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Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism

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Winning the Un-War by Charles Pena

Reviewed by David Isenberg

Not all worthwhile points are new ones. Sometimes the most useful thing one can do is remind people of certain undeniable truths, especially when the powers that be are doing their best to obfuscate or deny them.

In this task Charles Pena, a former director of defense-policy studies at the Cato Institute, succeeds admirably in Winning the Un-War. His thesis is both simple and powerfully valid. He argues that the "global war on terrorism", which nowadays the administration of US President George W Bush simply prefers to call (shades of Nineteen Eighty-Four) the "long war", is a tragic misstep. Pena is not the first one to note that, as terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, fighting a war against it is futile. But he does amass an arsenal of evidence detailing how it has made the United States less, not more, safe.

Pena has an eye for detail. The book is crammed with it. Obviously he spent a long time Web-surfing while doing his research. As such, the first few chapters dealing with the threat of al-Qaeda and the lackluster US response to it, the distraction of the Iraq war and the costs it imposed cover much of the material that has been covered in previous books. To his credit, Pena acknowledges this up front. Yet he manages to flesh out insights that rarely, if ever, are mentioned. For example, in talking about the numbers of US troops needed for the United States to crush the insurgency, he writes:

Historically, the force ratio required for imposing stability and security is 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants; this is the ratio the British - often acknowledged as the most experienced practitioners of such operations - deployed for more than a decade in Malaysia and more than 25 years in Northern Ireland. With a population of nearly 25 million people, to meet the same standard in Iraq would require a force of 500,000 troops for perhaps a decade longer.

That is the same line of thought, albeit more detailed, that caused the Bush White House to force former army chief of staff Eric Shinseki into early retirement when he testified before Congress in early 2003.

Pena also has a flair for language, as you might expect from an author whose acknowledged inspirations range from Sting to Yogi Berra. Operation Iraqi Freedom is a "catastrophic success". Or: "Removing 70,000 US troops from Germany and South Korea is the right thing to do. But like the proverbial joke about the demise of 100 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, it's just a good start." Or, commenting on the US lack of focus for waging war on terrorism, "It is as if America is still the little Dutch boy trying to plug all the holes in the dike with his fingers."

He writes that the "war on terrorism" is the "un-war" because it is unlike any previous war the US has fought. Because it is a different war it requires a different paradigm. But, sad to say, although fortunately Pena does, the United States has not yet made that shift.

One of the strengths of this book is in Chapter 4 where he details what the Pentagon is spending money on and how most of that is totally inappropriate for the war at hand. This is both an educational and a sad chapter. It is educational because of the wealth of detail it supplies on intellectually bankrupt Pentagon acquisition programs and sad because it shows how clueless the United States is in fighting al-Qaeda. Pena accurately points out that in the long haul this war will not be won by reliance on military forces. And yet the US persists in using the Pentagon as if it is the only tool in the toolbox.

The most useful part of the book is Chapter 6, "Tao of Strategy", in which he outlines his policy prescriptions. While this chapter clearly shows the influence of his days at the libertarian Cato Institute, its essence can't be said too often. Simply put, it comes down to this: it is America's actions in the world, not its ideology, that creates enemies. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda hate the US because of what it does, not because of who Americans are. To paraphrase Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion, for every US foreign-policy action in the Arab and Islamic world there is an unpredictable, but almost inevitable, reaction.

As Pena writes: "The problems of US foreign policy in the Islamic world will not be repaired by a better communications or public-reactions or public-diplomacy effort. Muslims see US foreign policy for exactly what it is. A better foreign policy - not better spin - is what is needed. Deeds, not words, are what matters."

Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for the War on Terrorism by Charles Pena. Potomac Books Inc, April 2006, ISBN: 1574889656. Price $27.95, pages 241.

David Isenberg is a senior research analyst at the British American Security Information Council, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, and an adviser to the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information, Washington. These views are his own.

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. The leadership is crushed as an example to all others not to repeat their folly of challenging the state. At the same time, much of what the ideology is demanding (in al Qaeda's case, the withdrawal of America from the Middle East) is granted in order to take away the motivation for future rabble rousing.
Mr. Pena correctly points out that American policy in the Middle East is blatantly self serving and revolves around oil. Our need for oil is something that we can change (with good domestic policies), besides which, the global market for oil means that we need not cozy up to unsightly Arab regimes. The main complaint in the Arab world about America's movements into Iraq is not that America was trying to bring democracy into the region but that America was only seeking Iraqi oil. If America wishes to quiet sympathy for the jihadist movement, then we need to act upon our principles in the region. This does not mean overthrowing every tin pot dictator (or Saddam Hussein). It does mean not supporting tin pot dictators just because they are our tin pot dictators, however. If Islamic governments are elected, it means supporting those governments as free democracies (providing the elections are free and a subsequent quashing of freedoms does not occur), even if we do not always agree with their policies. A principled America is an America far easier to support and far less easy to attack.
A principled America would also work hard to minimize abuses to civil liberties. While we rightly condemn the actions of a few at Abu Graib, we do not address the systematic philosophy underlying the system that allowed such torture to occur. A large part of that systematic philosophy is seen and manifested at Guantanamo as well. Locking individuals up without charges for years on end is the policy of tin pot dictators, and should not be the policy of the United States. If we want the world to believe that we stand for freedom and democracy, then we must practice what we preach. It is the separation between our noble words and our ignoble actions that gives the world pause and leads to hatred and resentment of America. We must follow our noble words with noble actions to insure our long term security. It may slightly hamper efforts in the short term, but our far more important long term goal is a victory over the terrorists in the hearts and minds of the world. While perhaps Mr. Pena did not want to delve too deeply into politics here, failing to mention Guantanamo, which is one of the strongest arguments against America and a rallying cry of al Qaeda, is shortsighted.
Mr. Pena is also absolutely correct in advocating a change to our methods in hunting al Qaeda. We no longer live in a world with the Warsaw Pact. Troops should be shifted around and our military should focus not on submarines, B-2 bombers, and new fangled fighter jets. Instead, we should focus on special forces and being able to fight insurgencies. Unlike Mr. Pena, I do not believe that this requires a shrinkage of personnel. I believe that we must stay in Iraq because leaving it will allow the terrorists another home back much like Afghanistan was. But we do need to shift from a Cold War outlook to a military able to deal with modern threats of non-state actors and indigenous insurgencies.
Special forces and good localized intelligence will be critical to tracking down the leadership of al Qaeda and bringing them to justice. While Mr. Pena is correct that their organization is flexible and adaptable, each time we make an example of one of their leaders, it will hopefully discourage others. This aspect of our operation is less important, however, because it is very difficult to dissuade martyrs. So while we should focus on catching bin Laden and his ilk, our main focus should be on eliminating his basis of popular support.

Conclusion

While the book does contain some shortcomings, and I do not think I would like to live in Mr. Pena's isolationist United States, Mr. Pena does offer us a hopeful way of combating al Qaeda. We must bring the fight to them. But we must define that fight as the fight for the hearts and minds of the Islamic world. We are not winning that fight by supporting Arab autocrats or by invading Arab lands. Instead, we need to adopt a principled foreign policy and work to rebuild our support not only around the region but around the world. In doing so, we will take away the critical popular support that al Qaeda relies upon. Combined with operations to destroy al Qaeda's leadership, this offers us the best chance of destroying al Qaeda and creating a stronger America in the process.

Insightful and well-written, Winning the Un-war is an important contribution to understanding the evolution of the Bush administration's "global war on terrorism"--its successes and more importantly, its failures.

As the title of the book suggests, Pena's central argument revolves around the concept that the "war on terror" is both a rhetorical and operational misnomer. He posits that in order to prevail in this "Un-war," the United States will need to radically change its strategies to meet the security challenges of the post 9/11 era.

Of these challenges, none is more important to Pena than al Qaeda--that he identifies as the true threat to the United States. As such, the war in Iraq--often cited as the "central front" in the war on terror--is viewed by Pena as a dangerous distraction that has, and will continue to hurt America's ability to defend its truly vital national interests.

Though this hypothesis may strike some readers as having been raised some years back, Winning the Un-war is anything but another Wilsonian rehash.

Indeed Pena's analysis goes far beyond the familiar pleas of reforming multilaterals and courting allies. Transitioning seamlessly from closing shop in Iraq, he offers logical and concise policy alternatives to problems such as streamlining the military, fixing homeland security, and ultimately reforming U.S. foreign policy itself.

Whether readers agree with his approach or not, Pena's breed of defensive realism (which should not be confused with isolationism) offers fresh solutions to complex problems--something dreadfully lacking in today's polarized environment (Neo-Conservative vs. Wilsonian).

Overall, Winning the Un-war will should prove a worthwhile read to anyone who is interested in evaluating the range of options when it comes to protecting this country and ensuring that the next generation is better off than the current one.

Most people say I lean well to the conservative republican side. That has not prevented me from reading James Carville and now Charles Pena.

The book is well written and clearly identifies options and the reasons for change in approaching the new enemy. Mr. Pena's analysis of current national defense budgets, foreign policy, and political rhetoric strike cords of rationality.

For success in protecting the homeland and de-escalating international tensions, I hope the book becomes well read and heeded by responsible parties.

This book offers a reasonably well crafted counter-terrorism program that could protect the U.S. from a host of real and imagined enemies. Charles Pena (Penya) is a careful writer who has taken the trouble to seriously reflect on the nature of the terrorist threats facing the U.S. in the 21st Century. In perhaps Pena's most perceptive chapter, "The Yin and Yang of al Qaeda", he makes clear that al Qaeda is networked type of organization rather than a hierarchical structure composed of multiple virtually autonomous nodes consisting of one or more persons. He further identifies al Qaeda as an extreme faction of a larger fundamentalist movement within the Islamic Religion. By accurately describing the target, Pena provides a vital first step in developing a rational counter-terrorism strategy. In this description he relies heavily on the work of Dr. Marc Sagemen, "Understanding Terror Networks" (Amazon.com) and Rand Corporation studies of networked type of organizations (Pena did not cite this work, but this reviewer would recommend "Networks and Netwars" edited by Arquilla and Ronfeldt as a good introduction to the concept of networked organizations (Amazon.com)). By making the effort to really understand the nature of al Qaeda and its place in the broader Islamic fundamentalist movement, Pena has been able to develop a viable strategy to counter the threat from Islamic extremists.

Although, Pena's proposed counter-terrorism strategy incorporates a number of sound ideas, it is somewhat less convincing than his excellent description of the problem. Still he makes a strong argument that Operation Iraqi Freedom has been a costly and, in many ways, pointless diversion from the real war on terror and he places both Iran and North Korea in rational perspective in terms of U.S. interests. More importantly, he characterizes the war on terrorism as not so much a war ("Un-war") as an on going diplomatic and law enforcement problem requiring major U.S. policy changes especially towards the Near East. Some portions of his strategy are somewhat more questionable, but he appears to be on the right track. At the very least, Pena appears to have developed a pretty good case for rethinking the so-called "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT).

When I first started reading this book, I found myself very discouraged. The first two chapters consist almost entirely of quotes, block quotes, and more quotes. All these chapters do is show how President Bush contradicted himself on terrorism and the war in Iraq. There is no discussion of the deeper issues at stake.

As I read along, the book gradually improved. Pena has some interesting ideas about rearranging the US military, the organization of terror groups, and how to structure our alliances in the Middle East.

Each of these could have been developed into an entire book, but unfortunately the author compresses them into individual chapters. Expanding one of these issues, complete with examples and in-depth explanation, would have greatly improved the book.

Regrettably, the poor writing style continues throughout. Long quotes occupy most of the space, rather than discussion of the ideas.

In short, this book had great potential. However, it is written in the style of a struggling high school student. It seems as though the author is simply trying to take up space, dumping as many quotes as possible, rather than taking the time to analyze the issues at stake.

Chuck Pena, with the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, has long criticized the administration's mismanaged war on terrorism and counterproductive invasion of Iraq. He deals with both in Winning the Un-War. It should be read by anyone who believes that protecting America requires more than ritualistic incantations about freedom's inevitable triumph.
Pena contends that killing or capturing terrorists is necessary but not sufficient. He argues that Washington also must stop appearing to make war on Islam, which helps create more terrorists.
He writes: "Ultimately, without blaming America, we must be
willing to look in the mirror to examine and understand how our
own policies--both foreign and domestic--may affect the dynamics
and evolution of the Muslim terrrorist threat."
Unfortunately, Americans don't hear such honest realism nearly often enough. Winning the Un-War may be the most important book yet to appear on dealing with terrorism.
'

Frank M. Hoopes wrote:


If I have to take away one main thought from the book it is that U.S,
foreign policy, and certainly not just during the Bush administration,
and certainly not just the war, is, and probably will continue to be our
big problem.

The above is a significant acknowledgement concerning this book in that I am a very staunch conservative!

This is exactly the cogent, focused strategy that should be read at the
highest levels of The Executive Branch. Were we go from here with our
nation's foreign policy can be summed up as follows: Good-bye PNAC,
Hello Winning the Un-War. Pena's book is a must read.

Charles Pena has written a superb book that captures the complexity of the problem the United States faces in battling Al Qaeda and its allies. His sophisticated analysis goes far beyond the cliche-ridden writings and speeches that usually dominate the policy debate in Washington. He shows clearly that the notion of a "war" on terrorism is an overused and misleading metaphor. Most of all, he demonstrates that America has frequently been its own worst enemy in the way it has dealt with the Islamic world.

There are so many valuable lessons that this book provides, but perhaps Pena's greatest achievement is that he demolishes the simplistic notion that most Muslim enemies of the United States hate America because of its freedoms and culture. Instead, he amasses evidence that a growing number of Muslims sympathize with the terrorists because of inept and hypocritical U.S. policies in their region. We need to do many things to neutralize Al Qaeda and its allies, but none of those actions will prove effective in the long run unless Washington changes its foreign policy.

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the terrorist problem and how to combat it.