Weekly Shredder 24:
The Defense Science Board report
by James Norton

Fifty years ago, political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.

The destruction of America's credibility is the topic of a report released last week by the Defense Science Board.

Government reports tend to exhibit the hallmarks of bad writing: they're often dense, confusing, choked with jargon, stripped of crucial context or simply misleading.

But this one simply sizzles:

There is consensus that America's power to persuade is in a state of crisis.... Opinion surveys conducted by Zogby International, the Pew Research Center, Gallup and the Department of State reveal widespread animosity toward the United States and its policies.... The war [in Iraq] has increased mistrust of America in Europe, weakened support for the war on terrorism, and undermined US credibility worldwide.

If this had been written by Paul Krugman, Michael Moore or "Anonymous," it would have been written off as a post-election firebomb lobbed by bitchy leftists.

But it was written by a government committee convened by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz... and reporting to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Naturally, it was released as a PDF document on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving — the political equivalent of burying the story at midnight in an unmarked grave. On the moon.

Fortunately, a journalist dug it up.

The report's explosive power doesn't come from outrage or satire. It's the counsel of a well-informed, well-connected, group of academics working with officials from the Departments of State and Defense. Because every word was hashed out carefully — and fiery rhetoric was a luxury — the stark facts of certain passages stand out like shafts of sunlight penetrating a dirty aquarium.

For archives, audio, and background about the column, click here.

Beyond illuminating the specific question of strategic communication, the document examines the elemental reasons for fighting the war on terror, and the very concept of a "war on terror" itself.

To succeed, we must understand the United States is engaged in a generational and global struggle about ideas, not a war between the West and Islam. It is more than a war against the tactic of terrorism. If we continue to concentrate primarily on states ("getting it right" in Iraq, managing the next state conflict better), we will fail.

The report also documents and dissects the administration's failures in trying to communicate American values and rationales for war to the world:

There has been no presidential directive on strategic communication since the Presidential Decision Directive on International Public Information (PDD 68), issued April 30, 1999....

[The Office of] the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs... was vacant or filled in an acting capacity for two years during the Bush administration.

The DOD created an Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) on Oct. 30, 2001, to serve as the department's focal point for a "strategic information campaign in support of the war on terrorism." ... OSI generated opposition from government public affairs officials who feared it would undermine their credibility and from negative press coverage in the US and abroad alleging the office intended to place lies and disinformation in foreign media organizations. The Secretary of Defense dissolved OSI on Feb. 26, 2002, stating the "office has clearly been so damaged that it is pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively."

United States strategic communication lacks sustained presidential direction, effective interagency coordination, optimal private sector partnerships, and adequate resources. Tactical message coordination does not equate with strategic planning and evaluation.... In 2002 the President's National Security Strategy urged fundamental change in the major instruments of statecraft.... Two years later, the US has made little progress in building and transforming its strategic communication assets.

Put together, these and other facts within the report point toward the conclusion that this government has failed to adequately communicate with the Arab community, alienated Muslims around the world and inflamed anti-US feeling while decimating America's diplomatic power.

In a nutshell: Far from fighting a smarter war against terrorism, Bush and friends are fighting a war against US credibility. The key tactic: believing our own propaganda about Al Qaeda being an isolated band of fanatics.

Are they fanatic? Unquestionably. Terrorists? Yes. Extreme representatives of a large section of the world's Muslim population? Unfortunately, yes — and they're becoming representative of more and more people as US diplomacy fails, and body counts click ever upward in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Occupied Territories.

At its very best, the report stabs directly at the heart of our enemies and their supporters, re-examining the classic post-Sept. 11, 2001, question.

Q: Why do they hate us?

A: Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.

... [These regimes] are the main target of the broader Islamist movement, as well as the actual fighter groups. The United States finds itself in the strategically awkward — and potentially dangerous — situation of being the longstanding prop and alliance partner of these authoritarian regimes. Without the US, these regimes could not survive. Thus the US has strongly taken sides in a desperate struggle that is both broadly cast for all Muslims and country-specific.

Complicated?

You bet. The US supports "friendly" regimes that are hated by most of their own people and much of the world's Muslim community. Terrorists like those enrolled in Al Qaeda use that hatred to win support. The US responds by more strongly backing those dictators and corrupt regimes, while telling the people of the Middle East that US actions are bringing "democracy" to their part of the world.

Then, for some reason, residents of the Middle East fail to believe us.

But the idea that our still-raging war is more complicated than a shootout in a really well-produced special episode of "Gunsmoke" is something that has never entered our government's planning, let alone its rhetoric — the strategy has been to go after "bad guys," and the tactic has been the attacking of hostile states.

With absolute clarity, the Defense Science Board report spells out the obvious: The people US troops are "liberating" in the Middle East don't view us as liberators, and until we take that fact into consideration, every iota of American government rhetoric, information and propaganda will be seen as lies from a selfish occupier.

This isn't a Democratic position; it's not a liberal or "progressive" stance. It's just pragmatism, something that the authors of this report know well from their grunt's eye view of international diplomacy.

Within its pages, the authors of the report raise dozens of large and challenging questions about American policy and strategy.

But the way this report has been handled by the government and press raises a different question altogether.

If the Pacers/Pistons basket-brawl was worth millions of words in print and hundreds of hours of TV time, why was this report — a searingly written, honest look at American policy and statecraft in a time of world crisis — dumped into a ditch and left to die?

E-mail James Norton at jim@flakmag.com.

— graphic by Derek Evernden (derek@ocellus.net)