The Opportunity Of Defeating The Enemy...

..is provided by the enemy himself.  - Sun Tzu, Art of War

The Army's Strategic Studies Institute has a rather clinical, chilling and intriguing paper on ritual beheadings in our current moral conflict and has some suggestions to counter the tactic:

MULTIMEDIA TECHNIQUES

Gary Blunt coined the term “e-jihad” to describe Islamist organizations which use the Internet to propagate a message of religious violence. Since 9/11, jihadists have been very successful in leveraging the Internet to amplify or broadcast their message. The beheading videos are a small part of a larger, sophisticated media campaign which has grown and evolved in a complex way. Early videos included “last will and testament” films of suicide bombers, recording their motivations and enshrining them as martyrs. The videos were played after the attack to claim credit and recruit more martyrs. One beheading video included footage of the surveillance and actual kidnapping of the victim, followed by his confinement, questioning, and murder, and thus served as a “how to” or documentary film.

In addition to videos, jihadists are producing and distributing computer art productions, songs, and prayers designed to motivate anti-U.S. mujahedeen. Posters or montages of photos glorify al-Qaeda operations and encourage anti-U.S. violence. The images are usually embedded in bulletin boards or stored in digital archives, allowing them to be copied and spread quickly across the Internet. The songs, called anashid, vary widely in content and origin but typically consist of chanting combined with military sound effects. They encourage suicide operations by calling to mind Islamic conquests
of the past or the prestige of Islamic culture. Short audio clips are embedded in threads in jihadist bulletin boards, while high-quality ones form the audio background of multimedia productions like recruitment and beheading videos.

The Iraqis are beginning to develop their own countering media solutions. For example, in February 2005 the Iraqi Interior Ministry and Mosul police chief began broadcasting messages that showed three kidnappers with guns and a knife, preparing to behead a helpless victim. In another scene, one of the kidnappers, now in police custody, declares “I am sorry for everything I have done.” A Mosul television station is also developing a program loosely based on “most-wanted” crime shows in the
United States.

POLITICAL RITUALS IN DEMOCRACIES AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The Bush administration and the new Iraqi and Afghan rulers understand the power of rituals to legitimize the government, as do the terrorists. Hence familiar rituals, or their disruption, have become major policy objectives. The Western mass media participates as a primary interpreter and shaper of these events. Political rituals are “made for television events,” staged with an eye towards impacting a world audience. To defeat the terrorists, nascent democracies in the Middle East should focus on implementing four rituals.

First is the ritual of establishing a democracy through political parties, debates and campaign speeches, popular elections, and a constitutional congress...

Second is the ritual of investing the new head of state. On December 7, 2004, Afghan President Karzai was inaugurated in Kabul. A red carpet, lined by soldiers, was spread in front of the former royal palace. Hundreds of foreign dignitaries attended, including Vice President Cheney. The ceremony included a Quranic recitation, the playing of the national anthem, and a patriotic song sung by schoolchildren wearing embroidered ceremonial dress. Karzai placed his right hand on the Quran and repeated the oath of office read by the Afghan chief justice of the Supreme Court. Afterwards, Karzai gave an inaugural address. The inauguration ceremony is a modern Western ritual; the proper ritual in an Islamic context is the bay`a―an oath-swearing allegiance to the ruler. That will probably not occur in Iraq as it does in Saudi Arabia, because the coalition wants to create a secular state.

Third is the ritual of holding a war crimes tribunal―a powerful symbol in Western society signaling the end of conflict with the trial and imprisonment of former regime members...

Fourth is the ritual of shura, which is consultation via democratically elected representatives who hold open councils with their constituents. Shura is the primary way that Muslim rulers gain legitimacy. It allows those with grievances to present them. Even though Iraq’s government is now secular, because it is predominantly Muslim, it makes sense to stress the principle of open consultation which coincides with a key aspect of representative democracy. Iraq should necessarily adopt a Muslim political concept, because it is a powerful and familiar ritual that can be a bridge towards establishing democratic institutions.

A moral conflict is, above all else, a war of ideas.  To win it we need to understand the cultural filters through which people perceive our actions and try to find a way to fuse our ideas with theirs--we need almost a Hegelian 'synthesis'.

What's disturbing to me about Karl Rove's recent remarks about liberals responding to 9/11 with "therapy and understanding" is not that it slams liberals but that it reveals just how much disdain BushCo has for actually, you know, trying to understand how to win their various wars.  Of course we don't mean putting bad guys on couches and asking about their mothers.  We want to understand what we're up against so we can choose the right approaches.

We're dealing with alien worldviews, motivations and social structures, particularly when it comes to the extremists.  While we are not at war with Islam, those with whom we are at war obviously use Islamic trappings as a part of their prosecution of this conflict.  Bush talks a lot about explaining to the Islamic world about how cool America is (if only they could understand us...).  Well, let's reverse that equation and communicate to the Islamic world that we understand them. 

To counter the insurgents' tactics, we must understand the context from which they are operating and how that influences the rest of the population we'd like to have work with us.  Sun Tzu said in Art of War:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

So we must know our enemy if we are to win (assuming for the moment that's possible).  Now the larger question is, do we know ourselves?

ntodd