Asymmetric warfare

We are in a worldwide battle with Islamic fascist forces, and it looks to me like we may well lose. How could this happen when we have overpowering military and economic might, and our opponents are disorganized fanatics with a medieval mindset?

We constrain our military and intelligence forces to operate within civilized rules of engagement. Our opponents feel no such compunction. We wouldn’t use a nuclear or biological weapon on them. They will happily use such a weapon on us if/when they get their hands on one. We worry about the civil rights of our prisoners; about whether it is legal or moral to sleep deprive them during interrogation. They use electric drills on their prisoners and don’t worry about the legalities.

Our opponents have hardy any economy to speak of, but that doesn’t matter because we ourselves fund their war for them with our addiction to their oil and drugs, and our generous aid programs. We give them many billion each year, which they use to feed and arm themselves, to spread their recruiting messages worldwide, and to wage the crucial media war.

Our opponents have hardly any indigenous technology to speak of, but that doesn’t matter because we ourselves provide them with cell phones and internet connections, computers and weapons, and all the technology training they need in our finest schools.

Our opponents care enough about their mission to die willingly for it. Their have little to lose and (they passionately believe) much to gain by dying for the cause. We agonize over every death, and as Vietnam proved, our public has little tolerance for even low casualty rates among our troops. Our opponents believe, perhaps rightly, that as soon as we lose a few soldiers, we will withdraw. We have given them enough evidence in recent years to support that belief, and we may be about to give them more in Iraq.

Our opponents are content to battle us for decades, even centuries. Our public has a short attention span, and cannot seem to pursue any political goal consistently for more than a few years. Our opponents think in terms of generations. We think in terms of quarterly reports.

We have an open and free society. They don’t, but they have learned well how to exploit our openness and freedom and use it effectively against us. We can’t reach their people on their media, but they can and do use our media to manipulate our public.

Our opponents use media consistently to advance their cause and spread their message and rally their supporters. We use the media to nitpick and criticize and denigrate our own government and humiliate our troops. If one of their suicide bombers deliberately kills 50 civilians, our media report it as a simple fact. If one of our tank shells accidentally kills a couple of children, our media reports it with the maximum of heart-sob guilt overtones. If the New York Times finds out about something effective the intelligence community is doing, they don’t hesitate to publish it and render it ineffective, since that sells more newspapers. Some of our media might as well be on their payroll. We haven’t lost the ground war yet, but we lost the media war a long time ago.

Demographics is on their side. Although America’s birthrate is holding (just barely) at replacement rate, much of Europe has birthrates well below replacement rate, and so their indigenous populations are declining precipitously even while their Muslim immigrant populations are exploding. Soon enough some of our important European partners will have Muslim majorities in their governments and will turn against us.

In the end, I fear we will lose because, while we were a strong determined society in World War II, over the past few decades we have grown soft, hedonistic, and purposeless, preoccupied with liberal niceties and legalities, while our opponents are tough, passionate about their cause, and focused, and far more pragmatic.