Weekly Think Piece ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How to Defeat Shari'a-Driven Islamist Army
David Yerushalmi wrote in the Conservative Voice how we can defeat the Islamists in Europe. It is a well thought out treatise and here are
some excerpts.
To Quote: "It is time to at least begin the real effort to destroy
the CAPABILITY of the Jihad warriors, which in turn will eventually erode their
MOTIVATION to war, die and bury their dead. While it is patently true that many
are prepared to inflict murder and mayhem until the bitter end, the last
struggle for Christian Europe and the effort to drive the Muslim conquerors
from the Continent demonstrate that even the Shari'a faithful eventually bow to
reality."
The Question: "Is the West prepared to face this reality?"
Carl von Clausewitz, the master warfare theorist, wrote
extensively about the components of war. Clausewitz's writings can be reduced
to a short equation capturing the essence of warfare, WAR = CAPABILITY
+ MOTIVATION . In this simple yet strategically
penetrating equation, CAPABILITY encompasses the fighting forces and the
logistical resupply which keeps the fighting forces in the field and combat
ready. MOTIVATION embodies the underlying reason why a belligerent is
committing his forces to combat and the belligerent's will to continue the
fight. Unless the components of CAPABILITY and MOTIVATION are both present and
viable, a belligerent will eventually be forced to discontinue the hostilities.
Put simply, without capability and motivation, there is no war. The formula
applies equally to both sides in bi-lateral warfare.
I have demonstrated, as have many other war analysts, that
there is no such thing as a war against terror. The Global War on Terror does
not exist. "Terror" is a tactic. The war we are fighting is against men, cells,
networks, regimes and peoples who embrace a hegemonic political ideology driven
by traditional and authoritative Islamic law, or what is termed Shari'a. In our
war against the Sharia-faithful, the strategic level encompasses all theaters
of conflict and the interactions between them - Middle East, Africa, Europe,
Pacific, Homeland, etc. Within the Middle East Theater, Iraq and Afghanistan
constitute operational levels of war, while Baghdad,
Fallujah, Kabul, and Kandahar are examples of areas of operation
(AO) at the tactical level.
If a belligerent's domestic support base, especially in
representative polities, will not tolerate significant, continuing casualties
inherent in strategic defensive limited war, that belligerent cannot afford to
undertake a drawn out limited war. Vietnam, and now Iraq, leaves no doubt about
the veracity of that statement.
In summary, an enemy's CAPABILITY can be engaged
strategically, operationally, and tactically, each in turn approached either
offensively or defensively. Counterinsurgency, as employed in Vietnam and Iraq, is the classic example of
being on the strategic defensive (i.e., fighting a kinetic limited war), while
conducting operational/tactical offensive operations. To have fought Vietnam offensively at the strategic level, or
to fight our enemies in Iraq
as such, Clausewitz instructs us that the enemy's CAPABILITY must be
effectively eliminated. This can be accomplished by targeting the enemy's
"center of gravity".
In Vietnam,
the enemy's center of gravity was North Vietnam,
and in Iraq it is in Iran, Syria,
and Saudi Arabia.
US counterinsurgent operations in Vietnam
were no more effective in their day than the surge will prove to be in Iraq.
The lesson of Vietnam, and
now Iraq,
is that the strategic defensive or limited war, even when waged on the
operational and tactical offensive, will only end if and when the enemy's
motivation is impaired because its strategic CAPABILITY is unimpaired. Thus,
the enemy can increase, decrease, or temporarily cease combat operations as
will. In short, the enemy retains the initiative as the insurgent in
counterinsurgent warfare.
He then goes on to speak to the fallacy and danger of a limited war which has been
our strategy since after World War II.
After 9/11, the US
went to war in the same wrongheaded way we have gone to war in every instance
since World War II. In spite of the president's ringing rhetoric about
permitting our enemy no sanctuary, even to the point of engaging the enemy
preemptively, the US
again donned the national security straitjacket of strategic defensive limited
war.. The operative assumption underlying limited war postulates that even the
most ardent ideological fanatics will accept stalemate or defeat before
employing every means of warfare available to them and will not continue the
war notwithstanding the continued capability to wage war. History has not borne
out this sanguine assumption.
Then just common sense which seems to be missing from military planners today.
The critical point regarding the
stateless Jihadi groups is that they are dependent on sponsoring states as a
result of temporary but necessary alliances, if they are to be capable of doing
any more than just surviving. For example, without a doubt, effective
interdiction of the Jihadists' CAPABILITY - that is, the logistical support
flowing out of Iran, Syria, and Saudi
Arabia - would mean a substantial decrease in the
intensity of combat in Iraq.
Even the Baker-Hamilton Report acknowledged this central fact when it naively
recommended that the insurgents' CAPABILITY (i.e., logistical) support could be
curtailed through negotiation with Iran
and Syria!
All of the parties in the Iraq
conflict know that the CAPABILITY of both stateless Jihadi groups and
state-sponsored Jihadi groups is sustained by the logistical centers of gravity
located in surrounding states. But the US
strategic end of fighting a limited, defensive war confines operations within
the border of Iraq.
So what has to be done?
We must jettison our Cold War national security thinking
featuring limited war and instead realistically reassume our World War II
strategic offensive posture. This will liberate us from the conceptual
straightjacket of our own making and provide us the clarity necessary to
prosecute this war to a victorious end. Our continued illogical commitment to
limited war has manifested itself in our almost blind acceptance of the
asymmetrical warfare of insurgency-counterinsurgency, thus putting our military
personnel at unnecessary risk by forgoing our firepower advantage in a vain
effort to "win the hearts and minds" of the Arab in the street. But this
ignores the nature of that street. Today, the tribes in the Anbar Province
are working with Iraqi and Coalition forces to purge the foreign fighters of al
Qaeda. But tomorrow, with the next assault by Shia militants on the Sunni
strongholds there, the internecine blood bath will resume with yet more
urgency. Insurgencies can be fought indefinitely if the re-supply lines remain
open. This means that Coalition forces and their airborne assets are better
utilized to prevent cross-border re-supply by striking depots in Iran
than engaging in urban warfare at close quarters.
However, when we are forced to engage in urban combat, air
and ground standoff weapons are just as capable of removing insurgents from
urban strong points as is room-to-room fighting, yet are less costly to the
American military in terms of casualties. The US must ruthlessly use our
technologically superior ground firepower and airpower to fight an asymmetrical
war that plays to our strength -- technology, rather than being lured into
close urban combat which capitalizes on the suicide commitment of the
Shari'a-driven Jihadists.
Whether in conjunction with the current combat in Iraq or at some later date, the
Jihadi-sponsoring states of Iran,
Syria, Saudi Arabia and possibly Pakistan will have to be confronted
militarily and the Jihadi centers of gravity destroyed. Rather than repeating
Operation Iraqi Freedom and attempting physical occupation of one or more of
these Jihadi-sponsoring states, the US should totally neutralize Jihadi
CAPABILITY in the targeted state by a massive air campaign followed by a regime
of "air control" that would involve repeated restrikes from the air of Jihadi
activities until Jihadi activity is no longer detected.
So,
how do you win the war against the Sharia-faithful? By kicking out from under
the Islamists their religious motivational support.
The main article of Islamic faith we must focus on is
Quranic: "It is they that obey Allah and his messenger, and fear Allah
and do right, that will triumph." (Sura: 24:52). To be successfulthe West must destroy the CAPABILITY component of the Islamic war
equation in order to degrade their MOTIVATION component. As Sura 24:52 makes
clear, Shari'a-driven MOTIVATION rests on the faith that the Shari'a faithful
are guaranteed to succeed in their conquest of the entire planet in the name of
Islam. Many years ago when Christian Europe geared up to push the marauding
Muslims out of Europe, it was understood that
if CAPABILITY is repeatedly thwarted and destroyed, it inevitably erodes
MOTIVATION. MOTIVATION is most effectively attacked through strategic offensive
operations that destroy an enemy's center of gravity CAPABILITY. Indeed, Islam
suffered many centuries of retraction and defeat until its collapse at the end
of WW I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.
It is going to take decades of undisputed domination and
humiliation of the Shari'a faithful Jihadists by the West through air control
to destroy Muslim MOTIVATION to continue Jihad. While displaying its superior
dominating airpower, the West must also engage in psychological warfare continually
publicizing the discrepancy between Allah's promise of success in Sura 24:52
and the reality that the Jihadists are powerless before Western technology. US
gun camera film showing Jihadists being vaporized by Western weapons and
emphasizing Islamic impotence should flood the Internet and the TV airwaves.
While this psychological warfare attacking the "theology" of Shari'a-driven
Islam will seem out of character for Western civilization, it is the only way
that the Shari'a faithful may be defeated in a strategic sense. The West must
attack and degrade the MOTIVATION that provides the Jihadists with their
"reason" to murder in the name of their theo-political ideology. Instead of a
promise of victory, Sura 24:52 must be made ashes in the mouths of Muslims. A
seemingly unending air control campaign over enemy territory is the way to
continually remind the Muslims of their subordinate status and the impotence of
Allah without becoming mired in the quagmire of counterinsurgency.
As oppressive as it may seem, war is never over until the
defeated belligerent knows he is powerless to resist further. The historical
evidence of this truth can be seen in the difference between what happened in
post-World War I Germany
as opposed to post-World War II Germany.
The Question Again: "Is the West prepared to face this reality and what
will make them embrace that reality?
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