America’s Not Ready for Today’s Gray Wars
America’s Not Ready for Today’s Gray Wars by Eric Olsen, Defense One
As Washington struggles to respond to brutal acts of violence from Syria to San Bernardino, much of the conversation is about the size and scope of our response to defeat our enemies.
Although Americans by now understand that we are not in a traditional war against an armed state, we still fail to comprehend the true complexities and profound challenges of conducting a broad range of military and law enforcement actions in smaller, less straightforward operations against terrorists and their organizations.
We are trying to oversimplify the pandemonium of war. Violence, frequent and savage, is brought upon us by non-state entities and their ideological subscribers who do not hold to the traditional justifications or methods of armed conflict. Barbaric behavior has become the norm. Our enemies’ use of technology will continue as cyber attacks become commonplace, digital media are used to frighten and incite, and remote detonation of bombs is exported from the roadside improvised explosive devices of Iraq and Afghanistan to the streets of Middle America…
