Plans
"One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles."
-Sun Tzu
One of the enduring truths of war is that knowing the enemies plans will make life much easier on you. In every war we have devoted the equivalent of divisions of men to deciphering what exactly the enemy is doing, what he is thinking, and what he's going to do next. During the Cold War these numbers only got larger, eventually encompassing several entire agencies of the U.S. government. It's obviously important. But in our current war, much has been made of the failure of those same agencies to decipher our enemies' intentions. However, that same enemy openly posts his deepest strategic thought out on the internet for anyone to read. Since that's the case, then anyone who wants to be able to speak intelligently about the war we're currently in owes it to themselves to go and read these two documents.
The first is entitled "Stealing al-Qaida's Playbook." It's relatively short (25 pages) and is intended as a primer to really hammer home the point that our enemies have left their playbook wide open on the internet for anyone to grab and read. You can find it here.
The second is a translation of an actual al-Qaida strategy document written by a lovely gentleman named Abu Bakr Naji, an up-and-coming al-Qaida strategist. The tome is entitled "Management of Savagery." You can get it here.
Like I said, if you consider yourself as an interested party to the current war, you owe it to yourself to read these documents and get educated as to just what our enemies are doing and thinking. They have extensively studied our political structure and ways of fighting, there's no reason for us not to study theirs.
h/t to the good CDR for both docs.
-Sun Tzu
One of the enduring truths of war is that knowing the enemies plans will make life much easier on you. In every war we have devoted the equivalent of divisions of men to deciphering what exactly the enemy is doing, what he is thinking, and what he's going to do next. During the Cold War these numbers only got larger, eventually encompassing several entire agencies of the U.S. government. It's obviously important. But in our current war, much has been made of the failure of those same agencies to decipher our enemies' intentions. However, that same enemy openly posts his deepest strategic thought out on the internet for anyone to read. Since that's the case, then anyone who wants to be able to speak intelligently about the war we're currently in owes it to themselves to go and read these two documents.
The first is entitled "Stealing al-Qaida's Playbook." It's relatively short (25 pages) and is intended as a primer to really hammer home the point that our enemies have left their playbook wide open on the internet for anyone to grab and read. You can find it here.
The second is a translation of an actual al-Qaida strategy document written by a lovely gentleman named Abu Bakr Naji, an up-and-coming al-Qaida strategist. The tome is entitled "Management of Savagery." You can get it here.
Like I said, if you consider yourself as an interested party to the current war, you owe it to yourself to read these documents and get educated as to just what our enemies are doing and thinking. They have extensively studied our political structure and ways of fighting, there's no reason for us not to study theirs.
h/t to the good CDR for both docs.
posted by Mike at 1:40 AM
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