"Thinking red." That's the military term for analyzing a situation from your enemy's viewpoint. Or, to quote Sun Tzu:
If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Brian Bresnahan, who served in OIF as a Major in the Marine Corps, takes a look at the GWoT through our enemy's eyes.
We read their newspapers and watch their news channels to see the hand of Allah at work. When they count the death of 500 of our Taliban brothers at the cost of two Americans as a loss for America, we know that god's will is being done. When their leaders like Howard Dean come on television shows and publicly state the same thing, we are sure that victory is Allah's will for us.
We are grateful to their politicians like Murtha and Hagel who argue for running away from us. That is the life blood of our cause -- to break their will. And while breaking their will, it gives us the propaganda to recruit others, to show potential recruits America 's leaders won't fight, we are winning. We use the words of their politicians to debate and attempt to demoralize their soldiers. We may lack the means to defeat them militarily, but we don't need to defeat their military. When America 's leaders give their people reasons not to fight we are accomplishing our objectives and inching closer to the victory we wait patiently for Allah to deliver.
So much of the analysis of the war we get from the media is focused purely on the US. How many losses did we suffer? How much money will it cost us? What does the world think of us? Besides betraying a Paris Hilton-like narcissism, analysis that is centered on the US gives us a picture that is not only incomplete, it's misleading. Major Bresnahan's column is a good start, but I'd like to see more like it from our illustrious media. But I'm not holding my breath. Expecting the news media to abandon narcissism may be a bit unrealistic.
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