New Sanity Squad podcast
Well, we had a Christmas hiatus, and we’re back. The Sanity Squad, that is, discussing the reactions to the Saddam execution, plus Somalia. Have a listen.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Well, we had a Christmas hiatus, and we’re back. The Sanity Squad, that is, discussing the reactions to the Saddam execution, plus Somalia. Have a listen.
Disaggregation attacks that strategy at the root, by focusing people’s attention on the local issues that they really care about. Kilcullen points out that it is social networks that draw young men into jihad. We can defuse those networks by giving them something else to fight for — something local.
This is where we meet Montgomery McFate in the article, the a DOD contractor engaged in a “massive act of rebellion against my hippie parents.” She lived with the IRA and then with Protestants in Ireland, and has developed an understanding of the things that drive radicals. She is one of the ones the US military turned to when it found itself trying to understand the Sunni triangle.
Cultural expertise is the key to unlocking these insurgent movements from the terrorists who would unify them. Local insurgencies can often be ignored by us (as in Aceh and Thailand), or put down if they need to be (as we were able to put down the Shi’ite insurgency of 2004 in Najaf and elsewhere). If they don’t aggregate, they are easy to control, and can’t threaten the fundamentals of our civilization. By the same token, we don’t have to radically change the size of our military to deal with them.
There are two things we need to make this work. First, we need an understanding among military men (who are quickly developing it) and the rest of American/Western society (who have not begun to do so) about how to engage earlier, tribal forms of society. For the leaders of the military in a region, that understanding should be specific. I will suggest later that the US military move the Special Forces out of SOCOM and into the combatant command units exclusively. These men who are specially talented in languages and unconventional war should have the time in a specific region to learn all they can about that region; and we should give them the lead on all military missions in conflict areas designated “insurgency.” They should be elevated in such cases to directing all US military involvement in such areas.
For the rest of us, we need a general understanding of tribalism. I wrote about this years ago in a piece called The Black Mail. The tribe does everything we expect a society to do: bestows legitimacy on leaders, takes care of orphans and other needy children, cares for the old and the widowed. Changing a tribal society to a modern one is the work of generations.
That’s all right — merely engaging a tribal society in modern economic life will do the work for us. We just have to be willing to wait. In the meantime, we play by their rules, and wait for the virus of freedom to work.
We must also show them the value of our society in terms that will mean something to an honor-based tribal society.
The best thing that we can do for America is to return to teaching heroic epics. We need to teach Americans how to be heroes — how to think about and value honor, shame, and wisdom amid violence.
American soldiers are our fi
rst and often our best ambassadors. When they behave as heroes, and believe in heroism, a tribal society responds. When they know how to speak of those concepts in a Western context, the tribal society learns that the West is not decadent — it too has honor.
This is the quote from that link I posted in the other thread.
The desire for power over other people, Neo, as Pat brought up, is I believe a direct function of their inability to succede or control themselves. It comes from a lack, a need, and a desire to do what they otherwise would not have been able to do.
Saddam and Hitler and Stalin could not produce any good works for their people. Why? Because, I believe, they had no inner strength or courage. As we talked of before, Neo, they were different from Emperor Hirohito. There is a separation of duty, of honor, between the good and the evil rulers. The evil rulers seek to accrue power and domination to themselves, because they have no power or domination over their own souls and emotions. They are powerless in their hearts. Now this is different from true believers. True believers are those who believe in a philosophy and will kill and die for that philosophy because that philosophy forms the core of their values and identity, it is all that they are. But true believers make very bad dictators, because to get the power of the leadership you must be able to manipulate and go beyond simple “laws” and “beliefs”. A dictator should be able to forge “belief” and “law”, as with Stalin and Saddam’s trials and executions. A reign of terror requires this manipulation, and if you are a true believer, then it will be very hard for you to manipulate the beliefs of those around you, if it requires doing something that is against the philosophy itself. There’s a lot of self-rationalizations of course, for folks like osama who might think that by living and fighting here, he will get a greater reward than if he blew himself up. Of course, the vice a versa is that good rulers are best if they are true believers in their duty to protect their nation.
Fascism is considered a right winger clique because the communists did a 1984 and Stalinques type of airbrush propaganda operation. As I believe, propaganda is very useful.
To add to what you said, Neo, about Soviets vs Nazis. You have to remember that the Soviets and Nazis were allied when they divided up Poland. So the NKVD secret police apparatus told people to think and say concerning the Nazis was that “we are fighting with our brethren socialists against the Imperialism of America and Britain”.
Then when Hitler attacked the Soviets, the NKVD told Russians something different to think and say. It was “we are now with our working comrades of the West, fighting against the fascistic pigs”. So it isn’t just a double, Neo. It is a triple ; ) A feint within a feint, within a feint. First they were for the nazis (communists welcomed Nazis in Paris), then they were agai
against the nazis and for the west, then after Hitler died, they were for the Nazis and against the West.
When you indulge in propaganda, Neo, rediverting how a person thinks becomes easy. Not only easy, but necessary in a totalitarian system. You have to be able to control how a person thinks.
I cannot give you the true flavor of the dichotomy, because I don’t remember the exact phrasings of the NKVD dictates. They were very colorful.
The question of the value of human life is murky. If one life is valuable, then doesn’t this add up mathematically to mean that a million lives are a million times as valuable? But that isn’t how humans work. Shrink gets cred for bringing up that very relevant quote. Because it is true. The Left is very very easy to manipulate, Neo, via propaganda methods. If only because they are steeped in deception and lies, they have no truth to pierce the darkness I would weave. So when the Left sees one death, Saddam’s, that matters to them. More than a million deaths that they never saw or spent a second thinking about. You can use this against them, Neo. Visual propaganda is required.
Of course Pat brings up that quote about all of man is sea or something about diminishment, and that is a philosophy that is based upon the fact that one human life is “invaluable”. Meaning, it has no price, it is priceless. Which basically means that one million lives are the same priceless value as one human life, Neo. And that one human life, coincidentally, is theirs. After all, that is why the quote talks about the “diminishment of” his self isn’t it? It is about him, and only him. All lives totaled together are equally as valuable as his own single life, that is why when one man dies, it diminishes him.
Such philosophies are child’s play to destroy, because they are playthings compared to true power. They put all the eggs in one basket, the ego and the self. Destroy that ego and that self, and poof, it’s all gone.
You asked a question, Neo, concerning why Mog fell so fast.
I think it had something to do with the fact that the Special Forces have been operating in Africa, unseen by the US media, for a very long time now. I think you remember incidents in which you’ve heard about US operations in Somalia, an interview perhaps. They are basically giving advice and training to local supports, acquiring local tribal support, and then using the local conditions to defeat the common enemies of the US and our tribal allies.
This is how the Special Forces fight wars, Neo. And as you see with Ethiopia, it is rather more effective than the first few years of Iraq. And the SF had to use local conditions and no US air power at all, to do so. You think that with such a hindrance, such a small hammer, not much could be done, right? There’s conventional warfare and then there is guerrila warfare. If you choose wrongly, then yes, it will be very hard for you.
Most people think war is just throwing into troops into
the meat grinder, and you will win. But others like Sherman, like the operators in Afghanistan and Africa, know better. Not even conventional war was about throwing enough men into the breach hoping for victory, let alone guerrila warfare.
Grim talked about this a little bit more, in which he said that Bush was ahead of the curve in this area of finding local allies internationally to divide the world wide jihad movement. However, I believe he is ahead of the curve simply because he allows the Special Forces to do what they want in such locations. And since the SF can be trusted to do a good job and not “leak” information or “betray” Opsec to the media, Bush is good.
Too bad i can’t get him to shine my shoes. i need a good squire.