America Alone

I just finished reading
"America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It" (Mark Steyn). The book was excellent but depressing.

The Styen's main points are:

• In the end the young win and Islam is out breeding the west.
• Only the US is keeping it population levels up.
• Europe is lost, it will become Islamic.
• America can still resist and win, but only if it believes in it self. Only if it believes it is better.
• The United States and Western Civilization is better than Islam.

The book list the many problems that the United States faces but does not provide much in the way of solutions. This book should be read, but we also need a book to help guide us to Victory. The "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century" (Thomas P.M. Barnett) has part of the answer but we need more. Barnett talks to Washington and the Pentagon. Steyn only list the problems.

I am still looking for the book that will layout not just the rational for long war, but the path we need to take for the next year and the next decade.

Technorati Tags: Islam, Victory, War

The NRSC Pledge

Join me in taking the NRSC Pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

As Hugh Hewitt says, not one dime.
General Petraeus testified that the Biden/Warner resolutions and those like them encourage the enemy.
Not one dime to any politician that encourages the enemy, nothing but scorn.

Technorati Tags: election 2008, Politics, Victory, War

A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy (SWJ Blog)

Dave from the Small Wars Journal lays out a A Framework for thinking about Iraq Strategy (SWJ Blog):

If we were to draw historical analogies, we might say that the problem in Iraq is like trying to defeat the Viet Cong (insurgency) while simultaneously rebuilding Germany (nation-building), keeping peace in the Balkans (communal conflict) and defeating the IRA (terrorism). And, oh by the way, these all have to be done at the same time, in the same place, and changes in one part of the problem significantly affect the others.

This is a excellent explanation of the intertwined difficulties in Iraq.

Feeds for ALMARs and MarAdmins

I recreated my screen scraper to create a feed of AlMars and MarAdmins
You can find the links at http://csm.chalko.com/scrape/.

For those of you interested I did this as an excuse to learn some ruby. The code is available at
http://chalktools.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/chalktools/Scraper/

Clearly I need to learn a lot more about ruby, I am still just using like a shell script.

Change America's course in Iraq

President's Addressed the Nation calling for a change in course. 20,000 additional troops to secure Baghdad. Not just clear, but clear and hold. I really appreciated the President's honest assessment of the risk this increase will entail. There will be increased casualties, but victory not casualty avoidance is the goal.

I am sure there will be additional call-ups for the Reserves. I just joined a new reserve unit, the 23rd Marine Regiment. I am the assistant communications officer. As always I am ready to serve.

Back home on the Information Warfare front there are plenty of battle to be fought. Later this week I will publish my thoughts on how a distributed network can keep the pressure on the enemy in the information battle space.

But the task for today. Is to support the course set by the President, and continually and thoroughly refute all attempts to sway America from it's path to victory.

Hollywood and the MSM are a Shame Based Culture

Hollywood and the Main Stream Media act like a shame based culture. Since much of the Long War, will be an Information War it is important we understand the rules of a shame based society.

Here is the key point for shame based societies:

The desire to preserve honor and avoid shame to the exclusion of all else is one of the primary foundations of the culture. This desire has the side-effect of giving the individual carte blanche to engage in wrong-doing as long as no-one knows about it, or knows he is involved. -- Dr Sanity

The main stream media acts the same way, caring more about appearances than truth or justice. Whether it is the tabloids claiming Angelina stole Brad from Jennifer or the Red Cross falsely accusing Israeli of shooting ambulance, what matters most to the main stream, sound bite driven society, is what others are saying about someone. The complication is that Arab and by extension Muslim society is a shame based also.

The Jihadi's seem to have a natural understanding of how to fight a popularity contest. Like the Iraqi Information Minister (M.S.S), they will say whatever is good for them regardless of the facts.

I think it is important that we fight and win the battle of public opinion. One of the important steps to fighting this battle is finding the appropriate metaphor. The one that comes to mind is a Jr High cafeteria. The battle in MSM will very much be a battle of the lowest common denominator. It will be important to be prepared to respond on that level. There are already plenty of Finders, Thinkers and Linkers in the blogsphere at war, and their importance is understood. We also need Satirists and Hecklers. Everywhere you turn Radical Islam must be seen as the weak horse. Impotent. A joke.

Short and visual may be best. The blogosphere can do that (Halp us Jon Carry), but the amount of lies and distortions to battle seem endless.

However in the end it may be just pure numbers that count. Page rank, buzz, and getting across the gap into the wider audiance. We must produce more You Tube fodder than our opponents. We must quickly expose their lies, and ridicule all their efforts.


Concrete plans and actionable tasks to follow.

Technorati Tags: Information Warfare, War