Planning for Gains

Planning For Gains

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Americans are confused by the War on Terrorism. The international media obfuscates the matter even more since media has problems understanding the war. Television is the average American’s interaction with global events, and if the media doesn’t get it right, chances are most Americans will approach the War on Terrorism with a distorted understanding of the war, or even worse, a wringing of the hands approach to it. The media attempts to portray the War on Terrorism as a war between a very select group of policymakers in the United States versus fundamentalist Islam in al Qai’da and other terrorist groups. The media does not explain the war to the American people as an attempted remaking of the global order by fundamentalist Islam. Americans are being trained through their television sets to believe that the War on Terrorism is a war being waged by America against a handful of disgruntled folks that do not even have a country. In Iraq, for example, media hopes Americans become horrified that the US military is engaging terrorists on the streets of Baghdad, since only police should be performing such a function. Americans have never seen in their lifetimes a military force engaging folks in civilian clothes on city streets. To many Americans, an enemy must not exist because that enemy doesn’t wear military uniforms of an opposing army. In the west, western populations become very uncomfortable when western military forces shoot other human beings that wear civilian clothes. Pay no mind to the RPG-7, or AKMS 7.62MM assault rifle lying next to the dead terrorist wearing civilian clothes that was shooting at US forces trying to kill American soldiers, the media images most Americans see are of claimed civilian dead. The dead civilians usually show up on American television sets either writhing in pain as they are being led away to a hospital somewhere in war zone, or flat on their backs dead with pools of blood draining from their bodies. No explanation that the individual was an insurgent terrorist is necessary. The fact that the terrorist was wearing civilian clothes draws a certain level of sympathy from the western media and that sympathy then winds it way down through American television sets to far left peace movements and anti-war protestors. The insurgents become “concerned citizens” defending their “hometowns” from US aggression, so to speak. It never ceases to amaze how sophisticated the western media is at shaping American public opinion.

For some time now I have been studying insurgent and terrorist propaganda videos of improvised explosive attacks upon US forces in the War on Terrorism. Improvised explosive devices account for over 75% of all US casualties in this war. I study the videos because they are scientific evidence in the realm of military science, or more accurately what is known as combat tactics. Military forces that engage opposing forces in open warfare approach victory on the battlefield through the use of combat tactics. Combat tactics are coveted techniques that nation-states develop through lessons-learned on the battlefield, and lessons derived from previous wars are then adapted into new and improved combat tactics.

Terrorist and insurgent forces have a very fluid chain of command and a restricted ability to share their knowledge of combat tactics. Since the United States destroyed the al Qai’da terrorist training camps in Afghanistan for example, it becomes much more difficult for terrorist and insurgent forces to train collectively in combat tactics without such facilities. Modern armies use forts with vast training areas to train soldiers for war. The forts that modern armies use are so vast that soldiers can also be housed in an isolated way from the rest of the populations of the nation-state to train for war. This is important for the nation-state so that soldiers can be resocialized away from behaviors that are not conducive to military operations, and makes the teaching and learning of combat tactics easier and more efficient. Terrorist organizations and the insurgent forces fighting against the United States and the west do not have such resources at their disposal. These groups then have created their own fort and training areas for war by using the Internet. The Internet has become the terrorist training center to prepare new Islamic fundamentalist soldiers for the war against the west.

In the dozens of insurgent and terrorist combat tactics videos that I have studied, several key themes emerge from all of them. First, the terrorists and insurgents operate in civilian clothing. These forces do not have uniforms commonly associated with flagged armies of the modern nation-state. Second, the terrorist and insurgent forces seem to be operating in squad sized teams as they move about the countryside looking for locations to conduct ambushes, raids and deployments of IED’s. Third, the combat tactics used are commonly found in the propaganda and training videos that are readily available on hundreds, if not thousands of terrorist websites. For example, in many of the videos where IED attacks against US forces are conducted, these attacks are done by remote control using cell phones. You can hear the terrorists using a pulse-tone cell phone and they dial 4 numbers, holding down the third for a few seconds until the target is precisely over the IED, and then the terrorists punch in the last number and the IED is detonated. That is a common combat tactic that the terrorists have trained upon. Then fourth, just prior to the selection of the target as it enters the kill zone, the terrorists can be heard whispering Allah Akbar repeatedly in the final moments before the attack, as if seeking approval from their god or praying to their god for a successful attack. When the explosion does occur and the target is immobilized, the terrorist group then shouts with loud voices the same Allah Akbar phrase that they used leading up to the attack.

Now to the media and the average American watching these attacks on television, this may not account for much. To the peace movement, war is wrong no matter what the reasons given, so these points will be lost on them completely anyway. What is important to recognize here is that these terrorist videos are not isolated to Iraq. These videos have the same recurring theme in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and every other location that terrorist and insurgent forces are engaging nation-state systems. What this proves is that terrorist and insurgent forces are modeling their operations transnationally and have injected a cultural application of god into their combat operations and tactics. So whether it be Iraq, or Afghanistan or Chechnya, or any other future battlefield, one thing is very clear: these combatants are wearing the uniform of radical fundamentalist Islam. Now the media and the peace movement cannot see uniforms when the media shows captured or dead insurgents on the unconventional battlefield. The media and the peace movement only see civilian clothing worn by the terrorists. This is what has made the war so confusing for many Americans and certainly the media. Make no mistake that the enemy our soldiers face on the unconventional battlefield is highly proficient with this form of modern warfare.

The Islamic intellectuals that are behind the creation and deployment of fundamentalist insurgent and terrorist forces know exactly what they are doing in this approach. They know that western countries have little tolerance for western soldiers shooting civilian combatants with machineguns. Since enemy combatants in this war are wearing civilian clothes, disconnects exist with the consumer of western media information about whether or not enemy combatants are involved in real combat operations against US forces. The American soldier in an armored vehicle that is engaged on the battlefield by an insurgent in civilian clothing knows who the enemy is when that same insurgent wields an RPG-7 anti-armor weapon. The civilian clothing doesn’t matter because the human wearing such clothing is waging war against US forces.

From a PSYOP perspective, unflagged armies operating in enemy territory have two primary benefits for the hostile nation-states that support them. The first benefit is that the hostile nation-state can disavow any connection between it and the insurgent terrorist forces. The second benefit is that western media sympathizes with disgruntled civilians in foreign states if those civilians belong to a state that is seeking or already has positive diplomatic relations with the United States. Since the international media is not in agreement with the United States about US objectives in the War on Terrorism, media then sides with forces that are attacking US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. While this occurs, the hostile nation-states that support terrorists and terrorist organizations is sending representatives to other states hostile to the United States so that the remaking of the global order proceeds as planned.

While Fidel Castro and the Ayatollah Khamenei are both close to death from illness you would think that these would turn into opportunities for the United States in seeking an expansion of global peace. The opposite is occurring. As the media haggles over the definition of enemy combatant to fuel anti-war sympathy in the United States, our enemies are planning for real gains in anticipation of a US retreat from Iraq. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is currently traveling in Central and South America to form alliances with hostile leftist states that publicly advocate hostility against so-called US imperialism. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, announced that his country would form an alliance with Iran to provide funding for “projects” throughout Latin America. We know what those “projects” will be and what they were talking about when the two leaders met. The “projects” that the two leaders were meeting about were projects that are to be funded that spread Chavez’s Marxist revolution throughout the region and to make it very difficult for countries there to resist. These projects are the exportation of revolution, a plan set in motion to isolate and sever US diplomatic gains in our own hemisphere. Chavez and Ahmadinejad want to create as many problems for the United States as they can to divert attention and resources away from US engagement with the Middle East and to protect Iran’s nuclear program. You can expect that Chavez willingly went along with Ahmadinejad’s plan and the two countries will exchange not only conventional resources, but nuclear development resources and information as well. Because of their meetings, Chavez could very well be the next Marxist leader to acquire nuclear weapons, the difference being that this time it will be in our hemisphere. Allied with the leaders of Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, the United States could quickly see communism spread throughout the hemisphere with a quickness that exceeds the Cold War.

Another very dangerous idea that has emerged from Hugo Chavez and Venezuela is the confiscation of private corporations under the auspices of “nationalizing” them to the benefit of the “state”. The term “nationalizing” is going to be more mainstream in the media as other nation-states follow suit. What this means is that Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are openly remaking the global order away from a western design and into a totalitarian one. While fundamentalist Islam sees no utility in communism and prefers in its stead fascism, Hugo Chavez is simply too tempting an ally to pass up. Chavez’s recent confiscation of foreign privately-held corporations has severely damaged the stocks of investors that owned them. So the remaking of the global order not only involves the removing of the United States from the Middle East, but a planned economic attack through global markets to undermine western attempts at globalization. The United States has exported a vast percentage of its manufacturing base out of the country, the only real strength of a non-globalized economy. Should the confiscation of private multinational corporations begin to catch on internationally, the effects would be devastating for the US economy. The so-called “nationalizing” of private multinational corporations then is a direct attack upon the United States. Even more dangerous is the fact that this very idea is being propagated in favor of policy by the Marxist operatives within the American peace movement. There are now calls by these dangerous and shadowy groups to nationalize American oil companies. That is precisely what Chavez and Ahmadinejad want to happen to destroy the United States as an economic power and the very foundations of our economic system.

Clearly, the use of unflagged military forces by hostile nation-states is advantageous to those countries. The western media and peace organizations that have been infiltrated by revolutionary anti-American Marxists are promoting the non-state alliance of terrorist organizations, while reality is much more dangerous for US national security. Operating under the umbrella of the War on Terrorism is a well-planned effort by Iran to protect its nuclear program in the international community. When Iran allied with Venezuela, Persia announced its willingness to spread revolutionary activity in our hemisphere in order to at some point have a direct effect upon how US military resources are allocated and to cause as much damage to our economy as possible at the same time. The reemergence of Marxist regimes in Central and South America is an ominous threat. The confiscation of privately-held transnational corporations by hostile nation-states is unpredictable and dangerous.

Ahmadinejad’s and Chavez’s plans however, no matter how well they try to hide them, will be known. Those plans are an expansion of the war against America and the United States must prepare to confront them. Ahmadinejad believes that the United States has already lost the War on Terrorism and he also believes the American people want retreat instead of security from terrorism and the hostile theocratic Trotskyite state in fundamentalist Islam. The president of Iran is traveling in our hemisphere to secure gains that he believes will emerge if the United States leaves Iraq.

This demonstrates how willing Persia is to dismantle the global order and also how willing countries in our own hemisphere have become to assist fundamentalist Islam’s war against the United States.

Christopher Farmer

MS, National Security

To comment about this article, please use our forum!