ISIS

Defeating the Terrorists

Terrorists in Brussels airport moments before detonating their bombs

Not sure how many of these mass-casualty terrorist attacks the world in general, and the United States in particular, have to withstand, before the people rise up and demand that their leaders take effective action to stop them.

I am also not sure that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, but I do know that it is pretty stupid and almost guarantees that your opponent — be that in a sport, or at the national security level — will probably defeat you.

A whole lot of Americans are getting pretty much tired of the political correctness that suggests that these terrorists are misunderstood; that it is our fault that they attack us; that we must not take drastic measures to defeat them, or they will have won. These pathetic attempts have not proven effective and we now have a major terrorist attack almost every month. Fort Hood, Boston, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Paris and now Brussels have entered our lexicon as locations of mayhem and death. Before, most Americans associated Belgium with waffles; now they link it to terrorism and murder.

The Europeans may be beyond salvation in this fight, unfortunately, because their populations have ceded way too much power to their own national governments, and on top of that have tried to pound a square peg into a round hole in submitting to an “uber-government” called the European Union. If you understand that the further away from the people a government is, the less it will respond to the people’s wishes, why in the world would anyone think that a governing body higher than the federal level would be of greater assistance to the average man in the street?

It is also obvious that we have had a crop of too many military leaders who were more interested in appearing sophisticated thinkers and Georgetown party-goers than they were interested in kicking ass on the battlefield, but that is what you get when you attempt to conduct years and years of political and social experimentation with your military.

Having said that, we here in the United States may have one last opportunity to preserve our sovereignty and way of life against an enemy that has been an anathema to our ideals for over a millennium. Without getting too far into the weeds, and not hearing any coherent plan from our current crop of political hacks, let me offer the following three-tier strategy.

“Point of the Spear”: take the fight to the terrorists. Intel agencies (like the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, etc.) combine with the military, and the other elements of power for offensive operations outside the US to not just defeat but eradicate the threat. Design rules of engagement to enhance our forces’ ability to find, engage and destroy the enemy, whether that is active terrorists, or those who provide haven, logistical support, or morale support. If you support the terrorists, you may find yourself part of what is called collateral damage. Deny the enemy safe haven anywhere in the world by offensive action and my linking a foreign country’s relationship benefits with the US to the aggressiveness that country deals with terrorists inside its borders. This fight is not designed to nation-build, as that would put US forces on the ground in one area for a protracted time, when what we want is a quick re-cock and the flexibility that provides; it is aimed at dismembering the terrorist organizations and personnel of those who would attack us.

“Not in our house”: defend the actual homeland. Law Enforcement (the Federal Bureau of Investigation, state, local police) and permissible intel (intelligence agencies that are allowed by law to operate inside the US) prevent attacks, and when that is not done, responding rapidly to an attack. Homeland Security and the State Department limit the influx of potential/actual terrorists into the country by protecting the border and effectively screening who attempts to get in, by using the simple and logical rule: when in doubt, keep them out. Use effective profiling techniques unfettered by political correctness, to identify threats especially among those individuals who demonstrate an unwillingness to assimilate into American culture. And we need to come down hard, by passing laws that make a life in prison without parole sentence the most frequent outcome for anyone convicted of taking an active part in a terrorist attack (or providing material support to terrorists be that money, intelligence, sheltering, etc.) whether that is a foreign terrorist or an American citizen that perpetrates those actions abroad or here at home.

“Goal Line Stand”: harness the inherent courage and initiative of the American people as individuals, who when faced with a threat take immediate action such as the passengers in Flight 93 to eliminate or reduce the effects of that attack. Support of the 2nd Amendment, even expanding it if necessary, and the encouragement of concealed carry by law-abiding citizens. Support efforts at community policing in Arab and Muslim enclaves in the US. Reduce gun-free zones that now just invite attacks. Establish laws to indemnify citizens who respond in good faith to terrorist attacks. A good last line of defense can overcome temporary power-brokers in Washington who make bad decisions — be they incompetent or dishonest — as well as foster the key goal that we are all in this together.

Every anti-terrorism effort must fall into one of these three defensive tiers or they are a waste of time and money; that is called unity of effort. Our society needs to marginalize those who would commit national suicide by tying the nation’s hands behind its back. Terrorism is here and not going away any time soon unless we circle the wagons and unify in the effort to defeat it.

“We Are at War” headline in German magazine

Defeating the TerroristsFrench MacLean2016-03-27T10:58:53-05:00

Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP

Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP

From the first time you see the Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP, you know you WANT to buy it. Now I’m going to tell you why you NEED to buy this pistol.

Designed by Herr Horst Wesp (who joined the firm in 1994) the weapon is made by one of the historically best – if not the best – German armaments firm, Carl Walther in the city of Ulm an der Donau (which translates to Ulm on the Danube River.) PPQ stands for Police Pistol Quick Defense, PP being in German “Polizei Pistole” – a term first used on a Walther weapon in 1929 and going strong for almost ninety years. Remember, the Germans make great cars, great optics, great toys and great weapons; you can’t go wrong here.

Designed initially for European police forces and in selected militaries (if I had to guess, I believe that our own special operations community is at the very least testing the Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP and maybe even already using it,) let me tell you what it really can do for you: protect you from simultaneous multiple attackers, all intent on killing you. Here is how it does that:

Accuracy: I am a decent marksman, but you are undoubtedly better. Let’s just say that I am pushing Social Security age and that Ray Charles was a better marksman in The Blues Brothers. After firing one hundred rounds to become familiar with the pistol, I was able to put all twelve rounds of a magazine into the ten-ring on the B27Q-Blue-Half-Size Police and FBI Training Qualification Practice Target at a range of fifteen feet. At thirty feet, I am able to put six (50%) of the rounds into the ten-ring. With practice you’ll be able to meet or exceed this because the Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP is a natural pointer and has an excellent 3-dot sight system.

Power: It’s a .45 ACP. What else needs to be said? For those into numbers, the 4.25-inch barrel will launch a 230-grain Winchester PDX1 Defender jacketed hollow point at 912 feet per second that results in 425 foot-pounds of muzzle energy. Tests in ballistic gelatin that I have read show this same round expanding to .80 inches, and there are a lot of other excellent rounds that have similar results. Now I sometimes get confused reading these tests as to how many layers of denim the bullet has to travel through to achieve certain expansion, but one thing I am sure of – the minimum diameter a bullet fired from the Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP, through any number of layers you want, is going to be .45 inches.

Speed: The Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP, like its 9mm and .40 caliber brothers, has no external hammer. Instead, it uses a striker-fire trigger system (also described as a partially cocked single action) in which the initial shot feels like a double action trigger pull (about four pounds,) while for subsequent shots the trigger pull is short, crisp – and fast. Those follow-on shots feature a trigger pull of a tenth of an inch and equate to a 15.7 ounce pull. Speed is also enhanced by negligible recoil, so you stay on the targets. The frame is polymer, but the slide weighs almost a pound and since it moves backward upon firing, it eats up felt recoil. Less recoil is better.

Tailorability: Every shooter is different and each has special needs and wants. The Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP comes with two size, easy to install backstraps to accommodate different hand sizes. The button magazine release can be changed from the left to the right side of the frame to correspond to a left handed shooter. The trigger guard is large enough so the shooter can where a glove in colder temperatures. There is a small built in rail forward of the trigger guard from which you can add a laser sight or a flashlight.

The Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP is fun to shoot. Recoil doesn’t bang you around and the 12-round-capacity steel magazines mean you don’t have to change them too often. More importantly, a weapon that is fun to shoot means you are likely to put in the practice required to fulfill the weapon’s intent and that is self-defense. Multiple common criminals, read street gangs, involved in a single incident are not that rare. And ISIS or ISIL, or whatever we are calling this deadly militant Islamic jihadist group these days, has already said that they were going to attack inside America. That has already happened at Boston, Fort Hood, Chattanooga and San Bernardino. In half of these attacks, there have been multiple assailants. In the hands of a capable shooter – you, if God forbid, are in the attack zone – the Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACP can get you out of a multiple-assailant attack in one piece.

Walther PPQ M2 .45 ACPFrench MacLean2023-10-08T15:29:27-05:00

Night Stryke

The following slides show a hypothetical framework for operational-level raids against ISIS in Iraq and Syria (although it could also be used in other areas.) I call it Night Stryke. For the last ten years, U.S. Special Operations have been conducting raids against high-value targets, of which the attack against Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was most notable. These attacks, for the most part, were against individuals or small groups of people, perhaps a few dozen at most. Night Stryke envisions attacking ISIS facilities containing perhaps 100 fighters deeper than most of the attacks so far, and as proficiency increases, so would the prospective size of the target and the size of the attacking force that might ultimately be reinforced battalions or tailored brigades.

Below are the five facets of the intent of the raids. Because of their scope, both special and conventional forces would be required. Because the transportation is by air, attacks could be launched deep behind the forward progress of ISIS forces. U.S. combatants would be on the ground for only hours (maybe a day at most), leaving no residual footprint to attack. Finally, the ability to strike anywhere at any time would almost certainly add a disturbing psychological burden on ISIS veteran fighters as well as recruits.

The following is the center of gravity (in my opinion) for ISIS forces. Every battle plan must attack an enemy’s center of gravity or else it is wasted effort. You defeat this center of gravity by killing existing fighters and reducing new recruits. There are non-combat strategies, such as turning a majority of Muslims against the militants and encouraging Islam to conduct its own reformation to eliminate it’s warlike tendencies, but those are strategies for the diplomats; this is a strategy for the warriors.

You don’t “take out,” you don’t “degrade,” you kill the enemy in large numbers until you break his will to fight. It has been that way for millennia and despite a recent political penchant to fight bloodless wars, you have to be ruthless or the enemy will be. Additionally, striking the enemy throughout the operational depth of the theater causes the defender to try and defend everywhere, and it is a proven military axiom that he who would attempt to defend every where, adequately defends no where.

Here is the basic concept. Intelligence assets locate a remote ISIS site occupied by perhaps several dozen up to several hundred jihadist fighters — perhaps a logistical support area for ISIS convoys carrying oil, or an ISIS-controlled oil field. Special operations forces locate and secure a forward operating base that includes terrain on which C-17 airlift aircraft or other platforms can land. As this is 25-75 miles from the target, the ISIS defenders have no idea of an impending attack.

Airlift assets then land combat troops and vehicles, such as Strykers, and this force, perhaps a reinforced battalion, drives to, surrounds and begins to attack the enemy village. Using direct observation, they pinpoint targets for attack aircraft (fixed wing, helicopters, drones, etc.) Air platforms must serve as artillery in this fight because adequate ground artillery simply cannot be transported in enough quantity as they (and their ammunition) take up too much haul space. If the defenders manage a call for help, the same air assets can hammer ISIS columns trying to come to the rescue of their comrades.

Once the ISIS force is eliminated — and the U.S. military simply must change its impotent rules of engagement if it wants to seriously prosecute this war — the force emplaces denial munitions and intelligence sensors to make enemy reoccupation of the facility dangerous. I would argue that the enemy dead should be removed from the target for “proper” burial elsewhere; such a disappearance would further degrade the moral of ISIS fighters who may have signed up to die for their caliphate, but may not have come to terms with disappearing for their caliphate. The ground strike force then rapidly returns to their FOB, boards their aircraft and departs for a secure base hundreds of miles away, perhaps even in another country. Any subsequent media inquiries as to what happened should be met with operational security silence.

How much lift we have available must be balanced against world-wide requirements. Conducting raids to achieve operational gains have been quite successful throughout military history, whether that was Union cavalry raids deep into the Confederacy, or the old Soviet Operational Maneuver Groups that terrorized German rear areas on the Eastern Front in World War II and that kept NATO war planners up at night for forty years in the Cold War. Time to get inside the enemy’s decision cycle, make him defend everywhere. And keep ISIS fighters up at night wondering which of their outposts will be the next one to disappear.

It has already worked at the tactical level and by purely special operations forces. In October 2015, U.S. and Afghan commandos, backed by scores of American airstrikes, attacked an al Qaeda training camp in the southern part of Afghanistan. The assault, which took place over several days, pounded two training areas — destroying elaborate tunnels and fortifications, and killing as many as 200 fighters. Because of the proximity to U.S. bases, C-17s were not needed.

It is time to take it up to the next level in size and scope. It is time to go deep against ISIS and use all special operations and conventional forces at our disposal in even larger raids.

Night StrykeFrench MacLean2023-10-08T15:31:58-05:00

Become a Hard Target

San Bernardino Terrorist Attack

The day after Nine-Eleven, had someone offered to bet me that we would not have another major terrorist attack in the United States for the next seven years, I would have mortgaged the house, hopped on that wager – and lost! It might have been luck; it might have been skill (and as a military strategist I would add it was because we took the fight to the enemy where he lived;) it was probably a combination of both, but we essentially had a multi-fatality terror attack-free Homeland until 2009. Today, however, we have a much more serious situation. Not only has the frequency of terrorist attacks increased, the attacks now include the heartland in places like Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Dallas, Little Rock, Boston and Fort Hood.

I read an article the other day about the development of humans and it discussed the response to danger, such as immediately trying to run away from a saber-tooth tiger by a caveman. There simply was not enough time for our early ancestors to ponder the situation (fight or flight) unless they wanted to become cat food. So far, so good, but the article went on to say that today humans have no predators out after them.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I would argue that we have more physical violence predators looking to harm us (I am not talking about predatory loan officers, computer scammers and the like) since the Middle Ages – and some might say the Dark Ages. You may not think there are predators out there, but there are and, more ominously, they look at you as a “meal.”

We are talking about two basic forms of predators: common criminals (such as serial killers, robbers, rapists, drug dealers and the mentally unstable) and terrorists, who today are the soldiers of one group or another that espouse the tenets of violent Islam. Certainly other terrorist affiliations and attacks have flourished in the past – Protestant/Catholic sectarianism in Northern Ireland comes to mind, but the current 800-pound gorilla in the room (although some refuse to see him) is militant Islam, be that Al Qaeda, ISIS, ISIL, Boko Haram, al Shabaab, or any other of the dozens of splinter groups. One might think there is no similarity between regular criminals and terrorists, but there is one commonality – they both prefer to attack soft targets.

A soft target has many characteristics: it is slow to react to an attack or does not react at all (commonly called the deer in the headlights look); it is not likely to be armed or to pose a physical threat to an attacker; it is often in an area that is unfamiliar to it; it is often alone; it has something that the attacker wants, be that notoriety achieved by attacking it, perceived money or valuables, or religious/ethnic/racial/gender hatred toward the target.

Criminals and terrorists avoid what we term hard targets, where the likelihood of the target capturing, wounding or killing the attacker is high. The hardness of the target can be measured by the presence of weapons, the defensibility of the architecture (walls, blast resistant glass, sensors [such as remote cameras]) and the correct belief that the humans composing a hard target are quite willing and able to respond quickly with lethal effects.

Self-defense is a human right.

You could become a hard target by building a castle, spending millions of dollars for bodyguards and sensors, and never leaving your fortress. That would be expensive and stupid unless you just like being a paranoid hermit.

You are by birth a soft target, but the following suggestions can help you become a hard target.

Limit your out-of-home activities late at night. Most hunters in the wild stalk their quarry at night, often late at night. And remember, these hunters are stalking you. If you are going to be out after 11:00 pm, you really need to ask yourself why.

Avoid high terrorism and high crime areas. Do you really want to take that summer vacation to Beirut? Whether you are motoring through Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan or most other places in the Middle East, you will stick out like a sore thumb, when actually you want to blend in and not appear as a target. We also know that certain areas of every major town, and city (here and abroad) are more dangerous than others. Simply don’t go into those. If you are unsure about that, go to the local police station and ask them frankly, “What areas should a person like me avoid?” They’ll tell you.

Stay alert. When you are moving, ditch the headsets, palm-held electronics (I-phone, I-pad, I-pod, Blackberry or anything else) and concentrate on staying alive, whether that is actually checking for traffic when you cross a street (never assume you have the right of way on anything), you are driving, or you are observing people moving toward you. Look in their eyes; you can often spot some uncomfortable intent in a person’s “window to the soul.” All this is called situational awareness. PS. Alcohol, prescription drugs and recreational drugs diminish situational awareness. Targets that are high get killed easier than targets that are not and bad guys know this.

Humans are social animals. Your chances of being targeted by a criminal go down if you are with a group. Unfortunately, the converse is true with terrorism; terrorists normally want a big score of dead and dying victims.

Now is where we get into arguments. Buy three firearms if you do not already have any. Even if you hate firearms, or are afraid of firearms, just buy them and put them away in a vault or safe deposit box. One day, things may deteriorate so badly that you, or your kids, or your grand-kids (when they are adults) just might have a need for them. There are plenty of trigger locks for safety; there are even some now where the safe doesn’t open unless a scanner reads your own fingerprint. If you are so inclined, use a safe deposit box at the bank to store it, unless there is some law or rule that doesn’t permit this.

The three to purchase (and I’m not going to start an endless argument over caliber, make and model) are a pistol, a shotgun and some type of smallish rifle that is more than a single shot bolt action. Some call that a carbine. Each of the three is better at some types of defense than the others; you can read opinions all day long about which type of weapon is better at some tasks than others. None of these will be fully automatic weapons no matter what the media tells you. To get a fully automatic weapon you have to first get several permits that cost so much and have such lengthy and detailed background checks that almost no one has them (I have met only two people in my life who have one.) What you want is a carbine type weapon that when you pull the trigger, one bullet is fired; pull the trigger a second time and the next bullet is fired, and so on until the weapon is out of ammunition. Make sure you comply with all local and state laws as to how large a capacity that may be. California, for example, allows much less capacity than most other states; it’s an ineffective law as witnessed by what happened when two Islamic terrorists attacked in San Bernardino, but it is on the books none-the-less. If you are uncomfortable with a semi-auto action, consider a pump action or a lever action that will be a bit slower but effective anyway.

A firearm in a safe deposit box is not going to protect you at home or on the street and you or your descendants will figure that out, so have someone competent show you how to use it. Then find a shooter-friendly range to practice safely. Then practice, practice, practice; not for a month, but every month, every year. Shooting skills erode over time, but if you keep at it you will get better and stay better. Remember, you aren’t looking to become an American Sniper here, shooting hundreds of yards or more. The distance at which you will consider shooting is that distance that a reasonable person is afraid that an assailant will kill them. And remember, the court gets to decide that reasonable distance, if you kill an attacker and go on trial.

Sign up and fulfill your state requirements to obtain a concealed carry permit. As with all of these recommendations, the first imperative is to obey the law. None of us know at this moment whether we will decide tomorrow night that the dog needs to be walked around the neighborhood. If we own a pistol and do not have a concealed permit, dropping that weapon into our pocket when Sparky wants to go outside just might be an illegal act. Having a concealed carry permit makes it legal, even if we never have to carry a weapon.

Get in shape. Ha! Easier said than done, I know, but people in better overall condition can do things that people in poor condition cannot do: think quicker and clearer; run faster; traverse uneven terrain (stairs, up and down slopes) without falling. If you are so inclined and physically able, try learning some unarmed combat. I contemplated recommending getting a knife that can do some damage in a self-defense role, but that means that your attacker is really close, the odds are you could cut yourself if you don’t know what you are doing and it adds in a whole set of other laws you have to follow on blade length and how it opens; so I won’t. A more expensive, but effective deterrent for a close-in confrontation and home defense is a German Shepherd.

Visualize potential attacks – criminal and terrorist – against you and mentally prepare options. There are several categories of a response to an attack and you need to rehearse in your mind what response provides you the best chance at survival. In general you can: move away from danger; hide in place; attack your attacker; comply with your attacker’s demands; or create some kind of diversion. No one size will fit all and what works one time may not work during another situation. You visualize by asking questions: if something bad starts happening right now, what direction am I going to run? Where was the last place I saw a police officer and how do I get back there? Maybe I shouldn’t run at all if there is a great place to hide within a few feet of where I am or I can blend in with the surroundings. What do I do differently if there is more than one attacker? If I have a gun, where is the nearest position that will provide me some protection from the bad guy’s fire? What if one or more attackers open fire before I sense their presence? What if the room or building I am in catches fire? Where are the fire exits? What do I do if a car bomb down the street explodes? If my family is out and about and we get split up, what is the plan to get back together if the cell phones don’t work?

This may all seem like complex stuff and law enforcement and the military practice this all the time. You won’t, and don’t want to become, a Rambo, just increase your odds that you and your family can survive in an increasingly dangerous world. But remember, these punks — be they common criminals or Islamic terrorists — are not particularly good shots nor are they invincible. They may be appear tough when they are dealing unarmed victims that are already tied up and waiting to be killed. But against an armed enemy, who has mentally prepared how to defend and react — you — they are beatable. They do not do well during the few seconds when you have the initiative and achieve surprise by doing something they do not expect — and they expect you to most often freeze and do nothing. Our active duty military can only do so much taking the fight to the enemy. Our National Guard can only do so much in responding to massive emergencies. Our police and intelligence community can only do so much trying to defend the homeland. The rest of us need to become hard targets and be the goal line defense of last resort to stand up to those who would do us harm.

Your only other approach is to say, “None of this bad stuff is ever going to happen to me”…

…until it does.

Become a Hard TargetFrench MacLean2023-10-08T15:47:48-05:00

A New Knights Templar? (Part 2)

Pope Francis: stopping aggression is legitimate

Certain conditions would have to exist before a New Knights Templar be formed in such a way that it could endure for the long haul, as the battle against militant Islam will not be won in the near future – in fact, it may become the Second Hundred Years War.

A New Knights Templar would likely differ from the original version in many respects. The Catholic Church officially endorsed the first Knights Templar in 1129; the New Knights Templar – while it may contain many Roman Catholics – could very well consist of non-Catholic Christians, Jews, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and members of other faiths; it is not inconceivable that Atheists might even join. The commonality of volunteers for the New Knights Templar will not be religion – which was the common denominator of the “Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon” that later became known as Knights Templars. The common denominator will not be nationality, just as it was not in the original warrior group.

The most-likely common characteristic of all would-be volunteers to participate in the New Knights Templar would be a belief that there is both Good and Evil in the world and that militant Islam – such as ISIS – has demonstrated on a daily basis that it is Evil. Furthermore these volunteers, brave men and women from around the world, would likely believe that Good should be triumphant, that Good must defend those who cannot defend themselves and that each individual can make a difference in this struggle against Evil.

Not every would-be volunteer for the New Knights Templar would be a member of an organized religion or would even be interested in what the leaders of major religions might think of the concept of the New Knights Templar taking up the sword to combat militant Islam and defending those innocents in its path. However, for some volunteers, it would be important to have the moral support of those leaders and it appears that they will.

Enroute to South Korea on August 14, 2014, Pope Francis commented on the military victories by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL) that have resulted in persecution and murder of Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities. Earlier, a papal communique against this violence was sent to all the nunciatures and the Pope wrote a letter to the United Nations’ Secretary General. The Pope, additionally, met with the governor of Iraqi Kurdistan and named Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, as his personal envoy to Iraq.

Pope Francis made the following remarks on that flight with respect to ISIS/ISIL in Iraq: “To stop the unjust aggressor is licit…One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor…Stopping the unjust aggressor is a right that humanity has, but it is also a right of the aggressor to be stopped so he does not do evil.”

In April 2015, the Community of Sant’ Egidio, a Catholic lay movement focused on ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue as well as conflict resolution, called for the creation of “safe havens” for Christians in Iraq and Syria, as well as the creation of an international police force capable of identifying and apprehending the authors of terrorist acts. In May 2015, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York marked the desperate plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria with an urgent plea for Americans to take action before it’s too late. “When it comes to the persecution of Christians, we are talking about an… international emergency.”

For would be volunteers for a New Knights Templar that are Roman Catholics – or other denomination Christians that take interest in the words of the Pope – it appears that the pontiff’s words would clearly permit men and women of conscience to stop the unjust aggression of militant Islam so it does not do evil. It is equally clear that the Pope is leery about a single nation determining the level of force that it will use to stop aggression, probably because that nation may allow selfish national objectives to cloud the issue of how much force is adequate to stop the aggressor versus how much may be too much. That concern, while valid, probably would not applicable for members of a New Knights Templar, whose volunteers will be from many countries around the world, not just one. Each individual would bring the norms and values of the nation from which he or she comes. No single country would hold sway on the activities of these volunteers. As will be described later, a New Knights Templar would probably have no world-wide governing body; the power of the organization would rest in the individual conscience, spirit, initiative and creative talents of each member, and every level of bureaucracy layered above the individual would have a stifling effect.

Leaders of Protestant Christian faiths seem to be in the process of making their own declarations that good men and women have their full blessing to fight evil and defend the innocent. In September 2015, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby decalred that the aerial bombig campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) was a just war. He stated that military action was justified on the humanitarian grounds that te victims of ISIS needed help in escaping the barbarity of Islamic extremists. The Archbishop, principal leader of the Church of England and the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, went on to state that: “There is justification for the use of armed force on humanitarian grounds to enable oppressed victims to find safe space.”

If they wish to support the fight against militant Islam, similar proclamations need to be made by leaders of other faiths and some have already come on board. Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi, born in Israel but now a prominent public figure in New York said the following: “A child who grows up with a Torah education knows that there is good and evil in the world, and knows that he is expected to strengthen the good and counter the bad. Wrote King David in the 97th Psalm: “Ohavei Hashem sin’u ra” – if you love God, hate evil! That is the moral passion that Judaism has encouraged for 3,500 years – and that is why those who are imbued with its values understand that the evil of this world is very real indeed, and that all of us have an obligation to do our best to fight it.”

For a New Knights Templar to come into being, with a chance to be viewed as the good of humankind, Muslim Imams must endorse that groups such as ISIS and other militant Islamic entities should be fought by all true Muslims of good faith, along with their brothers and sisters of other faiths. In March 2015, Imam Syed Soharwardy, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, created the edict which condemns radicalization and recruitment for ISIS. Muslims around the world have long been condemning ISIS, but this is the first time there will be an official fatwa stating so. Within days, 38 imams and Islamic scholars from across Canada signed the fatwa. It is a start.

However, another hurdle to the formation of the New Knights Templar would be that entity of which Pope Francis was concerned – the modern nation state – and that will be addressed next. To be continued…

A New Knights Templar? (Part 2)French MacLean2021-06-15T18:00:37-05:00

Finding a Strategy to Defeat Militant Islam

Strategy to Defeat Militant Islam

To develop a strategy to defeat ISIS, we must first identify the center of gravity of this enemy. For competent strategists, the center of gravity, be it the bulk of the enemy’s army or other capability (although seldom an enemy leader), is the hub of all power and strength. Destroy it and the enemy collapses. The strategic center of gravity of every militant Islamic organization, from small terrorist cells to large conventionally formed and equipped armies, is the magnetism of certain tenants of Islam that attract an almost inexhaustible number of recruits that are prepared to do violence to non-believers and even die for their cause in their quest to expand their religion into a caliphate under Islamic Law. Given that, the attached chart shows what must be done. These actions are not sequential; they will often overlap and several may take decades to accomplish. However, if we can follow these guidelines, we will prevail in the end.

Finding a Strategy to Defeat Militant IslamFrench MacLean2021-06-27T16:22:52-05:00

Wars with religious undertones have occurred over recorded human history. Many of these conflicts have been characterized by acts of significant brutality, recorded all-too-frequently by chroniclers as “putting the population to the sword.” Today, these shocking accounts have morphed from the pages of history text to graphic beheadings and burning to death on videos on the internet.

The Peace of Westphalia signed in 1648 resolved the Thirty Years’ War, one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history – and initially a war between Christian Protestant and Christian Catholic states in the fragmenting Holy Roman Empire. Christians continued to brutally fight one another, most recently evident in the civil wars in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Islamic factions – Sunni and Shia – have fought each other almost from the start of Islam and continue to this day. Finally, the era of the Crusades (1095-1285) demonstrated the ferocity of Christian-Muslim conflict.

Western historians seem to fall into three categories concerning the character of this two-century medieval clash: some see the Crusades as part of a purely defensive war against Islamic conquest; others view the struggle as part of long-running conflict at the frontiers of Europe; a third tranche has concluded that the wars were caused by aggressive, papal-led expansion attempts by Western Christendom. Muslim historians – and more importantly the average Muslim man or woman on the street – have quite a different view. As far as the Muslims in the Middle East during those two centuries believed, the Crusades were simply the latest stage in Frankish imperialism that had already manifested itself in North Africa, Sicily and Spain.

However, what is most important is not what Christians and Muslims thought 800 years ago, but how they continue to view these events today. The Christian West has quite simply forgotten the Crusades. They are an event that happened, but not one that still elicits emotion. Almost no Christian holds a public grudge that a distant relation fighting in the Crusades was killed by Muslims. In short, there is no utility in modern western life to be concerned with just another increasingly distant chapter in a dusty history book. The opposite occurred in the Muslim world. Initially – at the time of these events – Muslim scholars believed that there was nothing of value to learn from the Christian/Frankish barbarians who came from Central and Western Europe. Not only were Muslim historians uninterested in what Christians did, there were also indifferent to what Christians thought. Muslim feelings – in the exact obverse of Christian views – seem to be more concerned with the Crusades today than they were in the centuries immediately following the wars. Today, Muslims recall the Crusades as an offensive Christian undertaking with one or more goals of: humiliating Islam; defeating Islam; eradicating Islam. The Muslim view of the Crusades is that it is the wound that will not heal; it is original sin that no Christian may wash away.

Relations between Islam and Christianity did not improve to a brotherly love level over the last several hundred years, but for the most part did not involve attempting to destroy the other en mass, although periodic religious wars in the Balkans were certainly extremely violent. However, the fire between Islam and Christianity/Judaism rekindled with the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. In fact, one could easily argue that the current war by militant Islam against Christianity and Judaism – now 66 years old – began on this date.

It has become popular to attribute current unrest in the Mideast to a lack of good governance by many nation states in the region (i.e. lack of adequate health care, rampant corruption, inability to protect citizens from crime, substandard education, lack of jobs, etc.) While problems in good governance certainly are a contributory factor, they are not the root cause of the violence. England has good governance and they have a large number of jihadists, and it is becoming evident that so does the United States.

The root cause of the death and destruction throughout an alarmingly high proportion of the Muslim world are the beliefs of a substantial number of the faithful that the Qur’an (Koran) calls on them to subjugate and kill non-Muslims as part of the expansion of Islamic faith and culture.

The idea of fighting for God, although not confined to Islam, has given service in Muslim terrorist organizations a special attraction, which leads to a discussion of the Center of Gravity of ISIS, Al Qaeda and all other militant Muslim groups, regardless of their name or home location. For our purposes, let us define militant Islam as either Muslim nation-state sponsored terrorism or non-nation state terrorism, directed at non-Muslim targets. Muslim on Muslim violence (Shia-Sunni) is certainly violent, but it is something a little different.

Prussian military strategist, Carl von Clausewitz, believed that a fundamental requirement in war was to identify the enemy’s Center of Gravity and attack it vigorously. He stated in part, “the force at which our blow is to be aimed requires that our strength be concentrated to the utmost… therefore a major act of strategic judgment to distinguish these centers of gravity in the enemy’s forces and to identify their spheres of effectiveness.” This center of gravity, be it the bulk of the enemy’s army or other capability (although seldom an enemy leader), is the hub of all power and strength. Destroy it and the enemy collapses.

Listening to the Secretary of Defense and senior military generals talk about ISIS but never mention the term “center of gravity” is troubling. War is governed by certain tenets and principles and its nature is unchanging (although the character and conduct do change.)

It is this paper’s opinion that the strategic center of gravity of every militant Islamic organization, from small terrorist cells to large conventionally formed and equipped armies, is the magnetism of certain tenants of Islam that attract an almost inexhaustible number of recruits that are prepared to do violence to non-believers and even die for their cause in their quest to expand their religion into a caliphate under Islamic law.

Attacking this strategic center of gravity is a multi-faceted process. Over the long term, these select violent tenants of Islam must be “demagnetized” in an effort by which they lose their appeal to potential recruits. It will be a complex process, as we must create the conditions in which they will convince themselves that violence is not the answer. A second way to attack this hub of all power, which should begin immediately, is to simply kill the jihadists in as large numbers as possible. Unfortunately, that brutal solution may extend to succeeding generations seeking to emulate their elders, if these young jihadist “wannabees” cannot be convinced to drop the sword.

However, there is an additional course of action to only killing current jihadists and that is in the realm of psychological warfare. We must discover that which frightens the jihadist. What causes him to wake up in the middle of the night screaming in terror? Most religions and cultures have their own boogie men, infant-snatchers and vampire lore; how can we use these legends to psychologically dislocate the jihadists and their core supporters?

We must additionally separate the foot-soldier jihadists from their leaders. Our information campaign must create the story that the sons of these leaders rarely become suicide bombers (that is only for the lesser value men) and that the leaders often skim millions of dollars of wealth from the cause for their own personal benefit. More importantly, we must study with responsible Imams those terrorist acts that will cause the jihadist to be “excommunicated” from the faith and that there is no heaven for these men – and ensure that information is widely disseminated, if only to peel away some of the less-radical foot soldiers.

Not all jihadist groups are created equal and we must prioritize the levels of danger presented by each. Concerning the current iteration of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL), the center of gravity at the operational level is the group’s ability to generate significant funds to procure weapons, supplies and influence; the group is thought to have at least $2 billion and the sum is growing daily. Whether this is destroying or capturing oilfields under ISIS control, hacking into ISIS financial accounts or closing the flow of the Hawala money transfer system, it is imperative that ISIS be deprived of significant funding. This is because the leaders in militant Islam understand that while they can use a strategy of attrition to possibly defeat U.S. and western forces operating in the Middle East (and thus wearing down the American home front with seemingly endless casualties) – ISIS needs nuclear weapons to truly go on the offensive and actually expand the caliphate. This means purchasing such weapons, as ISIS does not have the scientific or technical ability to make their own. Make no mistake; when terrorists, with an end of days’ Yawm al-Qiyāmah philosophy, obtain nuclear weapons, it is only a matter of time before they gladly use them.

Unfortunately, this current war may well last into the next century. This is because breaking the magnetism of those violent tenants of Islam will require a Muslim “reformation,” whatever that looks like, powerful Fatwas and active dissuasion of violence from “the pulpit.” Islam must go through a self-generated process to eliminate the violent portions of its theology, while at the same time healing the rift between Sunnis and Shiites and that will take time – decades at the least.

To begin a strategic campaign, we must first be able to identify the enemy in order to tailor a strategy that will be successful. Militant Islam is not workplace violence; it is not a tiny minority unsupported by the vast majority of Muslims. Militant Islam cannot co-exist. It is not primarily a law enforcement issue; it is war. At the current time, militant Islamic prisoners of war cannot be reliably “cured” of violent tendencies; they are killing machines. That is why terms such as degrade are imprecise and dangerous. Despite the protestations of the barstool brigadiers and armchair admirals that never fired a shot in anger, the nature of war is violence and the character and conduct of this war will also be violent. It is no coincidence that Islam never spread northeast. In 1219, Genghis Khan invaded Khwarezmia, which was governed by Shah Ala ad-Din Muhammad, and during the conquest killed millions of people across the land. The Mongol adversaries took a back seat to no one in their application of violence and Islam never forgot. In most wars, the victor actually does kill his way out of it, inflicting so much pain on the enemy that the opponent surrenders or agrees to terms.

The second objective of this initial strategic campaign is not to lose before we have marshalled the will and resources to win. There are four conditions that could cause a situation that would preclude ultimate victory. The United States loses if it simply quits the fight and withdraws inward, sustains a significant weapon of mass destruction (WMD) attack that puts the national economy in peril, fails to support Israel to such a degree that Israel is destroyed, or seeks to accommodate the tenants of militant Islam such as Sharia Law. The current administration may feel that it does not have the time left or the stomach to do what must be done offensively. However, it can still make a contribution defensively: to protect the country from a WMD attack over the next two years, by first stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The next administration and the next generation of political leaders have their own roles to play and will have to ramp up the struggle. First, both major political parties must go against their own petty self-interests and work to unify the country as one. Second, taking counsel of sound senior military advice, they must rebuild the U.S. military to provide those capabilities that will prove successful in the fight – such as an even greater increase in special operations forces and intelligence gathering capabilities. Both support the operational Center of Gravity of the United States military – the ability to quickly and accurately place overwhelming fires anywhere in the world on land, sea and air across the spectrum of conflict.

Finally, as we contemplate a lengthy war, we must consider the composition of the military. The nation made a mistake after Nine-Eleven and did not implement actions to elicit shared sacrifice from our population. The last dozen years of war have been fought by the volunteer professional military, often described as the one-half of one percent. Nothing like the old Victory-Bond drives came into being after that fateful September morning. No special war taxes were implemented. No common, shared sacrifice was demanded. To a great degree, the conflict has been fought with a very small tip of the spear, albeit a razor-sharp one.

The nation needs to debate returning to a draft. We currently have numerous ethnic and racial groups that have little contact with or understanding of other groups; this leads to senseless mistrust and disunity. Societal evolution has led to many children raised in one-parent families and having no sense of either authority or of the collective good. Militant gangs replace absent fathers. Violence on America’s streets is rampant; Chicago, based on dozens of gang-related shootings every weekend, has acquired the new deadly moniker of “Chiraq” and this viciousness is not confined to large cities. Returning to the draft – and this does not mean deploying draftees overseas to fight jihadists; the character of the conflict is such that we can do that with a professional core – would produce shorter-term soldiers, who can assist with natural disasters at home, guard the borders of the country and ensure that all Americans have a stake in the outcome of the war. Equally important, we might be able to save what is appearing to be a lost generation.

For too long we have used terms such as target servicing, degrading capabilities and incarceration so as not to offend the ill-placed sensibilities of some in the media and the general public. Again returning to Clausewitz, the theorist wrote, “Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds; it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.”

We must contemplate unpleasant measures if we are to defeat an enemy that is as brutal and tenacious as militant Islam. CIA estimates go as high as 31,000 active enemy fighters, while Kurdish sources put the number at 200,000. On the legal front, we must engage the international law system to emplace laws that take away as many human rights of terrorists as possible; we should attempt to deny the terrorists all rights under the Geneva Conventions. Given that on the battlefield jihadists often pretend to surrender only to attack when our guard is lowered, that we are often loath to use the death penalty in judicial proceedings, that terrorists recruit new terrorists in prison and that released terrorists from Guantanamo confinement are likely to return to violence, we must examine our own procedures and rules to determine when it is simply too dangerous to capture them.

We should also contemplate closing confinement facilities, not because of the tired arguments that these centers serve as recruitment propaganda, but rather that the prisoners in them remain in the public eye. They write letters; they are potential bargaining chips such as the five Taliban leaders that were released at the stroke of a pen in 2014. We need to develop a system where uncertainty creeps into the minds of the terrorists. We should never return the remains of deceased terrorists to their relatives; in fact, we should never confirm what has happened or not happened to them when they disappear from the battlefield. We should not even give them a Muslim burial or place them in marked graves; their brutal acts caused them to forfeit that consideration (we did that with executed Nazi war criminals.) Additionally, since it is only a matter of time before the terrorists figure out how to create biological suicide “bombers” infected with Ebola, Small Pox or other deadly contagious diseases, we should assume that every dead terrorist is already infected and his remains should be handled accordingly.

Along these lines, we must immediately stop telling the jihadists what we will or will not do and where we will do it. We must refrain from explaining in the public forum, for example, why ISIS troops massing at the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria are becoming lucrative targets for attacks from the air; let the enemy find out the hard way that his tactics are in error. Uncertainty is our friend, causing the enemy to believe they must defend everywhere. As strategist Sun-Tzu opined: “To defend everywhere is to defend nowhere.”

ISIS/ISIL and Al Qaeda, left to their own devices, became killing machines. It will take a superior killing machine to drive home the terrible conclusion to every jihadist and every jihadist-supporter that there will be no glory in murdering innocents and no glory in dying for a hateful God. There will be no jail cell or halfway house, from which they might someday be released, for the purveyors of evil. There will only be a certain, agonizing, lonely, pointless death in the shadows of darkness in a manner that precludes even their memory from being cherished by their family and friends…their entire corporal and spiritual self will simply disappear for all time.

ISISFrench MacLean2015-11-16T18:29:33-06:00