Wandering about my logs and discovered this article all over again! Someone else was interested in it this morning and after re-reading it I can understand why. This is from 2003…
We are fighting a new sort of war and it bears remembering that our foes have not quit just because our economy is being ruined by our Government. Matter of fact if I were a betting man I would bet that Al Qaeda sees an opportunity now. We have less resources than we did in 2001 and we have a Commander in Chief who is either incompetent or on the otherside, this is a perfect time to attack to delivery a coup de grâce.
I believe that several of his paragraphs deserve to be considered over and above the rest of this seriously fine article.
Naval Institute Proceedings: The New Arab Way of War, by Captain Peter Layton, Royal Australian Air Force: “The New Arab Way of War” Intentionally, there is no obvious state involvement. In his attack, the assassin dies or melts into the crowd, providing no proof of who is responsible. This tactic is meant to confuse and frustrate a legally justifiable response, as the Western paradigm based on the 1648 Peace of Westphalia assumes a state-versus-state conflict. Avoiding giving the West a defined, obvious state opponent is a rational strategy peculiar to the Arab way of war.
Meaning that evidence of Saddam and Al Qaeda’s collaborations were not going to be found laying around street.
A major innovation of the Arab way of war is the deliberate targeting of civilians. The assassins’ rhetoric makes no distinction between civilian and military targets. Attacking civilians guarantees global attention as the media, reflecting global values, has a horror of the infliction of cruelty on noncombatants. Attacking civilians is perceived by the assassins as the most direct route to influence global opinion and to affect the national will of the nations struck. Attacks usually are conducted with considerable skill, timing, expertise, and precision but are designed to kill absolutely indiscriminately. Given this, the strategic aim of attacks is hard to discern.4 Violence customarily is conceived as a means to an end, but the essence in this style of war seems to be inflicting terror. Pakistani Brigadier S. K. Malik notes: “Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose on him.”5
I doubt that terror is used solely for the amusement of the terrorists. Instead it is used to affect the morale of the civilian populations in the west. Trying to break their will and cause them to withdraw from involvement in the Middle East allowing whichever State actors are the most powerful and favored to gain control. It is a very dangerous game since the terrorists have two points close together, one that spells victory and the other that spells the west losing its control and destroying significant portions of the population of the Middle East.
From the footnotes the author makes this very point. Great article and you should read all of it.
But there have been many instances in Western history where patience has been exhausted suddenly and merciless, ruthless responses undertaken. The Arab way of war could yet reap this whirlwind for the Middle East if attacks by assassins go too far. History suggests this line will not be known, or even articulated, until after it is crossed. This is one of the difficulties with dealing with democracies that opposing political systems have problems comprehending. back to article
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