"I would also add that not nearly enough thought has gone on in government circles into how authorities can demoralize these networks on the moral level..."

We are conditioned to think of war as government activity and for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations of war that is true. But once the 4th generation+ appears it is no longer a war waged by governments against governments. Our free societies are comprised of government and civil society. The moral level is something that is better handled by the civil society component. We recognize the importance of the "strategic corporal", well in civil society we need to recognize the role of the "strategic citizen". In the kind of war we are now fighting ordinary citizens can have a strategic impact. In free societies it is the government's job to guarantee freedom of speech. It is not authorized to pick and choose among the variety of speech its citizens choose to engage in. Rather, it is the role of the citizen to step up to the plate and compete. Islamic fundamentalists are free to try to persuade people to their point of view, to wage media campaigns, hire lobbyists, and propagate their ideas. As long as they are not breaking the law, government has no role. But citizens do have a role. The kind of war we are in now is different from what we faced in the past. Citizens have a strategic role to play. In fact the only way we can win this war is if citizens assume the responsibility of waging the war within civil society and wage campaigns within the context of civil society to counter Islamist activity. "Strategic citizens" need to create networks, develop ideas, and persuade those who are vulnerable to the Islamist message to adopt a vision of a society "conceived in liberty". They need to become advocates for what we have in the West that is worth defending.

Last year when we were first discussing 5GW, I suggested that we look at the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci's idea of cultural hegemony as a possible contender. One of the internal conflicts within socialism in the early 20th century was the fact that the working class was not inclined to fulfill its "assigned" role as the revolutionary agent. Some socialists solved this problem by aligning with authoritarian nationalists and replacing the working class with "the nation" as the revolutionary agent, thus giving us fascism. But Gramsci concluded that the failure to radicalize the workers was because liberal capitalism had achieved cultural hegemony, whose ideas and values were unconsciously accepted as "common sense". Therefore socialist ideas were rejected out of hand. The plan then was for socialists to engage in a strategy to achieve cultural hegemony for their ideas. This is exactly what Islamic fundamentalists are doing. They are first achieving hegemony within Muslim communities in the West and then by demanding special concessions for their Islamist views, seeking hegemony in Western societies generally. Western democratic governments are not organized to deal with this kind of threat. In the West we break things up into different categories: religion and politics, politics and war, war and crime. And depending on how a particular act is categorized determines how we respond to it and whether government action is authorized. But the Islamic fundamentalists don't necessarily think terms of our categories. For them religion, politics, war and crime are undifferentiated. One of the biggest problems we have in the West is recognizing the threat and that is because it doesn't fit into our categories. We look at what they are doing and we say "That's no threat, it's not war. It's just people practicing their religion, engaging in normal politics. That's nothing more than a criminal act, law enforcement can handle it."

There will come a time when Islamists will realize that terrorism is counterproductive in the West. That they can achieve their goals through boycotts, protests, marches, lobbying, media campaigns and electoral politics. Is that still war? There is a point where politics and war become indistinguishable. And at that point it isn't government that will lead the way, but, rather, citizens. Citizens motivated by the ideals of the free society, creating associations to further those ideals, and waging a war of ideas to defend their civilization.

So what will it take for citizens to become "strategic citizens"? To recognize their potential and to have the will and drive to act? The war on the moral level is a citizen responsibility. How do we wage that war?
 

I like the "strategic citizen" concept as you have articulated it Phil -well done. I think you are right. Part of getting started will be raising awareness of the concept among potential ' influencers".

OTOH, even with that being the case the *impact* and more importantly the public *perception* of the imapact of governmental actions are so large that they should give the Pentagon/IC/State/NSc/White House some pause to consider the moral level and develop a strategy.
 

Great comment, Phil!

From early on, I have been trying to formulate the best way of putting: GWB supports the Islamists! Heh, that's a radical way of putting it, of course. In fact the suggestion that some thousands of Islamists terrorists actually threaten America's destruction is so vastly overstated as to be a feather in the cap of bin Laden. I.e., by preaching fear while also telling the American public, Go shop, carry on with your lives; I GWB and the government hired to protect you will do all the work!, GWB has, in effect, been saying that 300 million Americans are no match for a few hundred thousand terrorists (if that many) -- whereas, he should have been preaching that every American can do what an Islamist can do, but do it better.

I addressed this very notion, and tied it to 5GW, in August '05 on Phatic Communion:

"For each terrorist, there is at least one American standing in opposition."

The problem is: GWB's rhetoric has been disempowering individual Americans; whereas, in 5GW, you gain hands in the field by empowering your (perhaps unwitting) agents. And we will probably need to move into the next generation of warfare if we are going to win this Long War -- before our enemies do (as you have already pointed out.)
 

“by preaching fear while also telling the American public, Go shop, carry on with your lives; I GWB and the government hired to protect you will do all the work!”

While I believe Bush is without ethics, I believe he has a clear logic. Bush could not carry out war without a strong economy. Our economy is based on the consumer. Without the consumer the USA could not keep borrowing funds to finance a war. The consumer needed to keep spending, at least until financial resources from Iraq started poring in.

If you haven’t noticed our economy still appears very strong despite massive tax cuts, massive government spending and a war waging to the tune of 8 billion a month. As long as we Americans in the USA keep spending, at home and in Iraq, our economy will continue to prosper. No, the last thing Bush wanted was for the consumer to stop spending.

“GWB has, in effect, been saying that 300 million Americans are no match for a few hundred thousand terrorists (if that many) -- whereas, he should have been preaching that every American can do what an Islamist can do, but do it better.”

I think what GWB has been saying is: shut up people (as in we the people) I know what is best for you. I am a benevolent ruler put on this earth to guide you. Let me and my people of superior ethics save this country, at any cost, from all of those who want to destroy it. I guess you can’t argue with logic like that, even if you tried.

5GW is warfare without any worth, because it has no ethics. The way you defeat 5GW is by ignoring it. Warfare is really about supporting a reality and taking away someone else’s. 5GW gnaws at your ethics to change your reality. If your ethics cannot support your reality, then your reality probably should fall away anyway. If 5GW had ethics or worth, it would be self-evident. You would bring them out into the brightest sunlight instead of hiding them like some coward. No 5GW is about your own ethics and not your enemy's. 5GW is a warfare inside yourself, it is evolution.
 

The way you defeat 5GW is by ignoring it.

Well, that's how you are attacked by a 5GW force. 5GW is SecretWar, if it means anything at all.

Likewise, talk of ethics here seems distracting. If "ethics" are normative, then they are out of place in a substantive discussion. If they are substantive, a better term should be found.
 

Larry,

How has our strong economy won the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Is 'borrowing funds to finance a war' healthy for our economy -- say, borrowing from China? Would America's economy spiral into 3rd-world status (or Gap status) if Bush had not said, "Go shop!"? (I think Americans spend, and will continue to spend, until there is nothing left to buy or no funds to buy it.)

No 5GW is about your own ethics and not your enemy's. 5GW is a warfare inside yourself, it is evolution.

How is telling the average American, "Go about your normal business", and getting them to do so, a recipe for internal evolution? Really, I want to know. Is it 'ethical' to turn a blind eye to the exterior world that doesn't fulfill a personal need...say, ignore doing something to defeat extremism and global terrorism while slavering over the upcoming release of the Playstation 3? Is it 'ethical' to abdicate responsibility for the world to a Benevolent Leader?
 

Dan,

I probably would have used the word 'virtue', myself.
 

“The way you defeat 5GW is by ignoring it.”

”Well, that's how you are attacked by a 5GW force. 5GW is SecretWar, if it means anything at all.”

Of course, it means much to me; I listen to you explicitly. Perhaps ignoring it is not exactly what I mean. If 5GW is a SecretWar then there is not much you can really do about it, if one is being waged against you. Your only defense would be to have a strong enough horizontal force to combat this warfare. By ignoring it and concentrating on what makes your country strong, standing up for those things that made you strong to begin with, would seem to be the way to defeat 5GW. So what I may be suggesting, if a 5GW is being waged against you, which you will never know, you should not change your ways, but simply have faith in your society.

Also, there would be as good of a possibility in making a bad change as making a good change. I believe 5GW is really evolution and it seems to me evolution is usually a good change. The enemy is trying to get you to evolve into something else, make you change. Therefore don’t change, evolve.

I guess a case in point would be Pat Buchanan’s theory that Mexico is waging a SecretWar to take over the South West USA. He makes a good point, if his statistics are accurate, but I am not sure we should start changing a bunch of laws to counter this SecretWar. I think something has changed inside the USA and that needs to be corrected or we need to ignore it and let evolution take its course. If we ignore it, we need to hold those ideas that we hold dear even tighter than before.

In that sense I believe 5GW must be kind of backwards. To remain unchanged, we will need to become proactive and probably become a country that is unrecognizable a few years down the road. To evolve, we need to ignore the process and instead strengthen our will to keep those ideas that we hold true unchanged. If these ideas that we hold as true are worth a rats ass, they will stand on their own. In Howard Bloom terms, we need to seek out our inner-judges and hold on to them for the ride during this inter group tournament.


”Likewise, talk of ethics here seems distracting. If "ethics" are normative, then they are out of place in a substantive discussion. If they are substantive, a better term should be found.”

Again I was thinking in terms of inner-judges. I believe what inner-judges do is give the movement of a complex adaptive system worth. It does this by assigning ethics to its movement. Perhaps values or worth would be a better term. I am not sure the inner-judges actually “judge” the ethics (I think this judging is done in the inter-group tournaments), the inner-judges only identify those ethics and determines if the movement has these ethics, kind of in a rule of law sort of way. The participants of the inter-group tournament play by these ethics and the outcome is ethical.

Although I agree my comment about Bush having no ethics was out of place, I think this statement is true about all leaders. A leaders job is to shift resources to the areas that need resources and take away resources from those who haven’t any. I think this practice has no ethics, but the war between ethics is fought inside these inter-group tournaments. The winner of the inter-group tournament needs the resources and the leader shifts the resources of the complex adaptive system to the winner. The participants of the tournaments are using the “ethics” of the complex adaptive system to “win”.
 

"How has our strong economy won the war in Iraq and Afghanistan?"

It is not so much that our strong economy is winning the war; by telling the people of the USA to keep spending we didn’t destroy our economy. If the people of the USA had started to sacrifice, spending our resources only for what we need instead of what we want, our economy would not have survived as is. If we had started saving to buy the resource for this “Long war” our economy would have tanked. Another way of looking at this is as long as we have another country, or several countries, that are willing to finance a long war; there is no need for us to conserve our resources to support this war, the movement of resources throughout the globe continues with the same dynamics.

Our consumer economy is not built on consuming the things we need; it is built on a system of want. We want that playstation 3. We want cheep products from countries that pay their people less than our workers while destroying their own environments. We even want cheep oil, so we can move around, as we want. As long as our leaders move the resources according to the winners of our inter-group tournament (in the case of the USA it’s those people of want) our economy will keep going. The potential for movement, or potential energy, is the same with a system of want or need; the difference is that when a system gets needy, it starts to diversify. A system of want can diversify or conform to itself, as in conform to globalization or diversify into nationalism. When we become a nation of need, we will try to diversify the system that is prevalent. This would mean an end to globalization.

Perhaps if you look at the way China is manipulating the dollar, it will clarify the situation. China is keeping the value of the dollar high so that our nation remains a nation of want. Almost all Asian nations import into China, so China needs a potential customer, someone it can put its resources into. By keeping the dollar high, China is building up its own potential customer; it is in effect creating potential energy. As long as the USA remains a country of want, instead of need, our economy will remain strong. It also helps China if the country that it is putting its resources into also is willing to put its resources into securing the needs of China. While the resources that are being spent in our war with Iraq are going back into our economy, in a way, the resources under the country we are dieing for belong to China. The more we borrow from China; the more this becomes the truth. China, more than the people of the USA, is financing our war in Iraq. If we had been told to sacrifice, we would have tried to finance the war on our own. In a Milton Friedman sort of way we would have stopped producing dollars to send overseas, and instead conserved those dollars in our banks over here. I think this would have produced the effect of fewer dollars in circulation. Fewer dollars means a smaller, less powerful, economy.

“Is 'borrowing funds to finance a war' healthy for our economy -- say, borrowing from China? Would America's economy spiral into 3rd-world status (or Gap status) if Bush had not said, "Go shop!"? (I think Americans spend, and will continue to spend, until there is nothing left to buy or no funds to buy it.)”

It is “healthy” for our consumer economy.

“Would America's economy spiral into 3rd-world status”

We would look like Russia did in the 90’s, except we would have more “friends” ready to help us.

“How is telling the average American, "Go about your normal business", and getting them to do so, a recipe for internal evolution?”

Evolution is all around us, but you can’t see it because it is 5GW. Evolution is about enabling two cohesive forces move pass each other in the same mass. This mass is called globalization. The two cohesive forces are able to pass, or survive, each other because of friction. Friction is the relationship between two cohesive forces perpendicular to each of them.

If, as an example, you look at the vertical force from China and the vertical force from the USA as two forces able to slide by each other, then you can see evolution in “action”. Our two countries are able to exchange mass, money and products, one slides by the other, without these masses bumping into each other.

But then, mass accelerating across a distance is kinetic energy, a cohesive force. The mass moving between each country is time dependent so there has to be acceleration, both positive and negative, involved.

While the civilian exchange of goods comes from the horizontal force of each nation, when it is exchanged, it becomes a vertical force, or what I call kinetic energy. The friction that enables this evolution is the explicit law related to this exchange of mass. We are united, in one mass, with a totalitarian government that believes in a benevolent ruler; we are united by globalization. But the outcome of this globalization has not been determined yet. There is an inter group tournament going on inside this complex adaptive system called globalization.

The inner judges are judging the worth of the beliefs and explicit law of this system, while the wants and needs of the system battle it out. By telling the American people to “go about your normal business” we are enabling this tournament to continue. So “go shop” is really not the recipe for internal evolution, there is internal evolution going on inside globalization, it is just advice to continue the evolution.

While many people on the web think that China is evolving into something that looks more like the USA, the reverse can be true. We have suspended habeas corpus, tortured prisoners, spied on citizens and attacked countries that haven’t attacked us. Why, it may soon be that only by the benevolence of our leaders will we have freedom. It is up to your inner judge to decide; I am just saying it could be that we have already evolved, somewhat, but you can’t see it, you know 5GW.