The War on Terrorism - Part 1 of 5

The turning point in the movie “The 13^th Warrior” is when an old hag tells Buliwyf, “Wars are won in the will. Perhaps you’ve been fighting in the wrong field.” That’s exactly what the U. S. is doing in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). We’re fighting terrorist tactics when we should be fighting their strategy. The problem is that we cannot fight their strategy with military force. All wars, truly, are won in the will, and the will our enemy is fighting is the will of the common American citizen, not the will of our soldiers.

The Department of Defense (DoD) defines terrorism as, “The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.” In military terminology, a terrorist act is usually a tactical action intended to achieve strategic objectives. “Tactical actions” are usually very short – from a firefight that lasts a few hours, to a bombing that only lasts a moment. “Strategic objectives” relate directly to the endstate, or final goals of a government or non-state actor. Because terrorists know that they cannot defeat the US by military power alone, they carry out their tactical actions against civilian and infrastructure targets in order to cause enough of a public outcry to force the government to change its policies in accordance with their desires.

Let’s use American football as an analogy. Tactics are the individual plays and the blocking schemes, snapcounts, coverages, etc. that make up those plays. The strategy is the overall game plan that the coach has devised to win the game. Do you see the difference? The strategy is devised based on knowing your opponent and trying to make his strategy (game plan) irrelevant while keeping him from doing the same to you. For example, if I know that my opponent’s star tailback has a knee injury that keeps him from being able to cut left, my defensive strategy will be to bottle-up the right side and only give him the left as an option. Since he is hampered going that way, I will have an advantage. If I know the opponent’s right outside linebacker is a rookie making his first start, I’m going to run and throw right at him to intimidate him early in the game and get him frustrated, and then plan on working that weakness all game. My individual plays (tactics) will be based on my game plan (strategy). It is worthless to have a game plan and then run plays that don’t go coincide with that plan.

Tomorrow – Another Football analogy

“Fly high & roar loudly!”

dirk

All material ©MMVIII Dirk van de Kaap. The goal of GriffinScat is to bring some semblance of logic and intellectual rationality into discussions in the public forum. All opinions are those of the author unless otherwise stated.