The terrorists are supposedly masters of "netwar." But they're just another bunch of terrorists and insurgents, but with Internet access and gullible Western academics willing to read deep thinking into their observed actions. I guess being "diffused" and "flat" isn't what Western theorists have it made out to be. Netwits.
So let's have a laugh at the jihadi documents that give us a look inside al Qaeda in Iraq:
Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll, the American military's spokesman in Baghdad, says the document trove is unique, "a kind of comprehensive snapshot" of al-Qaeda during its peak.
"It reveals," Driscoll said, "first of all, a pretty robust command and control system, if you will. I was kind of surprised when I saw the degree of documentation for everything -- pay records, those kind of things -- and that [al Qaeda in Iraq] was obviously a well-established network." ...
Be it then, in 2006, or be it now, al Qaeda in Iraq is nothing if not bureaucratic.
Included in the headquarters of the security prince, Faris, are bundles of pay sheets for entire brigades, hundreds of men carved into infantry battalions and a fire support -- or rocket and mortar -- battalion. To join those ranks, recruits had to complete membership forms.
"These are the application forms filled in by the people who join al Qaeda," Abu Saif said, holding one of the documents obtained by CNN. Until recently, Abu Saif was himself a senior-level al Qaeda commander.
"They took information about [the recruits], and if the applicant lied about something -- because they were investigated -- they would whip him," Abu Saif said.
Induction into al Qaeda, he said, would take up to four months. In one case, Abu Saif recounted, an applicant lived for four months at the home of what he thought was a local supporter of the organization providing a safe house. Finally accepted and called to a cell leaders' meeting, he discovered that his host was actually a senior recruiter who'd been studying his every move for those four months.
Al Qaeda's bookkeeping was orderly and expansive: death lists of opponents, rosters of prisoners al Qaeda was holding, along with the verdicts and sentences (normally execution) the prisoners received, plus phone numbers from a telephone exchange of those who'd called the American tip line to inform on insurgents, and motor pool records of vehicle roadworthiness.
Good grief people. Experts went on about a bunch of thugs as wonder terrorists running circles around our stovepiped defense organization. They had email! And web sites! Ooooh. New and improved! It was netwar! They had mastered it and we had not. We were doomed.
In reality, al Qaeda just about had a Department of Redundancy Department. What kind of flat netwarror is so anal retentive about keeping records? They had membership applications, for Pete's sake!
A lot of Western academics made money and reputations building a bunch of petty but brutal bureaucrats into some magical self-organizing enemy that had discovered a new way of war that we couldn't cope with unless we abandoned our traditional defense organization and mimic them--or mimic what our academics said they looked like. Our academics didn't have a friggin' clue.
Instead, we're kicking their terrorist asses across Iraq and killing them in Afghanistan whenever they appear. With traditional methods time-tested in past campaigns against other irregulars and terrorists who think they should kill their way to power.
Weapons change. Warfare does not.
