The White House has at last managed to find a general willing to become “war czar”. The administration had been having difficulty filling its new post, formally titled “assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation.”
At least three senior military officers have reportedly turned down the job. One of them, retired Marine full general Jack Sheehan, went public last month saying he hadn’t fancied becoming war czar because he didn’t think the Bush administration had any coherent regional policy.
Now, however, the President’s men have managed to recruit lieutenant-general Douglas Lute, a relatively unknown Washington player. As war czar he will have powers to coordinate the efforts of different US government departments and help obtain a good result for America in war-torn Southwest Asia.
And the good general has some interesting views – particularly on the technology front – as evidenced in this article. “We can kill and capture the enemy and go after the camps,” Lute said. “But the intangible parts of the network defy a conventional approach.
“They have a safe haven on the internet,” he went on. “No one in the US military has been tasked with the mission of attacking these intangibles. Until we do they will operate with impunity. “You need a network to defeat a network.”
There isn’t any doubt that Lute would like to go after al-Qaeda, the Taleban, Mehdi Army et al specifically on the internet. As war czar, he might well be able to get such ideas implemented.
“This war is more about will and perception than firepower,” he said. “We have concluded that, in that sense, we are not equipped to attack the enemy. We must attack the intangible part of the network if we are going to win.” It’ll be interesting to see how these ideas get implemented now that Lute has leapfrogged his superiors at the Joint Chiefs and speaks with the Commander-in-Chief’s voice.
The internet may be about to become a more dangerous place. It’s to be hoped that Lute can manage to avoid any cases of friendly fire as he launches his digital assault.
There is no doubt (imho) that a concerted effort on the 'net by crafty operatives may harvest some enemy chatter. "However", it was not the internet that has developed the particular methods of warfare used by many elements of certain widely separated oriental forces for the past (at least) fifty years and that have been adopted and passed down by the ancestors of our present opponents. When you are not playing by the same rules as your enemy, and he has carte-blanc while you are bound by the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury and your actions reviewed by every liberal lawyer on the planet, you are into a hard battle. It was not the internet that managed the snafu at Tora Bora, and it was not the internet that dug the mountain caves which largely defeated the Irsaeli Army recently. And it is not the internet the enemy hides behind while they approach our troops, it is women and children that our troops cannot shoot through. It is not the internet that hides the perps who plant roadside IED's in the night, or that parks explosive-laden trucks, cars, motorcycles and backpacks where civilians and children can be murdered to further inflame the population about the ongoing carnage.
Besides, if anyone thinks the enemy is stupid (or somewhat less clever than a two-cell bottom feeder on a keyboard) or cannot spread a ton of FOD for the turbines on keyboards to pick up and smother the analysts with, while they actually communicate over the 'net and other means with methods that defy casual and even concerted effort, then there is a ton of frantic activity about to launch in the DC area that will not make one hill of beans in the war against terrorism and radical murderers who tape rantings to their ankles because they know that area will have the most chance of not being blown to pieces when they detonate their murder bomb. If the new plan is any better than what the good folks on the 5th level down somewhere back east have already been doing every minute they can, i'd have to see it to believe it.
But, that said, i certainly wish the good General and his ideas the very best of luck. Glad i'm not him! 🙄