The following is an in-depth review of this book. But for the very abbreviated version: It's a good book with a few shortcomings. A good read though with some great strategies for America.
The Critique
Charles Pena's new book on American strategy in the face of al Qaeda offers a solid plan for defeating America's enemy, but suffers from a few shortcomings. Overall, however, the plan of focusing on al Qaeda, of using Special Forces to capture and kill the leadership while simultaneously removing the motivation behind the terrorist attacks is a solid one. Our nation's leaders would do well to read this book and take heed of Mr. Pena's advice.
Writing and Editing Comments
Before delving into Mr. Pena's arguments, there are a few shortcomings with the writing and editing of the book that we should cover. The first few chapters rely too heavily on quotes from political leaders, sometimes with five or more direct quotes on a single page. While this works well as evidence, the reader would be better served by one or two quotes getting directly to the point, and backed up by additional cites in footnotes or endnotes, followed by the analysis of the quote. It takes nothing away from Mr. Pena's analysis, but would serve to make the first few chapters more readable.
The second quibbling point is on Mr. Pena's tortured analogy of al Qaeda to quantum physics. Mr. Pena spends several paragraphs describing the wave/particle duality of light before going on to talk about the organizational structure of al Qaeda. But while light is both a wave and a particle at the same time, al Qaeda is not both a structured hierarchical organization and a distributed nodal network at the same time. Al Qaeda is simply a distributed nodal network, with the only true leadership that occurs being an ideological leadership. Again, this does not affect Mr. Pena's analysis of al Qaeda, but it does serve to confuse the reader with this tortured analogy. The use of other analogies, especially focusing on eastern theology, is somewhat better in that the analogy itself is shorter. But I still cannot understand how al Qaeda is composed of both yin and yang. When using analogies in general, it would seem better to compare something that is not generally understood (al Qaeda) with something that is commonly understood by the reader (not usually eastern religions or quantum physics). But of course all of these objections are minor and we should move on to a more in depth discussion of Mr. Pena's analysis of al Qaeda and American policy.
America's Focus
Mr. Pena's book contains one major assumption upon which the whole book and argumentation are based. That assumption is that al Qaeda is the foremost threat to America. While some may take this as doctrine, others do not, and Mr. Pena does not do a sufficient job backing up this assumption. Let us take, for example, al Qaeda's attacks directly on American interests in the last two decades :
1. World Trade Center - 1993 (unsuccessful)
2. African Embassies -1998
3. USS Cole - 2000
4. 9/11 - 2001
All of them were of course devastating and reprehensible, but the only one that had the effect of doing real damage to America was 9/11. And yet, five years later, truly not much has changed in America. The change was greater in New York itself, but five years later they are still haggling over the WTC site. And while the 3,000 deaths in the attack is tragic, it pales in comparison to the more than 42,000 that die every single year in auto accidents in America.
Al Qaeda may be the only group out there that actually has the wherewithal to attack America, but even their most devastating attack by no means brought America down or even threatened to do so. It's far more devastating effect was not the immediate deaths or impact on the economy, but the changes that it produced in America's foreign policy, which have generated additional support for our enemies and far fewer friends for America.
The truth is that al Qaeda is not an actual threat to America or the American way of life, but they are a threat to American power and influence in the world, and bring that fight to American soil. As such, they deserve to be hunted down and destroyed, but we should do so in the context of a broader campaign to increase America's power and influence.
America today is the most powerful nation the earth has ever seen. The only current international threat still comes from the nuclear arsenals of Russia and China, which are the only groups able to actually destroy America itself. But we have successfully used deterrence to minimize the risk from those countries. The biggest threat to America today is that, through bad leadership, we misuse our power and influence and cause it to decline. This would allow other state and non-state entities to arise and threaten not only our dominance in world affairs, but our very country. Thus, while it is good to consider America as a positive influence on the world, we should look at America's power and influence in world affairs as a strong protector of our freedoms and our democracy.
While many of Mr. Pena's suggestions are excellent as to defeating al Qaeda, he seems to believe that this conflict is more about the protection of the "homeland" than about the protection of American supremacy. It is not the "homeland" that al Qaeda is after, it is American supremacy itself. Yielding that supremacy to al Qaeda may temporarily protect the homeland, but it will lead to a lessening of American interests abroad. As successful Presidents over the past century have recognized, a peaceful and prosperous world leads to a peaceful and prosperous America. I will discuss some strategies for defeating al Qaeda while simultaneously maintaining and expanding American power and influence later, but first let us discuss al Qaeda itself in more depth.
Nature of the Beast
Mr. Pena does an excellent job at stating what al Qaeda's goals and ambitions are. He also reiterates that it is not America that al Qaeda hates, but America's effects in the Islamic world. This is true, and not stated often enough. Al Qaeda is not some evil demon from the pits that we must slay for the goodness of the world. Al Qaeda is instead a group of human beings with ambition and an ideology to back up that ambition. Their ambition is the reform (revolution) of the Muslim world to return it to the "pure" state as when it was led by caliphs. Their ideology is that anyone who interferes with this ambition is not a true Muslim and so is an obstacle in their path. They also have a less stringent regard for either their own lives or the lives of others, especially non-Muslims, in the world.
These ambitions and ideologies put al Qaeda into direct conflict with America, which by its power and influence acts to either maintain the status quo in the middle east (with all of the assorted authoritarian unpleasantness) or to push for increased democracy and improved freedoms (as we have, rather unsuccessfully, done in Iraq). So al Qaeda and the United States are simply two groups with different ambitions and ideologies that compete for power on the world stage. America already has vast power and influence while al Qaeda is attempting to gain its own power and influence. Because of the power differential involved in this competition, one of the only rational choices for al Qaeda to accomplish its ambitions is to conduct asymmetrical warfare. Asymmetrical warfare is a term used often in the connotation of Vietnam to describe how a small, mobile, ideologically committed force used surprise, terror, and propaganda to defeat the largest military power in the world.
Just as with Vietnam, al Qaeda does not have to militarily defeat the United States (nor could it). They must simply win the propaganda campaign. They use terrorism to accomplish this. This is because for every atrocious act that they commit, the United States (or their own local governments) cracks down. These crack downs usually accompany oppression of some sort because the terrorists are mixed in among the local population. Oppression breeds resentment and creates more recruits for al Qaeda who then uses those recruits for more atrocious acts. And thus the cycle continues, with al Qaeda strengthening with every iteration. So Mr. Pena is absolutely right in saying that our continued presence in the Middle East, and especially our occupation of Iraq, merely leads to additional recruits.
But what Mr. Pena does not focus on enough is that al Qaeda is essentially a guerilla group. Their genius is that they are one of the first of such groups to truly go global . While most guerillas are local fighters battling local governments, al Qaeda is a global organization battling the global superpower. Their ability to go global has been aided by international transport and communication. Understanding al Qaeda as a guerilla organization is helpful though because al Qaeda relies on popular support. Without friends and associates to hide them, or without friendly local mosques to recruit, al Qaeda would not be able to function. Mr. Pena is absolutely right that while the leadership is important, it is this popular support that must be destroyed in order for the organization to cease functioning.
Crushing al Qaeda while maintaining a Strong America
Mr. Pena's advice for dealing with al Qaeda is fairly simple: crush the leadership and remove the motivation. This is excellent advice and in fact has been practiced successfully before by countries when non-state actors rise up to challenge the state. The key here is to use both the iron fist and the velvet glove.
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