LTC Joseph Myers is a man whose name ought to be on the lips of all who care about victory in the Global War on Terror. For quite some time he has been fighting a lonely battle to get our military to study and counter-strategize against the distinctively Islamic elements in the strategies our enemies use against us. An AT contributor, Joe has studied the doctrinal aspects of Quranic warfare and written and lectured on the subject.Only if we understand the enemy's strategic thinking can we anticipate their moves, identify their points of vulnerability, and carry out a winning strategy. Yet our military and political establishment refuses to recognize the religious-based aspects of the thinking of our enemies.
Congressional Quarterly carries an interview with Joe that is concise and highly informative. Well worth reading. An excerpt: We focus on al Qaeda and violent actors, we focus at the tip of the spear to prevent terrorist attacks on the homeland. We are orienting all our resources, intelligence, homeland defense, against preventing attacks. We have very few resources, in my view, oriented on everything that leads up to the point of attack - the radicalization process. And because we don't have a model for the war on terror, we don't fully even understand what that radicalization process looks like. What is the infrastructure of it? Who's involved in it? What is the ideology undergirding that radicalization process? So we still, I would argue, seven years into the war on terror, have big gaps in our strategic thinking about the fight we're in. I think those gaps explain some of the challenges we are facing in the prosecution of this war, such as, at least from what I've read in media sources, strategic communications programs. [....]
Now, I would argue, go back to the Cold War and imagine if 90 percent of our Russian studies programs were being funded by the Soviets. I mean, there's potential implications in terms of strategic influence that I think needs better scrutiny.
LTC Myers is doing our country a favor in his quest to get these questions addressed.
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