Minor Thoughts from me to you

Welcome to Information Warfare 101. This is a topic that the American public desperately needs to know about. The war in Iraq is not just a war of bullets and bombs. It is a war of ideas and information. Right now, our enemy is better at fighting this war than we are. We must win this war through information and ideologies, not through strategic bombing campaigns or overwhelming force. While overwhelming force is effective, it is not sufficient to win the war by itself.

What is Information Warfare? According to Kim Taipale, "information warfare is the protection, monitoring, disruption, or manipulation of information and information flows to improve one's own decision-making process or to degrade that of the enemy." It is making the enemy see what you want him to see and hiding what you don't want him to see. Information Warfare is the art of making your enemy react in a way that you want him to react by feeding him information that you have manipulated in some way.

Our terrorist enemies are masters of this type of warfare. They know that they cannot defeat our forces in an open fight. They also know that we have proven vulnerable to information warfare in the past.

We lost our first major information battle during the Vietnam war. In January of 1968, the Communists of North Vietnam launched a surprise attack against American and South Vietnamese forces -- the Tet Offensive. Their main goal was to provide the impression that American forces were not winning (and could not win) a fight in Vietnam.

The actual attack was a disaster. The North Korean forces suffered 35,000 dead, 60,000 wounded, and 6,000 captured. The American and South Korean losses totaled around 3,900. The attack was not judged in military terms, however. It was judged in terms of perception. The American media and the American people perceived it as a devastating American loss, mostly due to the surprise of the attack and the wide-spread nature of the attack. The Tet Offensive marked the beginning of the end of American involvement in Vietnam.

The goal of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and other terrorist groups, is to duplicate the success of the Tet Offensive. They are willing to take large military losses if, in doing so, they can convince the American people that the terrorists are winning.

Judging by the media coverage of the Iraq war, we are losing the information war. That needs to change. We can win in Iraq, but only if the American people are willing and able to look past the misinformation, lies, and distortions of the terrorists.

I'm willing to spend my time pointing out exactly where and when we're being lied to. Are you willing you follow along with me?