Ideological war

One major criticism of the administration is that it hasn't done nearly enough in the public relations department to counter Islamist propaganda worldwide. Bill Gertz reports and I couldn’t agree more:

The U.S. government needs to develop a counterideology to Islamic extremism as part of its multifaceted global war on terrorism, according to a former U.S. counterintelligence official.
An aggressive ideological war on Islamic extremism should complement military, diplomatic and economic measures, but ideology has been neglected by the U.S. government, writes William Gawthrop in the current issue of the Vanguard, the journal of the Military Intelligence Corps Association.

Specifically, Mr. Gawthrop, whose views in the article are his own and not those of any U.S. government agency, said the U.S. military needs first to study the warfighting methods of Islam's central figure, something it has not done to date.

"Mohammad, both in his capacity as a military and religious leader, established a strategic objective of political (as well as religious) imperium and he left behind a rudimentary warfighting doctrine articulated in the Koran, elaborated on in the Haddiths, codified in Islamic Law and reinforced by current interpretations in the modern era," Mr. Gawthrop said.

"As late as early 2006, the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Mohammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war fighting doctrine laid down by Mohammed, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered."

Mr. Gawthrop calls for developing an ideological counter to Islamic extremism and for the United States, moderate Muslim governments and the non-Muslim world to wage ideological war on the extremists.

"Presently the adversary has the upper hand in using a global network of information outlets capable of delivering Islamic themes penetrating otherwise inaccessible recesses of the Islamic community," he said.