A very big Thank You Joe!

Some good things, some bad things in that article.

While I agree that Clausewitz may be pushed to areas his ideas were not meant to go; other things proposed seem idiotic.

Lawfare? It's stupid IMHO. Accepting and creating restrictions to fight the enemy where he has none. Al Qaeda, Iran, and the Taliban have no lawyers to advise them (always) not to attack the enemy because it's illegal. Law restricts ONLY the West not Islam.

But the biggest problem I have with the article is that it ignores the essence of War which LeMay encapsulated: "kill enough of them and they stop fighting."

Given our experience in the Civil War, it seems to be about 40% of the military age male population: 18-40 or so. Kill enough of those people and even folks like Nathan Bedford Forrest will call continued war a lunatic endeavor.

The problem with the article is it's deep denial of the obvious: we are in a war of the peoples. The Muslim people wish to conquer us and convert us to Islam by force or kill/enslave the rest. Hence Londonistan. Creeping Sharia.

The solution to this is not "hearts and minds" campaigns but destructive warfare that kills about 40% of the military age population, and the ability to wage war which means in places like Londinistan property, money, access to mosques, freedom to travel etc. and in Pakistan total destruction of anything more than donkeys and goat trails.

Terrorist support among Muslims in Britain will not stop by idiotic "hearts and minds" since the desire to conquer the West is a war of the peoples. It will stop when agitation or even over displays of Islam get mosques burned down (with Muslims in them); shops burned to the ground, loss of property and impoverishment, incarceration for long stretches, poverty and no welfare or other benefits and total exclusion from all areas of life in Britain.

A man may well sacrifice his son to Jihad when he has others, and won't lose his property. He'll feel different if he would lose every penny he has, his family thrown out on the street with just the clothes on their backs and reduced to begging.

Which is eventually the solution that will bring itself to hand from a fearful population well aware that the State is unable and unwilling to perform it's first duty which is the protection of the mass of people from violent attackers.

The same tactic can be applied to Iran. The article makes much of the need to know the various tribal and political aspects of Iran. Much better to emulate Sherman's March to the Sea and target all sources of wealth and power in Iran, for continued destruction unless the nation offers it's unconditional surrender. When it came to their estates the elite of Richmond decided to stop fighting.

In other words, more Machiavelli, less Clausewitz. But no 4GW either. Guerrillas are not unstoppable and the usual rules (kill enough, make the rest poor) apply.

Wish I could find the reference, but pre- US Civil War someone estimated they'd have to kill about 33% of the "males of fighting age" population to subdue the South. Would be interested to know who said that... and what the final figure was at the end.

This would at least begin to put such discussions in the realm of data points and specific history.

Joe -- VDH's "Ripples of Battle" had the 40% figure as the total for the South at the end of the Civil War.

The other bone I have to pick with the article is the lack of understanding of technology and the mis-placed faith on language and other skills. Certainly that's important, but if we (as is very likely) surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan how important will knowledge of tribal politics and culture in those two countries be?

About as important as a warm bucket of spit.

Meanwhile on Future Weapons at Discovery Channel, we have the Army demonstrating the Future Combat Systems networked war-fighting capability. A team of twenty soldiers doing a task (clearing a building complex) with lots of networked mini-UAVs, UGVs, Apache longbows, park-and-use missile systems, intelligent mines, and lots and lots of intelligent sensors.

This is critical since Hezbollah has gone into UAVs in a big way, nearly sunk an Israeli Corvette with one. The technology revolution is critical since it allows fewer soldiers to do the same job, lessening logistics.

Meaning whoever masters it first can move faster without the huge logistics tail. Speed kills.

Also, technology can negate American Air-Sea advantage. It's critical to keep pushing those boundaries because potential enemies (the Chinese and Russians) certainly will. And even if we don't fight them directly they will sell to those we will fight (Iran, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, etc.).

Consider a freighter in NY Harbor. The crew is Hezbollah. They launch hundreds of UAVs which individually do not show up on Radar and swarm to say a particular skyscraper and all crash into a certain floor and detonate at the same time bringing the structure down and killing 20,000 or so.

How do we fight THAT?

Knowing politics and culture of Iraq and Afghanistan, turned over to Al Qaeda and Iran because of political demands by Dems/Media won't help at all. Only technology (better radars, our own swarms of UAVs patrolling and counter-fighting theirs, etc) can stop that scenario.

Far fetched? So was 9/11. See "Declining Terrorist Threat," July 2001, Larry Johnson.

So you are talking about killing what a million or more ?
That is not going to happen, the American people will not stand for it.
As for the muslim people wanting to kill us and enslave us they would rather kill each other (apostates) than infidels.
I spent 6 months in Afghanistan in 1976, much of it on horseback. You people know NOTHING about the people or the culture. You should all go back to playing Dungeons and Dragons.

1ed or 2ed???? I played Twilight 2000 my self.

from John Ryan at 12:13 am on Apr 06, 2007

I spent 6 months in Afghanistan in 1976, much of it on horseback
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Actual first hand experience doesn't count for much with a lot of people around here.
.....................................................................
You should all go back to playing Dungeons and Dragons.
.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

These same people were not very good at D&D, that is how they wound up here.

TOC, John...

If you want to discuss the issues raised - including doing so in a way that demonstrates superior knowledge and enlightens folks who have made statements you think are foolish - feel free.

If you want to make grade-school slams, do it someplace else.

Keep doing it, and the choice won't be yours.

I'd love to have John R explain what he saw in Afghanistan and how it applies to decisions about what to do now. Handwaving and claims to authority doesn't cut it here.

Over to you...

A.L.

#5 from John Ryan: "As for the muslim people wanting to kill us and enslave us they would rather kill each other (apostates) than infidels."

I think apostates from Islam often are us, and we must fight and kill as much as it takes to defend apostates so that we can endure as free people.

I think that's the morally right policy, because freedom of religion is a fundamental right, and I think it's the winning policy.

When nobody dares to raise a hand against those who walk out of the Muslim mad-house, then (and not before then) Islam will really begin to moderate itself, to compete as one product among many in an open religious market where the customers can and do change their minds every day about what source they want to buy religious comfort from; or else it will lose out, and especially it will lose girls, who can get a better deal in almost any other religion.

I am all for planning, but one must have a rational and relevant aim. That is the one I advocate. And until someone can show me that:
(a) freedom of religion is immoral, or
(b) helping slaves to defect and flee from a slave army that is coming to attack you is undesirable in a military sense,
that is the aim I will continue to advocate.

I tend to agree with Jim, although I haven't yet read the piece in it's entirety. I don't disagree that knowing one's enemy is important, including at the cultural level, but the notion that technology isn't critical just seems like Luddite nonsense to me. After all, even if we decided that appropriate strategy involved seeing the enemy as part of a tribal structure (as opposed to another kind of network or structure of cells) an advanced technology might still be critical to implementation, especially given our own reluctance to lose personnel. And I say this even though I'm a political sociologist.

BTW, I've always thought Robert Kaplan's Eastward to Tartary more revealing about Muslim culture than most of the hypersensitive scholarly treatises I've read... especially his observation that these populations are more appropriately seen as a collection of city states than either nations or tribes. Another good source of cultural insight is Ernest Gellner's Conditions of Liberty, although it sounds like Corn might see both Gellner and Sam Beer as "Huntingtonesque", because they avoid being particularistic. I suppose he'd approve of the war colleges elevating Geertz to the level of Clausewitz.

Jim is right re: technology as a critical force multiplier.

When I read articles like this one my first instinct (honed over a number of years of budget battles) is to ask what agenda lies behind the analysis.

This article is a dollar short and a day late re: the Army and culture / language skills. It doesn't acknowledge a huge push that's been in progress on that front for a couple years now.

Man Ima spend several weeks in Aghan too! I thinker that's where I lost me bong.

I haven't read the article yet, but I think all things are key in a balance. Pure technology, pure cultural understanding, pure force rarely wins in a guerrilla warfare game. New technology is vital, and is dramatically changing our stance in the battlefield. If the terrorists start a stand-up fight we'll win almost every time. The problem is that the terrorists who survive realize this, and almost never enter a standup fight.

Indeed, technology is also dramatically changing the ease of guerrlla warfare. Cell phone bombs are a great example of how cheap technology can be used against us. Although we are getting better at detecting these things, they're so cheap and simple that all of our technology cannot prevent it.

But if we (as is very likely) surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan how important will knowledge of tribal politics and culture in those two countries be? About as important as a warm bucket of spit.

I have long argued that one of the reasons why we will lose these wars is because of our inability to establish ourselves in/understand regional politics/cultures. Either misunderstanding, incompetence or wishful thinking (probably a little of everything) has contributed to the situations we are now in, which has caused us to prop up parties with opposing interests, and back politicians who have little to no sway in their own country. A better understanding of the ground situation 4 years ago probably would have helped both countries. Although we still might be able to turn things around, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

A man may well sacrifice his son to Jihad when he has others, and won't lose his property. He'll feel different if he would lose every penny he has, his family thrown out on the street with just the clothes on their backs and reduced to begging.

I see what your saying, but I also see it reversed. If I was innocent person living in the ME, and a US attack stripped me of everything I have, I can understand someone who goes out to seek vengence. I don't condone it, but I understand it.

I think that's the danger of warfare amongst civilians. Yes, on some level, civilian deaths will occur and that's a natural part of warfare. However, unintentionally, it also pisses people off. Usually, it's the people we need to find the terrorists in hiding.

I would argue that with the full establishment of a "March to the Sea" approach won't work anymore, especially not in Iran. Once the Republican guard starts to fail, the population will naturally fall into guerilla warfare. The more people you kill, the more the population goes into hiding and attacks from your rear.

I guess the modern 'sherman' strategy is to bomb civilian populations into oblivion, which has been discussed here before. In addition to american civilian unrest, economic sanctions against the US, and eventually causing an expansion of terrorist attacks, it's just not a very nice thing to do. It's hard to argue that we should use 'technological genocide' and still keep 'the moral ground', as it were.

I think Clausewitz is a healthy influence on the U.S. military.

I'm very far from being an unreserved fan of Clausewitz. I don't see how anybody can be an unreserved fan, if their starting point is the naval British Empire or economic warfare. Personally my starting point in homespun military philosophy is the city, and the long, long war of civilization (that means cities, and sedentary living with recorded and accumulating knowledge) against barbarism. As you'd expect, starting there, I find Machiavelli the most congenial basic thinker, though it is even less possible to admire him without reservation. And I like Sun Tzu for the emphasis on making civilized capacities pay off even in a kind of contest that often favors barbarism. So if I could see that the Americans really were being hyper-Clausewitzian, I would not say "and so they should be!" I would object.

But the Americans are not men and women of one book. They apply some discrimination. They have other great military thinkers in mind too. And if you read the little US Marines books (which I recommend) you can see the Clausewitzian influence, and I think you should be able to see that it's moderate and healthy. Which is natural, as Clausewitz is one of the great and necessary military thinkers, whatever his flaws.

The alternative presented does not impress.

"Clausewitz will always remain stimulating reading, but less than ever can he deliver actionable insight. Clausewitz should be not so much retired as kicked upstairs, and made the topic of a yearlong seminar at the doctoral level � once, that is, the future (interagency) National Security University establishes a much-needed doctoral program."

To kick Clausewitz upstairs like that would be folly.

I think now more than ever we need to keep a tight grip on what war is, that it is own field of activity and study, with its own spirit, and that it is not a branch of something else, like anthropology (?!?) - and Clausewitz is good for that.

We should be asking less from our militaries, that is, success in battle and not too much else, and we should be asking more from civilian agencies. (Though oddly I think Australia already has this more right than some other countries.) We should not ask our sailors and marines and soldiers and air-persons to be agents of anthropological benevolence. We should require them to be authentically belligerent and devastating fighters; the kind of people who could never be scooped up without resistance by less than half their numbers of Iranian fighters, and who would never give the enemy their full and docile cooperation on every topic, not because they had received a special training course on that situation, but because they were the kind of people and part of the kind of organization that manifests passionate, well-organized and effective antagonism to the enemy from the root, from the basic nature of war and (worthwhile) warriors.

Still, this is a very worthwhile article to read, and anyone who did not read it when it first came out should consider doing so now.

Please, do read the whole article. There's a good deal of button-pushing and pugnacity, especially towards the front of the presentation, which probably will get in the way of the proper delivery of Corn's message, but there are interesting ideas behind the bluster and spitballing. I especially liked his section on message vs. narrative, and the notion of successive regional "Arab/Islamic Cold Wars".

As for "killing them until they go home", Corn is arguing that there's too deep a reservoir of potential manpower to kill enough of them to make the force-in-existence go away. There's too much of a watertable uphill of the swamp to try to drain it without addressing the problem of refill. Using your own 40% fatality/disablement number, you'd have to kill or incapacitate, what, somewhere between 100 million and 300 million? I'm having some difficulty imagining what the actual number would be, given the likelihood of the war going on for multiple generations & the effect of such a long, sanguinary war would be on demographic behavior. Given the current exchange ratios and civilian-to-combatant fatality ratios... good lord.

This is where Corn's talk of narrative is interesting - he's suggesting that the key to combating the armed ideology is a sort of memetic interdiction, an assault on the narratives which drive recruitment. It's kind of theoretical, but the practical explicitation of such a strategy sounds promising, if it's not all air and assertion.

As for "lawfare", I suspect the idea is that the value of such behavior is less the direct negative effects on the enemy, which is probably negative in the short term, than the indirect effects on morale of the elites and maintenance of coalition cohesion.

Check out his ideas about 4GW's neglect of state action and over-emphasis on "the crisis of legitimacy". That's some strong stuff, there, clearly aimed at the Paul Pillar crowd.

John Ryan -- not only will the American people stand for it, they will INSIST UPON IT after another atrocity. The US forces certainly killed that and more in Japan during the firebombing campaigns. With nary a whimper in the Press. Around 300,000 or so IIRC were killed in the Tokyo firebombing raids alone.

When Americans feel threatened they have zilch compunction about killing on a truly organized scale without any restraint at all.

So you spent 6 months in Afghanistan on horseback? That has zilch relevance to the mostly urban, globalized and thus radicalized Pakistanis that form the core of the Taliban who have lots of contact with the West through global trade and are profoundly threatened by it. Western individualism rots through the tribal culture of Islam. Where are Muslims if everyone is free to do as he or she pleases? Marry a woman from across the globe instead of your father's brother's daughter? Where is the tribe then?

The Afghanistan you visited does not even exist anymore. If nothing else the extreme amount of foreign presence has made Muslims well aware of their total failure to compete in the modern world and the corrosive impact of globalization on tribal society which is essentially destroyed by it.

Muslims in the West (and elsewhere) DO want to kill and enslave us. Osama, Zawahari, Qadarawi, Abu Hamza, almost any Western-based Muslim preacher say so repeatedly. "God Bless Hitler," "Freedom Go to Hell," "Europe get ready for the REAL Holocaust," "Behead those who insult Islam" etc. being the signs carried by Muslims in the heart of London suggest that Muslims DO want to kill and enslave us. Killing Nuns and priests over remarks by the Pope, threatening Apostates with death (in Afghanistan), killing Rushdie's translator, stabbing his publisher, Theo Van Gogh's murder, 9/11, Beslan, Bali, and a zillion other atrocities all suggest that Muslims are committed to violence: to kill and enslave us.

Muslims say they want to kill and enslave us. Then they go out and carry those wishes out: 7/7, 7/21, the Skybombing plot. Over 42% of Brit Muslims want to live under Sharia law: which is enslavement of non-Muslims. Britain has already given up Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, flying it's flag, teaching the Holocaust (and Crusades), historic statues of boars, and the three little pigs in the face of Muslim demands backed by violence and still more is demanded. The available evidence suggests Mr. Ryan that you are quite wrong about Muslims intent. Easily checked by visiting a giant hole in the ground in lower Manhattan.

I understand why this conflict is so: it's about tribe vs. individual freedom. But that in and of itself suggests there is no deal, accommodation, or anything else short of killing lots of the enemy OR submitting to Islam as a convert or slave to stop the War of the Peoples. Which will indeed be ugly.

Alchemist: yes aerial bombing is basically the new March to the Sea and of course a force multiplier. Which was aimed at destroying economic targets not battles to kill people. But the most hard-core jihadis such as Osama, Zawahari, Zarqawi, Atta, Yusef etc. were never harmed in any way by America or the West. Instead they profited by it. Suggesting IMHO that the core of the conflict goes to individualism vs. tribalism.

MitchH -- only those Muslim nations that are middling wealthy are a threat. The really poor are so disconnected from globalization that they are not threatened by Western individualism eroding tribal culture. We need only worry about Iran, Pakistan, Saudi and Gulf Countries, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and possibly a few other places. And we need not nor should we not rush to war with them at the same time or even if there are alternatives such as getting them to fight among themselves. But our conflict with say, Niger is nil because Niger is not on the global trade network. But yes we inevitably will end up killing a lot of people. America loses a city and the killing will begin.

[The hope is that technology provides the ability to abort such an attack before a city is lost, thus stopping global bloodletting. He who masters technology often wins, and Hezbollah is very interested in adapting UAV technology and has made some dangerous strides in that area.]

Mitch, et al:

Still haven't had time to read the article, but I plan to. Before I do, however, I just wanted to register a reservation about my dismissal of it... or of the "deep description" (ala Geertz) of an enemy culture. I'm not sure I really buy the idea that Islam is inherently and only bent on world domination, or that its "letter" will never allow it to become "tame".

I've been fairly impressed, recently, with Cesar Millan on NGEO's The Dog Whisperer. The fellow is an absolute savant about the social and predatory psychology of dogs, and frequently accomplishes the seemingly impossible, taming what appear to be incorrigible monsters. But having said that, I don't think Cesar's insights into this animal world are all that easily transferred to the typical academic mind. There are people with "the gift" of such insight, but most not only don't have it, but stand no chance of ever attaining it. (Cesar teaches dog owners a few simple tricks, but the transference of his understanding isn't really what's happening in those episodes.)

That's the problem with the "deep description" orientation. It seduces people who don't have the gift into believing it's a relatively simple achievement, acquired with only a little focus. All we need do is abandon a few of our preconceptions and we'll easily be able to take the reins of this tiger.

No, not so much. I think we have to be open to the savants who genuinely have "the gift" (and perhaps David Petraeus is one), but we also need to value those who have "it" a good deal more than the behavior this Democrat congress suggests we're prepared to do. Being a wishful-thinking prat is no substitute for genuine depth. Our Lockean culture produces savants capable of this sort of deep understanding with a great deal more frequency than does a culture centered on either ethnic identity or charisma. That's our real advantage over the ummah.

I'm hoping Corn is saying something like that... Otherwise, reading the piece will be a waste of time.

Unfortuately, the article does little more than point out Clauswitz' limitations, Corn does little more than merely propose an anthropology of war. Which is sad, because the idea is good and needs a better defense.

Clauswitz' basic limitation, as I read Corn, is that he lived in a world primarily composed of states knocking eachother around, whether in diplomacy or war, hence the "war is politics by other means." The reality is that the world isn't just monolithic states, but interlocking networks and systems of economics, culture, power, communications, you-name-it. That's the "terrain" modern wars are fought on, so our soldiers need to learn this more modern, complex terrain.

The point of war isn't to kill a bunch of people, but to finesse the system in such a way that good things happen. Take the Kurds, for example. We studied Iraq, learned that they were being oppressed by Saddam's regime, and that that oppression was carried out by tanks and aircraft. Then we set up a no-fly-zone and so give the Kurds the autonomy they need to pull themselves up, all without massive causalities on either side.

With the GWOT, we need to study the culture, figure out how all these things fit together, and then make the problem go away, probably by disempowering the radicals and letting pro-West/Modern moderates come to the fore of Islamic society. Maybe that means our soldiers have to spend more time drinking tea with the locals than killing people, but that's what good soldiers do. Do you think Alexander conquered Iran by killing 40% of the male population?

"I'm not sure I really buy the idea that Islam is inherently and only bent on world domination, or that its "letter" will never allow it to become "tame"."

Read the Koran.

Read the Bible.

Lots of (mostly old testament) stuff that makes it clear that Christianity could never co-exist with a modern Western civilization.

The reason that the great religions continue to survive is that their holy books are contradictory and ambiguous enough that just about any interpretation can be managed, if so desired.

Mr. West:

Nobody really thinks that the Old Testament has or had anything at all to do with the Christian message. In the minds of Christians, and in the minds of those who don't call themselves Christians but act largely as if they were, the central message of the Bible is Christ's single (I think) commandment: "Love one another". The implication is clear that if you follow that any minor transgressions will be forgiven.

It's quite possible that real Christianity is incompatible with modern Western civilisation, but for the opposite reason that Islam is.

The central message of Islam is to spread the Word, by any means necessary including slavery, oppression, tax on infidels, bloody war, rape, theft and betrayal. All that is in the Koran.

Christ died on the cross for other people's sins; Mohammed (hellfire and eternal damnation be upon him) was a paedophile, rapist, murderer and warlord. Case closed.

Remember what day it is tomorrow, and what it means.

In the minds of Christians, and in the minds of those who don't call themselves Christians but act largely as if they were, the central message of the Bible is Christ's single (I think) commandment: "Love one another". The implication is clear that if you follow that any minor transgressions will be forgiven.

Yet that message was also largely not followed in modern christian history. Instead, the greatest message condoned among major church organizations for hundreds of years was: convert at any cost. Look at transgressions by the catholic church on the jews, the pagans, africans etc up through the 17th, 18th, even 19th centuries in some cases. Look at catholics killing prostestants. Look at Southern Baptists declaring blacks as 'less than whites' according to the bible.

Yes, Islam has some serious problems, but so did christanity for a looong time. I still beleive Islam can iron these things out (eventually). Maybe it still needs a good push in the right direction. However, the bible should not get a free pass because it's 'the home team'.

alchemist, the true difference is that the "Christians" committing these acts knew in their heart of hearts that they were not following the example of Christ, or his commandments. They were not good Christians at all.

On the other hand, the jihadis are rather good Moslems from their point of view, by the example of their prophet. I think you can guess my definition of a good Moslem.

It is possible indeed that Islam, if given the time, could grow up in the way that Christianity has grown up since the Middle Ages. But they will have to do it very quickly. The Crusaders didn't have the power to let loose cosmic energies in pursuit of their goals. I don't like to think what would have happened to civilisation if they had.

Islam already has the power that fuels the stars in its hands; but currently not in the hands of its extremists. If those people get it, then Islam will die; the only question then will be how many Westerners die first.

"alchemist, the true difference is that the "Christians" committing these acts knew in their heart of hearts that they were not following the example of Christ, or his commandments. They were not good Christians at all."

I really don't think thats the case. Did the crusaders who through themselves on Saladin's spears not believe they were good christians? Im Catholic, and i consider myself devout in my own way. But every day thousands flock to the Vatican to see gold leaf and jewels from wall to wall in the head church devoted to a poor carpenter. Every day the Vatican Bank makes high stakes deals under the banner of the man who flipped the tables of the money changers in the temple (one of the few times in the bible Christ every showed open anger). Human beings have a remarkable gift for hypocrisy and self-deception. I dont think its something unusual about the Muslim faith. Yes there are verses in the Quo'ran that advocate violence, just as there are verses in the old testament that command you to drag your disobediant children before the town to be stoned to death.

People will read into dogma whatever they wish to ultimately. If there is a problem with Islam, it isnt their dogma. Its the cultural attribute that has developed of victimhood that seems to trump and excuse any amount of evil. Its the silence of the moderates that is troublesome, and this is something we have failed to hold to account in the West.

Could we focus more on the article itself? It's a very worthwhile contribution to the discussion.

What do you think of this idea: demographic warfare, prosecuted in this case by "natalist policies, anti-Western mass indoctrination, and mass emigration to the West"?

"In Colin Gray�s Britain, Muslims are barely 2 million, but politicians are already pandering to the Muslim vote and willing to make all sorts of concessions, including on immigration. Caught in a time warp, Gray looks jihad (al Qaeda) and dawa (Hizb-ut-Tahrir) in the eye, and see nothing more than � a bearded version of the ira. Rather than bury their heads in the Clausewitzian sand, strategists would be better inspired to meditate the truly �remarkable trinity� engineered by Arab governments for more than thirty years: natalist policies, anti-Western mass indoctrination, and mass emigration to the West. Isn�t time at least to add a chapter to On War on �demographic warfare?�"

I think it's bang on the mark, important, and important to discuss.

Demographic warfare is normal. I don't think you can discuss what's really going on without it.

David:

Apologies for the slight derailment.

Demographic warfare is what we have right now, true. It's probably time that we started acting as if it was; some things we can do (I'm referring primarily to the UK now):

Not renew any right-to-stay documents or work permits held by anyone from the Middle East or Pakistan.

Ban halal meat and other barbarian rituals.

Get rid of the loophole about bringing in family members.

Not give planning permission to any new mosques.

Throw in jail or expel (depending on whether citizen or not) any rabble-rousing clerics.

Stop making concessions (moslem-only swimming evenings, allowance of Friday off, concessions for Ramadan, prayer rooms, the list goes on and on).

And as part of this effort; leave the EU so we can actually get control of our own laws and borders back.

All of those suggestions are reasonable, in terms of demographic war, and a lot more humane than letting things drift till terror plots start to germinate. (Which has already happened - meaning these things, and others, should have been done long ago.)

Is this all really war, or just bigotry? Yes, it is really war, and no mere bigotry.

When Rome lost great territories, tragically decisive for its future, the real war was demographic. The lack of Roman babies and the settlement in Roman land of large numbers of barbarians who it was claimed to skeptical Romans would assimilate but of course who never did, was decisive. The scuffling later merely ratified a calamitous war already lost.

This is an interesting article, but is it a problem that it neglects to fill in the "anthropology" that it calls for? Or is it that to do so would be politically impossible, because Muslim demographic power, money power and doctrinal aggressiveness are too great, and Western moral weakness in the ruling class, the media, the voting public and even in the armed forces (as the "frightened fifteen" illustrate) is too crippling?

I think it's the latter. In which case, Clausewitz's weakness not the problem. Policy, the calculation of chances, and mainly the power of sentiment, of animosity and wrathful aggressiveness on one side and timidity on the other are good starting points for the thinking that would have to be done if we were bold enough to do it.

Clausewitz's remarks about boldness being practically a creative power in war because of the remarkable effect it can have in combination with the enemy's timidity, and that extreme courage and being bright enough to get by are not at you would expect consistently outmatched in war by extreme cleverness and being brave enough to get by look a lot like what I'm seeing in the global jihad war.

I finally read the article (it was long and I was swamped at work) and think it's very good. It provides a vocabulary to work with. It points to some anthropological faultlines in the enemy structure. And it has suggestions on directions of study. Plus there is some wickedly sharp and entertaining writing. My favorite is this one:
Once it becomes clear, as in the early 1990s, that [the] U.S. is peerless in conventional warfare, isn’t the duty of [military] educators to anticipate that the enemy will have no choice but to choose an asymmetrical approach — as in “irregular warfare?” Yet, while the Osamas of this world were issuing fatwas against “Jews and Crusaders” and defining their own struggle in terms of “Fourth-Generation Warfare,” our Clausewitzian Ayatollahs were too busy turning Vom Kriege in[to] a military Quran and issuing fatwas against the theoreticians of 4GW, Netwar, and other postmodern “heresies.” […]

It does not take an Einstein to realize that, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, the greatest generals for 20 centuries had one thing in common: They have never read Clausewitz. And conversely, in the bloodiest century known to man, the greatest admirers of Clausewitz also have had one thing in common: They may have won a battle here and there, but they have all invariably lost all their wars.
I love that one.

And finally, we all know that the military is winning easily in Iraq and Afghanistan, totally dominating the enemy at every turn, yet it doesn't seem that the war is really going well. And the reason why is the asymmetric aspects of the war. We don't control the media. They are uncontrolled and operating under a toxic doctrine perversely descended from comintern agitprop aimed at America during the beginnings of the Cold War. The enemy is using our media against us. They are using our own laws against us (the real meaning of lawfare). They are using our political system and immigration against us. None of these are purely military aspects of the jihad. The military cannot handle the entire counterjihad by itself. And yet these aspects are critical to the successful defense of the free nation and free world. So what to do?

What to do? Planning must take these things into account. Structures must be created. Alliances must be formed. The nation must be on a war footing, but the opposition party doesn't think a war footing is needed. They have been reading their Carl Schmitt and are projecting their own plans for a "kind and gentle" socialist/fascist takeover on the president and his party. This is complicated. That's why this is an important article.