Reply #206: One Hardly Knows Where To Begin, Sir

[The Magistrate]

This comment, along with your queries in No. 201 above, indicates you lack any grasp of even the rudiments of guerrilla war, and suggest at least a brief course in first principles is in order. If any part of the foundation for your views in this matter is based on the idea fundamentalist Islamic radicals could not have seen doing this as being in their interest, you are erecting your weighty idol on feet of clay quite unequal to their supporting task.

Guerrilla war has been rightly called the ultimate expression of the "indirect school" of strategy. It inverts all the concepts of conventional war, and nowhere is this more important than in the relation between the military and political spheres. All forms of war contain a signifigant political element, since the maintainance of the will to fight in a people and its armed forces is at bottom a political matter, but where the aim of action in conventional war is to so alter the military equation as to force a political result, the aim of action in guerrilla war is to achieve a political result that forces an alteration in the military equation. This "mirroring" is not sufficiently appreciated in conventional circles, which goes far to explain why convential military forces have such a poor record against guerrilla actions in the modern era.

To succeed, guerrilla movements must achieve two complementary political goals. They must gain and maintain widespread support among the mass of people they wish to direct against the power they oppose, and they must create within or inflict upon the political base of the power they oppose a sense of defeatism, or of illegitimacy in the exercise of that power, that will hamper the exercise of its military might against the guerrillas and the cause they champion. It is only when both these things have been achieved in some degree that a guerrilla force can achieve any real military effect by its operations, and when both have been achieved in any great degree, the success of the guerrilla movement is almost certain.

The first need of a nascent guerrilla movement is to call attention to itself, and impress the fact of its existance on the people it needs to rally and the people it needs to dispirit. The ordinary tool for the purpose is what the old Anarchists of fin de siecle Europe called "propaganda of the deed," namely spectacular outrages against the existing order that are certain to be widely bruited about, and calculated to inspire a desire for emulation on the one hand, and feelings of shock and great disquiet on the other.

As a strategem, these actions fall into the "gambit" class, for they are certain to draw vigorous and violent action in response from the power assailed, that will certainly do great damage to the guerrilla body and its early and potential supporters. But it is hoped that from this will flow even greater support in future, and even greater shock and disquiet be created among supporters of the power assailed, and these hopes are often realized. The actions of the power assailed are often very poorly aimed, and extraordinarily brutal, to a degree that can be counted on by the developing guerrilla movement. On the one hand, they will harm and outrage many whom the guerrillas hope will come to support them, leading to greater support for the guerrillas by means of fresh outrage, and positioning them to color further attacks as a champion's vengeance for these wrongs. On the other hand, the excessive actions of the power assailed will alienate some proportion of its natural supporters, who will recoil from the brutality done in their name, and point out, at the next round of guerrilla actions, that these brutal efforts of the gendarmerie have not really been very effective, since obviously the guerrillas have not been quashed or cowed by them. Successive actions by both sides will only heighten this vicious circle, that must spiral into either a success for the guerrillas in the political spheres at which they must aim, or into a degree of frightfulness by the power they oppose sufficient to cow the mass of people into abhorring the guerrilla movement that opens them to such brutality. Though another course is obvious to the dispassionate observer, namely a resolve by the power assailed to find some level of concession to the mass of people the guerrillas seek to mobilize that will suffice to buy them off while leaving that power with most of its prerogatives still intact, and thus isolate the guerrillas from any possible mass support, that course is only very rarely followed.

The opening stages of any conflict, whether guerrilla or conventional, are always a delicate matter certain to be fraught with many misapprehensions. For it is in the nature of things that, at the commencement of a conflict, each side thinks that it can win it, and of course, one of them will be proved wrong by the conflict's course. Therefore, many of the beliefs of the people who commence a conflict about its important factors, such as the character and power of its enemy, and even their own character and power, will be sadly in error. Thus, many things may be done that can easily be seen, from outside or in hindsight, to have been grievous miscalculations.

The fundamentalist Islamic radicals adhere to a critique of Western society not too different from that of the early twentieth century totalitarians, namely that for all its external power, it is at its core mushily soft and weak, a sort of creme-puff masquerading as a hard roll. They have therefore convinced themselves that it will not take too much to break the political will behind the military power, that it will not take too many strokes to cow the citizenry of the West, and the United States in particular, by convincing them that the enemy cannot be prevented from striking by any means other than capitulation to its demands. They fancy themselves much harder creatures, being steeled by an austere faith and devoted to death to their cause. They imagine they have the unequivocal support of an all-powerful deity in their actions, that gives them an abiding certainty of success, whatever the situation may appear to promise at any moment.

Thus, to the view of al'Queda militants and leaders, matters have gone rather well. Their movement is universally known, and they are viewed as its emblem and standard throughout the regions they wish to rally to their cause. They have not really suffered much damage in consequence of their actions. Some of the middle-level leadership has attained Paradise, but new men hold the same reins. They have had to resume an underground existance, but they have mostly lived an underground existance and it does not much discommode them. They are still recruiting and training without much hinderance, and there are new groups springing up in emulation of them throughout the Islamic world. The actions of the United States against them have been extraordinarily clumsy: indeed the heaviest blow from the United States has fallen on an Arab power that was quite hostile to them, and has had only the effect of opening a new theater in which the United States can be readily assailed with little risk to themselves, and providing a tremendous rallying standard for further recruitment.

"Can't nobody here play this game?"