John Guandolo at Big Peace has begun a frightening series of articles.
Money quote(s):
"It is now March of 2011. That jihadi attack on the United States is over nine years behind us. The declaration of a global jihad from Iran in 1979 is over 30 years in our rear view mirror. The national security apparatus of the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to “make America safer,” yet we still have not defined our enemy – or even tried. There is no place in the national security structure which has objectively evaluated the threat doctrine of our enemy, and then created a strategic plan for victory for the United States – per U.S. warfighting doctrine. This lack of strategic understanding of the nature of the threat we face is not only costing us lives on the battlefield in wars with no realistically stated objectives, but so long as we drift aimlessly, we cannot win and we allow the enemy to move our boat as he sees fit. That, is the enemy’s strategy. And he is executing with great success."
This problem has implications far beyond the merely doctrinal and theoretical. When the ever-awkward construction "global war on terrorism" is junked for "man-made disasters," it's not an improvement.
Foreign policy, or at least diplomacy, is just one of the instruments of national power which can be used to implement or support a strategy, grand strategy, or even an operational or tactical plan. Without a clear grand strategy in the current global war, or even an acknowledgement that it exists (that there is something bigger going on that two isolated theatres of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan), foreign policy will be about what you see now.
"The United States continues to view the wars (the establishment sees this as several conflicts, not as one global conflict) as kinetic engagements where guns, air power, drones, bombs, and other weapon of war are brought to bear on “Al Qaeda terrorists” and others with whom we are engaged on the many battlefields around the world."
As I noted above, military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were not conceived and initiated as wholly unrelated and independent activities, whether you agree with them or not. They were, and are, separate campaigns in a larger strategy.
Students of history will note that strategies, and grand strategies, evolve, as do objectives. Abandonment or feigned ignorance of those objectives, however, partway through their accomplishment courts great hazard.
"Every brand new intelligence officer in the United States military knows that when the United States evaluates a threat, our doctrine drives us to begin our process with WHO the enemy says he is and with WHAT the enemy says are HIS reasons for acting. That is where the U.S. analytical process begins – per our own doctrine. If we had done this after 9/11, we would not have so much confusion about the enemy we are engaging.
One hundred percent of the enemy we are fighting states he is fighting “Jihad” in the “Cause of Allah” in order to implement Islamic Law (Shariah). Therefore, U.S. analysts must begin here. Does Islamic Law exist? If so, what does it say about “Jihad” and the requirements for Jihad?"
Clearly, what even the shiniest new intelligence officer or analyst knows requires years of experience and higher education to unlearn. But it can be done.
"Our entire national security apparatus is focused (fixed) on the threat of the violent Jihadis – Al Qaeda and the hundreds of other jihadi groups throughout the world engaging U.S and allied troops on the ground around the world.
Our enemy has no intention of defeating us on the battlefield. The kinetic war being waged by organizations like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the many other jihadi groups is meant to bleed us, fix us in place, and create a strategic distraction while the real war they are fighting is won in the information battlespace. While AQ fixes us in place, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) presses the U.S. – and the West at large – into a corner with a stated foreign policy mirroring that of Al Qaeda. Who is the OIC? The OIC is the umbrella organization for every Muslim nation in the world – 57 states (they count Palestine as a state). At the Head of State and King level the OIC seeks to re-establish the global Islamic State (Caliphate) and implement Islamic Law. They have a 10-Year Plan in English on their website that may begin shedding light on who they are and what they intend for the West."
Oddly, I was recently required (earlier last year) to write a strategy paper as if I were a military analyst tasked with developing a strategy for Al-Qaeda. It looked a lot like what you just read. Of course, I was probably looking at many of the same, publicly available, source documents available to Mr. Guandolo.
"(T)he reason the International Muslim Brotherhood is calling for the death of Qaddafi is because he is “killing Muslims without right,” a capital crime under Islamic Law, and an act defined as “terrorism” by the OIC – that means the Head of State and King of every Muslim nation in the world has a parallel foreign policy from the one they are discussing with our State Department, and our State Department does not have clue one about it."
Our State Department, like the military, is run as a top-down organization and, like aboard the Titanic, it's difficult-to-impossible to change a large organization's course from down here in the engine room. Individual analysts and reporting officers must continue to write the truth as they observe it, as they interpret it, and keep faith that policy and decision makers are doing more than filing things down the memory hole and proceeding with their pre-conceived biases.
"The Muslim Brotherhood, like the OIC and Al Qaeda, seeks to re-establish the global Islamic State (Caliphate) and implement Islamic Law (Shariah). You do not need a SCIF or a “secure space” to pull this information up on a classified government system. All of the enemy doctrine can be found on the worldwide web, in books, in speeches, in their training curricula, and coming out of their mouths on a daily basis."
What he said.
"When the MB says they have “renounced violence” they are – hold onto your hats – lying.
From several major terrorism trials in the United States, and other information, we now know nearly every major Muslim organization in North America is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) or a derivative group. We know many are support entities for Hamas, and all of the Islamic organizations working with the U.S. government are controlled by the MB. These include: the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Hamas support entity; the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Hamas organization; the Muslim Students Associations (MSA); the Muslim American Society (MAS); the Interntional Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT); the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a Hamas support entity; and many other. We also know that the objectives of the MB mirror those of Al Qaeda.
The MB’s doctrine is crystal clear on their objectives. The means for achieving these objectives is to wage a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” – a “grand jihad” – to destroy us from within. They seek to co-opt our leadership in all areas of our society – political, military, intelligence/law enforcement, media, religious. Civilization jihad by our hands. When we see that the Islamic advisor to President Clinton was a Muslim Brother and an Al Qaeda operative currently in federal prison, or that the MB runs the Shariah Compliant Financial programs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, or that senior policy advisors to Secretary Napolitano are Muslim Brothers, or that the Assistant Director for the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate is an Iranian-born Muslim, we see that there are catastrophic security issue within the U.S. government and that - just maybe – the MB means what they say."
These statements, if true, have some very scary implications. I'm disinclined to tar everyone with a Middle Eastern or Muslim background with too broad a brush, having served in uniform with more than one such individual in whom I have undiminished confidence. Nonetheless, connections with MB-connected front organizations are not happy-making.
