Dispatch from Task Force Justice
I visited Forward Operating Base Justice, located in the northwest Baghdad neighborhood of Khadamiyah, in April. Its commander is Lieutenant Colonel Steven Miska. I recently asked him for an update on developments in his AOR (Area of Responsibility) that I could share with Contentions readers...
Go to the link to read about Asian World Cup soccer, immigration, reconciliation, militia influence and the media.
Key Quotes
Did you see the CNN coverage live from FOB Justice of the Iraqi Soccer game? We threw a great party with all of our local nationals. You would have thought we were at an Army-Navy tailgate. We went downtown after the game and spoke to people on the street. Khadamiyah was absolutely nuts. Lots of fun and a cathartic experience for the Iraqis to see their team accomplish something across the sectarian divide. Hopefully, more good can come from the victory.
The fight is complex. The challenges are hard to boil down into 9-second sound bites or catchy headlines. However, we do spend a lot of time educating reporters, in addition to VIPs. We have a few die-hard reporters that travel to the fight and get a view from the ground on the challenges and opportunities facing our forces and the Iraqis. Most of the journalists I meet are tremendous professionals who make personal sacrifices to provide transparency in a society that needs media spotlights everywhere. The press is instrumental is helping keep the good people honest and the bad guys from committing even more egregious transgressions. Many of our media colleagues have brought attention to significant challenges like immigration, the need for diplomacy around the periphery of Iraq, detainee abuse, and other challenges. We need to encourage them and help them gain access to the stories that will shape human behavior in positive directions.
See, for instance, this article by Robert Burns, the Associated Press's veteran military writer. Burns has just returned from his 18th trip to Iraq to report: "The new U.S. military strategy in Iraq, unveiled six months ago to little acclaim, is working."
Or this new report by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He traveled to Iraq with Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution recently, and while his findings are not quite as positive as theirs, he nevertheless writes: "While all the half-truths and spin of the past have built up a valid distrust of virtually anything the Administration says about Iraq, real military progress is taking place and the U.S. team in Baghdad is actively seeking matching political and economic progress."
Key Quotes
Unfortunately, that matching political progress has not yet materialized. To be sure, there have been surprising and encouraging gains at the local level where Sunni tribes are increasingly turning against al Qaeda. But at the national level the political gridlock is worse than ever.
Of course, no serious proponent of the "surge" expected that Iraqis would get their act together overnight. In fact, the theory has always been that gains in security are a necessary prerequisite for the major political factions to make compromises. Since the gains in security are just beginning, it is far too soon to say that political progress won't happen, too.
Thomas X. Hammes is a retired Marine colonel and the author of a well-regarded work on modern war: The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century. He is also a fellow participant in an online discussion forum on military affairs called the Warlord Loop. I was so taken with one of his recent postings on how to battle jihadists on the Internet (a major venue for Islamist organizing and proselytizing) that I asked him if he would adapt it for contentions readers. He kindly agreed....
Key Quotes
(Hammes) While we have a few Americans who take similar action against mufsidoon (evildoers) web sites, why don't we encourage Americans/western "geeks" to go after these websites? Exploit them, disrupt them, shut them down, post false information, and create distrust. This will not be a government controlled or directed effort. Essentially, I am suggesting a leaderless effort that allows Americans to use their creativity, technological skills, and the rabid dedication some people will apply to such a project. The mufsidoon are coming after all American citizens; this is a way some Americans can fight back.
(Boot) Like all great ideas, this one sounds blindingly obvious: use a network against a network, pit our computer geeks against theirs. But while there are some private groups (such as the SITE Institute) that monitor jihadist activity on the Internet, I haven't heard of any that actually attack jihadist web sites. Maybe it's already being done on a small scale, but much more could be done to target the thousands of Islamist web sites. Hackers, take it away...
Comments
Why shutdown an extremely important source of understanding the global Sunni jihad, how they appeal to new recruits, what they are thinking, how they are speaking in tongue among themselves, how they indoctrinate new cell members and how they pass on their battle tactics.
A number of Red Hats are saying by leaving these sites alone in fact we are gaining a deeper insigth into their thinking and actions. Waiting and watching has never been a strong US trait.
There is also the ongoing typical infight by a number of commentators that the jihadist websites are just propoganda and others say "read their lips" and understand just what they are saying.
We tend to forget that the former KGB had thousands of personnel involved in OSINT during the peak of the cold war and we seem to not have the the same ability in the GWOT.
It seems that by shuting down globally web hosted sites is viewed as a major "victory" in the GWOT-when in fact we just drive them deeper underground---much like the argument that by driving drug dealers off the streets it is a win in the war on drugs and what do we normally see when that occurs?
However, both Hammes and Boot may be overdoing it a bit with this:
<i>"Like all great ideas, this one sounds blindingly obvious: use a network against a network, pit our computer geeks against theirs. But while there are some private groups (such as the SITE Institute) that monitor jihadist activity on the Internet, I havent heard of any that actually attack jihadist web sites. Maybe its already being done on a small scale, but much more could be done to target the thousands of Islamist web sites. Hackers, take it away... "</i>
I won't say most computer literate types -- REALLY literate -- are supportive of the Islamists but my suspicion is that very few of them are supportive of the US. They'd be more likely to look at the Islamists as fellow rebellious types determined to offset or disable globalism and US corporate greed...