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  • From: Thomas Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>
  • To: InterNetWorkers <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: sun tsu
  • Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 08:41:25 -0400


I'm copying here a letter to Salon which is one of the more astute
things I've seen all week. Find it here:

http://www.salon.com/news/letters/2001/09/14/klare/index.html

TaB

----------------

"The last person to say anything particularly new and insightful on the
subject of winning wars was Sun Tzu, way back in 500 B.C. Here is a
basic primer: "In war, it is of supreme importance to attack your
opponent's Strategy. The next best thing is to attack your opponent's
Alliances. Next after that is to attack your opponent's Armies. The
worst thing is to attack your opponent's Cities."

"This is basic, self-explanatory stuff that the U.S. military cannot
seem to figure out. Their bazillion-dollar war machine has, in recent
history, reversed those priorities. The result is always the same:
massive overkill, unbelievable wasted resources and zillions of dead
civilians. So we end up with expensive scorched-earth pyrrhic victories
at best and defeat at the hands of Third-World countries at worst. With
WWII analogies flying fast and thick we would do well to remember that
the bombing of civilian targets in that war did absolutely nothing to
help either side to win. Strategic bombing raids were meant to
demoralize the enemy and weaken their capacity to wage war, but they
accomplished neither of these things. They served only to strengthen the
resolve of those who were attacked. And it looks like we may be about to
see it again, only this time the results will be even worse, since a new
generation of fundamentalist nutcases will rise from the ashes. The U.S.
will find itself he target of daily attacks, just like Israel.

"So let's go back to Sun Tzu and see if we can find a way to actually
win. What is the enemy's strategy? Their goal is all-out global war
between Muslims and the West. They seek to accomplish this by attacking
civilian targets in the West, which will provoke the West to
conventional war, which will polarize moderate Muslims and (so the enemy
believes) bring the Muslim world together in Holy War against the
unbelievers. Secondly, where are the enemy's alliances? They are seeking
alliances with all Muslims. There are 1.2 billion Muslims on this
planet. That's a lot of people they're reaching out to. Thirdly, what
are their armies? They are small, tightly-knit, decentralized groups all
across the globe. This makes their armies largely invulnerable to
conventional warfare.

"Now. How do we attack these things? We are unable to attack their
strategy because too many in the West already see Muslims as the enemy,
and too many Muslims are terrified of Western power over life and death.
We are unable to attack their alliances for the same reason. We are
unable to attack their armies because our intelligence community has no
Arabic-speaking agents of Arabian descent. Conventional means are
useless against their armies; we must attack them with spies and
counter-agents. But we're so insular that we lack the means to get
inside.

"The key to victory on all these fronts lies in allying ourselves with
the non-fundamentalist Muslims who are of course the vast majority. We
must strengthen ties with the Islamic world and make friends with as
many powerful and influential Muslims as we can. We must fight
Islamophobia in our backyard. Practically all of the world's Muslims,
even outside the West, see Osama bin Laden as evil, but many also see
the United States as a frightening global tyrant. We must use the
awesome power of our media to show them that they are right about the
former and wrong about the latter. When Arabs are fully integrated into
Western society, some of them will certainly wind up signing up for
military duty or intelligence service duty. When we no longer fear each
other, the enemy's strategy will be defeated. When Arab nations see the
U.S. as an ally, the enemy will lose their potential allies. When the
CIA and FBI have undercover agents of Arabian descent, we will be in a
position for the first time to attack their armies and win.

"If the U.S. government is serious about treating this matter as a war,
they are going to have to start paying attention to real military
strategy: the kind that wins wars. Not the kind that sells weapons. "

-- Jonathan Moriarity



  • sun tsu, Thomas Beckett, 09/15/2001

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