Defense Science Board findings

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Here are excerpts from a Defense Science Board report a little more than a year ago. Link.

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To succeed, we must understand the United States is engaged in a generational and global
struggle about ideas, not a war between the West and Islam. It is more than a war against
the tactic of terrorism. We must think in terms of global networks, both government and
non-government. If we continue to concentrate primarily on states (“getting it right” in
Iraq, managing the next state conflict better), we will fail.

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Nothing shapes U.S. policies and global perceptions of U.S. foreign and national security
objectives more powerfully than the President’s statements and actions, and those of
senior officials. Interests, not public opinion, should drive policies. But opinions must
be taken into account when policy options are considered and implemented.

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Frames simplify and help to communicate complex events. But like the Cold War frame,
the terrorism frame marginalizes other significant issues and problems: failing states,
non-proliferation, HIV/AIDS pandemic, economic globalization, transnational threats
other than terrorism, and global warming. Often the terrorism frame directs attention to
tactics not strategy. The focus is more on capturing and killing terrorists than attitudinal,
political, and economic forces that are the underlying source of threats and opportunities
in national security.

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In terms of strategic communication especially, the Cold War
emphasized:
• Dissemination of information to “huddled masses yearning to be free.” Today we
reflexively compare Muslim “masses” to those oppressed under Soviet rule. This is a
strategic mistake. There is no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-U.S. groundswell
among Muslim societies — except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as
apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends.

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American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature
of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to
single-digits in some Arab societies.
• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The
overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in
favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing
support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic
societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that
“freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that
Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do
not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq
has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions
appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in
order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire
radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have
elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy
among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an
Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public
support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups.
Not only has there been a proliferation of “terrorist” groups: the unifying context of a
shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian
boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all
about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans —
really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game.
This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but
nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are
really just talking to themselves.

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Also, the take on demographics starting page 49 is extremely interesting, but a little long to quote.

Thoughts on this report? Keep in mind, it's from September, 2004.