Cult of Death Revisited

Hello Steve,

It is interesting to revisit what you wrote in Sept/04. Some comments: The enemy has no "organisation" - just separate little cabals of fanatics - except they are larger in Iraq - we are fighting them where they are - and thus we are attracting them to where we are in Iraq - including here in the US and UK - they will come here anyway - they have not been at all deterred from that - so we wait.

We effectively destroyed any willingness of other countries to help us - the fanatics are too separate to destroy their arms - they have no central base except maybe a supply of explosives - we would be surprised I believe to find out who is supplying them - you cannot destroy a fanatic's morale - they have cell fones and the internet to communicate - and they can act wherever and whenever they please because they are not cohesive - and finally - we know very little about who - when - where - etc, and no way of finding out anything definitive.

We are in a terrible mess - I don't think even 500,000 troops on the ground in Iraq would solve it - things would have been solved to some extent had we stayed in Afghanistan and neutered Osama.

Al Greffenius


This article by David Brooks on the attack in Beslan is good. So is the article by Paul Krugman, also published today at http://nytimes.com.

If our enemies are as Brooks describes them, and he describes them accurately, here are the implications for the war we are in:

- We have to destroy our enemies' organization, not arrest or kill them one by one.

- We have to fight our enemies where they are, not wait for them to come to us.

- We have to have much assistance from other countries and other organizations to fight and destroy our enemies where they are.

- To defeat this enemy, we have accomplish the same things that warfare has always had to accomplish: disarm the enemy fighters, destroy their morale, destroy their ability to communicate and to act. Usually success in these activities involves killing many fighters, but it also involves sustained operations against the entire enemy organization.

- Lastly, to be successful in any of these things, we have to know our enemies well: where they are, who they are, how they operate, what their plans are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, where their resources are.

All five of these points are so obvious that it feels awkward to write them down. But, since we finished the war in Afghanistan and launched the attack on Iraq, we have not paid attention to any of them.