Broadening the Viewpoint - Information Warfare

I checked Chapomatic's blog this morning and enjoyed his article and the links to the issue of pulling out of Iraq. I began what I thought would be a short comment, but it grew. Here are my thoughts (first read his post, "I just Don't Get It" to get the flow of my discussion: I just had a scary thought.... Common thread: The strategic tool that gets us to the tipping point for those events listed is the Media.. I have long thought, since my college days after Vietnam, that war was going to be waged in very different spheres, the press being one. Subsequently, we saw our peace partner, Japan, wage an economic war agaisnt pretty much the rest of the world. We, to some extent, did a similar thing to the USSR under Reagan, but, I have never felt the NCA, and alkl of us who have or are working for same, really "get it." It's not just on the physical field of battle where we must excel. As I wrote that line, we have become the Redcoats, in our rectangular formations, while the farmers and indians send small, "untrained" (meaning tactailally thinking unconstrained) bands to pick at our flanks, until we can no longer see how to win. Yes, there is Information Warfare, but we seem to continue to confine it to a mostly military discipline. This IW is much, much bigger than that, and, as I said in one of my posts, they may not have tractors from John Deere to harvest rice and rubber, but they still understood a part of the spectrum far better than we did then and possibly even now. I heard rumors some of the very first visitors to the new Sandanista government were NVA types, particularly to get them geared up in the IW arena against us. Congress also took a serious swipe at our national security there, as they were defeated in the press, the same as they had been during Vietnam. And, here we go again! Now to the scary thought: Make PAO staff types part of the unrestricted line, based on the rising importance (or at least so we can catch up) in IW. Doesn't that send a shiver up your spine? I don't think we can afford to "outsource" this to the press corps any longer.... Anyhow, to add one more pice of a puzzle, as we don't see the Republicans, or the President using in your face verbal assualts on the opposition, neither do we see him going after the global enemy in the World press, as they are dong to us. Time to take the gloves off, in my opinion, in the War of Words, and put the Islamic agenda out for what it is, adn has been since AD 622, when Mohammed and about 200 followers went to Medina, expansion and control of the world, pure and simple. The particulars of which specific tools we have to wage war have changed, but the underlying premise of why hasn't. See this trackback to Mudville Gazette for Greyhawk's added commentary on the post from Chapomatic...