get a hold on public security. We manned the provisional authority with officials too short on experience in the region and deployed them on tours too short to become effective in their work.
We also now have before us the question of whether a former darling of administration officials, Ahmad Chalabi, not only misled the administration with the intelligence he made available to provide a rationale for the war, but allegedly gave valuable information to Iran.
These mistakes were not our greatest folly, however.
Focused on transforming the way we fight campaigns at the operational level, the administration eschewed military advice, overcommitted the forces deployed and made the huge strategic error of not focusing national energies on the enemy's strategic center of gravity in the larger war on terror.
We have invested a huge amount of national treasure and energy in a war that distracted us from the main strategic threat of terrorism without first exhausting the possibilities of containment of Saddam Hussein in a way that kept important allies in harness with us. Our great irony lies in the fact that having invaded Iraq, we cannot risk the chaos that will emerge if we walk away precipitously. We must leave a stable situation behind us or risk emergence of another authoritarian regime, destabilization of the Gulf states and the economic implosion in world markets that would result.
So where to from here? The administration must do a better job of explaining in detail to the American people the threat we face. We will not win the war on terror in the normal strategic sense. The cycles of campaign will not correspond with our electoral rhythms.
With allies, with a combination of military and police force, and with aid and assistance to weak states at the brink of failure, we can slowly dry up the resources that terror networks need to survive and grow. With military and police acting on shared intelligence, we can track down the most obvious terrorists as they rise to leadership positions.
The best we can hope for will resemble our experience with the ultra-leftist Red Brigades, which sought to separate Italy from the Western alliance and slowly faded away in the late 1980s. We will never see a surrender ceremony and have the psychological relief it creates. The task that faces us will take time and patience. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld belatedly wrote last fall that it will be a "long, hard slog" that will try us all.
A unilateral approach will not work. Nor is a fascination with military solutions useful. Attacking the center of gravity of the terrorists' networks will require allies. In the Philippines, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and South America, concerted action will require the perception by local constituents and their political leaders that we are the right partner and that our common cause is necessary and just. We cannot do this task alone. Speaking loudly and carrying a big stick frustrates our purpose.
Finally, we must change the way we think about the strategic problem. Defense transformation is as much a function of strategic thinking, political influence and military and police power as it is a function of new technology. Elegant technological solutions at the tactical level cannot make up for misguided strategic choices.
We have much to do in the war on terror, and we have not started well. Creating an Iraq with a democratic government is only part of a much larger problem of empowering Muslim moderates to confront Islamist radicalism. Progress to a solution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and stability in Pakistan remain crucial to this endeavor.
We must also deploy an information campaign that convinces Muslim communities of their own self-interest in drying up the terrorists' sources of recruits and funds. Allies willing to work with us under great risk bring invaluable capabilities, tools we do not have in our own inventory.
With shared intelligence and the coordinated, multinational efforts of law enforcement, combined task groups of military forces and special operations forces, we can run terrorist operators to ground. But the campaign will require our best effort, patience and an approach that brings the greatest number of friends along in what will be a long, frustrating campaign, the more so if we continue to operate without a coherent strategy.
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