“Our adversaries are way ahead of us in the use of the Internet and the use of the media,” said Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, undersecretary of defense of intelligence.
It was a stunning statement.
The United States invented the Internet. Its entrepreneurs in a few short years transformed the world. Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, YouTube — the list goes on.
Hollywood produces films that generate billions of dollars worldwide each year. Foreign audiences can’t get enough of them. Network television, Cable TV, 24-hour news channels — all born in the U.S.A.
The nation possesses enormous human capital as well. Every spring, America’s world-class universities produce legions of behavioral scientists, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, media specialists, film school grads and computer engineers. Its citizenry includes populations of moderate Muslims from every corner of the world.
But despite all of this, when it comes to fighting the ideology of radical Islam, the United States is getting its butt handed to it on a plate.
“The question is on a day to day basis, who is responsible for information operations for the United States government?” Boykin asked. “And the answer is ‘nobody’… There is no one in charge on a day to day basis.”
Although the message hasn’t sunk in with the general population, think tanks, academia and even some at the Pentagon will insist that all the bullets, fighter jets and high-tech sensors aren’t going to win the so-called global war on terror. Bombs can’t kill ideas. (Although they can kill civilians and their tragic deaths can deftly be used as anti-U.S. propaganda.)
The Quadrennial Defense Review spelled it out. The end of the war will only come “when extremist ideologies are discredited in the eyes of their host populations and tacit supporters.”
Thomas O’Connell, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, is among those who are lamenting the nation’s lack of unity in countering the ideas of radical Islam. The enemy is adept at using information technology tools, he said at the conference. He criticized the U.S. and international media, but also laid some blame on the Defense Department.
He described a successful raid by Iraqi forces on a terrorist compound. Insurgents immediately posted a video of the aftermath that showed dead bodies inside what they said was a mosque. It was a prayer room in a house, not a mosque, he contended. There was plenty of evidence uncovered that showed the insurgents there had tortured Iraqi troops and weren’t innocent civilians as the propaganda video claimed.
U.S. Central Command responded to the allegations a day and half later, O’Connell said. By that time, the Iraqi units had already taken a “hammering” in the press, he said.
“We have got to do a better job of telling our story,” he said. “I think we make efforts. I don’t know if they’re efforts that are very well coordinated both on an international and a domestic level.”
The false mosque story was a tactical victory scored on the part of a nimble and sophisticated enemy. Strategically, the nation is losing ground in the larger ideological war. Al-Qaida and its sympathizers are creating their own “narrative,” in which their spin on world events is widely believed, two recent reports have pointed out. The terrorist group now has its own media production arm, dubbed As-Sahab, which serves as an information clearinghouse. Any U.S. public relations firm would recognize its methods.
A recent Senate hearing pointed to the lack of attention being paid to the issue.
On the same day U.S. Central Command’s chief, Navy Adm. William Fallon, sat before a packed Senate Armed Services Committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held the second in a series of three briefings on terrorism and the Internet.
Fallon attracted several television cameras. At the Homeland Security hearing, the room would have been half empty if not for the groups of high school students stopping by for 30-minute intervals. Reporters for the Associated Press and a handful of niche publications were present, but the hearing generated few headlines. Only three senators attended.
Testifying were a Georgetown university professor, a West Point officer and a representative of the Defense Department’s newly formed “support to public diplomacy office,” who had been on the job for three days.
The new office — serving the undersecretary of defense for policy — is tasked with “ensuring strategic communication and information are integral to policy making … developing and coordinating key themes within the Defense Department to promote policies,” and working with other U.S.
government partners, particularly the Department of State … to design and
facilitate whenever possible strategic communication policies and plans to effectively advance U.S. national security,” the new deputy assistant secretary of defense, Michael Doran told the committee.
The Internet is the “primary repository of the essential resources for sustaining the culture of terrorism,” Doran said. As far as spreading Islamic extremist ideology, the Internet functions “as a kind of virtual extremist madrassa.”
Attempting to shut down web sites is an exercise in futility, those testifying said. They will pop up in a matter of minutes somewhere else. Password protected chat-rooms are even harder to penetrate. The Internet is the ultimate terrorist safe haven.
Boykin said the solution to winning the war against extremists “is not killing or capturing every terrorist ... That’s a never-ending process. We’ll never be successful.”
That presumably also goes for the legions of al-Qaida sympathizers who sit at computers and contribute to the jihad through their technical and media expertise.
The nation must enter a new phase of its battle, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.
“These myths and falsehoods must be debunked and discredited,” he said at the hearing.
And that means coming up with a compelling counter-message to the violent ideology spreading through the Internet and other means, he added.
Cilluffo came to the committee with a new report in hand — “NETworked Radicalization: A Counter Strategy.” About the same time, Rand Corp.’s Center of Middle East Public Policy released a similar report — “Building Moderate Muslim Networks.”
Both papers argued that the United States needs to do a better job helping Islamic moderates spread the word that extremists are harming the Muslim world and that their beliefs are based on false tenets.
The Rand authors pointed out that the United States does have some experience in this area. During the Cold War, the nation was in an ideological battle with communists, and it eventually prevailed. Comparing Bin Ladinism to communism isn’t always a perfect fit, but there are similarities. America’s cold warriors successfully built networks and coalitions of those who opposed the political ideology.
The anti-communists included those who disliked the United States, and that was okay, the report said, as along as they were on board with the idea of ending communist rule.
“The U.S. government and its allies need, but thus far have failed, to develop clear criteria for partnerships with authentic moderates,” the Rand study said. Despite numerous policy statements, speeches by President Bush and other documents, no consensus on how to identify and support partners in the “war of ideas” has emerged.
There are few existing moderate networks to engage with, the study noted, so they will have to be created. Possibilities include: liberal and secular academics and intellectuals; young moderate religious scholars; community activists; women’s groups engaged in gender equality campaigns and moderate journalists and writers.
U.S. funds should flow to members of these groups, Rand analysts recommended.
Credibility is the key. If the message is perceived as coming from the United States, then it wall fall on deaf ears.
The State Department is spending $700 million per year on the U.S. Middle East Television Network, better known as Al Hurra, which has been sharply criticized for failing to gain market share. Radio Sawa, part of the same effort, has gained an audience, but it is not clear whether either of them has been able to positively shape attitudes in the Muslim world toward U.S. policies, Rand said. Both stations are seen as proxies for the United States.
The ultimate goal, Cilluffo said, is the deconstruction of the al-Qaida brand. That’s “not to be confused with a public relations campaign to improve the image of the United States,” he added.
Rand said moderates must “reverse the flow of ideas.” The communists attempted to export their ideology into the West, but the United States and its allies turned the tide by infiltrating democratic ideas behind the Iron Curtain.
Some countries are more open than others. Strict regimes in the Middle East may not allow much meddling, but moderate, relatively open nations along the region’s perimeter are a good place to start. Indonesia, North Africa and Turkey, and nations with minority Muslim communities are potential spots to get a foothold, said the Rand report.
Now, all that’s needed is someone to take charge, or at least show some leadership.
If the United States is to help “reverse the flow of ideas,” who is responsible?
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, at the hearing asked the Pentagon’s Doran if anyone was in charge of countering extremist ideology.
Karen Hughes, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, was his answer.
Hughes was a close political advisor to President Bush, tasked with reinvigorating the State Department’s public diplomacy sector, which had its post-Cold War budgets eviscerated by Congress.
But within the State Department, Rand analysts said, there is little consensus on what public diplomacy means. Is it changing opinions, garnering support for policies or marginalizing extremists? The sector gets short shrift there. And at the Pentagon, the public diplomacy office didn’t open its doors until more than five years after 9/11.
“This strategic uncertainty ensures suboptimal policy performance,” said the Rand study.
There is no “unity of command,” Boykin said, putting the leadership issue in military terms. “We’ve given up on that. What we do hope to achieve is unity of effort.”
All agreed that waging an effective war of ideas against radical Islam is not the responsibility of one department or agency. In fact, to wage an effective campaign, the effort should reach to the nation’s allies, Cilluffo said.
Meanwhile, Boykin said, “we are coming up short on the whole concept of inter-agency, government-wide information operations and how it’s applied against this ... global insurgency.”
Unfortunately, until the U.S. government gets its act together, the extremists will continue to beat America at its own game.
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