I was very intrigued to read that a major film is being made about the life of Noor Inayat Khan. For those who aren’t familiar with this WWII heroine, a brief synopsis, after which I’ll discuss the plans for the movie.
War and Peace
On War, Comprehension and Persuasion
There must be something in the water lately as I have been getting an upsurge of inquiries and public comments regarding information operations, public diplomacy, “soft power” agents of influence, 5GW and similar matters. There are other blogs I can recommend as being better on this score – Beacon, MountainRunner, Kent’s Imperative, Swedish Meatballs Confidential and Whirledview to name but a few. Also, I would suggest that interested readers search the archives of Studies in Intelligence, PARAMETERS, The Strategic Studies Institute, Combined Arms Research Library and the threads at The Small Wars Council. Genuine expertise may be found there and for discussions of theory and emerging trends, I recommend Dreaming 5GW.
That being said, I will offer my two cents anyway.
One point of agreement across the political spectrum and that of informed opinion is that the USG has not done a particularly good job of managing “the war of ideas” in the conflict with Islamist terrorism. Or against state adversaries. Or with persuading neutrals and even our own allies to our point of view. When you are having difficulty drawing even in global popularity contest with a crowd of bearded fanatics who put beheading videos on the internet, it’s time to admit there’s a problem.
The Myth of Retaliation
I wrote earlier about the fairly widespread erroneous belief that the Bush administration advocated the invasion/liberation of Iraq due to the mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks.
As a sociological phenomenon, this error fascinates me. The liberation and democratization of Iraq is the major political event of our times, yet we see that a significant minority of lay people and cognoscenti alike honestly do not understand the rather clearly stated rationales for attempting it. Why do so many people make such an important decision based on an erroneous premise and what does this say about the overall quality of our general political decision making?
9/11
What can I add to other people’s eloquent writings on this topic.
I was not surprised by the attack. I had been expecting WMD terrorism for years. I expect more of it. I am grateful that President Bush, instead of sending the FBI to Pakistan to take depositions, understood immediately that we were in a world war. IMO this was his defining act as president, from which everything else followed. If he had handled things differently then we might be in a much worse position now and for years to come.
What surprises me is how quickly so many Americans have decided to put the 9/11 attack, the war and concerns about WMD terrorism behind them. We are probably safer now than we were immediately before 9/11. But we will probably remain a target because technology that can be used to make WMD is probably only going to become more widely available.
Time will tell. In the meantime I want us to keep killing our enemies, to discourage attacks and to discourage other groups and countries from becoming our enemies.
I invite discussion in the comments.
UPDATE: David Foster has a related post here. See also here.
“Not helpful”
That’s what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said when pressed to comment on MoveOn.org’s despicable “Betray Us” ad in the NYT.
On the contrary, I think the ad was very helpful, since it makes crystal-clear its sponsors’ position on the war and on their country. Of course this kind of clarity is not politically helpful for today’s Democratic Party.