Admiral Olson, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote this piece in the Journal of International Security this week. I'm not going to write a long criticism here, simply because I'm lazy and just wanted to link to it, because I thought y'all might find it interesting.
But I am going to throw one comment out there: Admiral Olson, in his intro, lumps all the terrorism and insurgencies the United States is facing under the broad term of a "global insurgency." This is a mischaracterization of the nature of the threat. There is no global conspiracy between terrorist and insurgents everywhere to bring down the United States, as Admiral Olson would have it sound. The insurgencies we are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan are the consequences of the counter-terrorism course we chose to pursue in the wake of September 11, 2001.
1 comment:
Great point. You're alluding to the central jist in Kilcullen's excellent The Accidental Guerrilla. He argues that Al-Qaeda and the core international terrorists are a very distinct group from most insurgents. They want a more globalized world, but one in which the ummah (Islamic peoples) dominate. Most of the insurgents we fight are fighting against our globalizing influence or simply because we are in their space.
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