From today's Washington Times: "General Sees 'Generational War' Against Terrorism"
In his comments, I believe General Schissler provides an important--and cautionary--note for those seeking short-term political and military fixes in the War on Terror (Hellooo...Mr. Baker). And, if anything, Schissler may be optimistic in his assessment; lest we forget, many of these "errors" in Islamic thinking are rooted in traditions and teachings that date back hundreds, even thousands, of years. One of the more "recent" influences on Osama bin Laden was a radical Sunni cleric who did most of his writing when Thomas Jefferson was in the White House.
Trans-generational problems require steadfast commitment and long-term solutions. As General Schissler notes, our enemy is committed to the 50, 100-year plan." He's concerned about "maintaining the public will, the American will, over that duration."
Clearly, he's read the ISG report.
2 comments:
Thanks for covering this.
I've linked to you here (as well as quoting you heavily): http://consul-at-arms.blogspot.com/2006/12/re-words-of-wisdom-part-ii.html
This is in the "everything old is new again category."
I have blogged before on a book that markedly changed my world outlook, and that of the history of the world and our own nation.
"Our Own Worst Enemy" by William Lederer (who was a retired Navy Captain and the co-author of "The Ugly American") told an very interesting story, with wisdom for today, about taking on an enemy who has a much longer history of their culture and has in fact fought multigenarational battles within that history. In the book, he discusses that Vietnamese fighting for 1000 (no typo there read: One THOUSAND) years against domination of the Chinese and winning (note: the struggle lasted 1000 years). That type of history engenders certain cultural views we cannot grasp well, but if we intellectually understand this about the enemy, maybe we can adapt the strategy and tactics to this set of conditions.
I highly recommend the book for so many other points WIlliam Lededer made, which are good issues to be considered in any war we consider.
What's even more amazing about his work, is it was published in 1968 and the sepculation about the NVA/VC infiltration of the RVN military and political leadership was so dead on (Confirmation in "A VietCong Memior"), it's spooky. Had anyone in the political and military leadership of our country had read that book the year it was published, we might be having entirely different discussions about "Vietnam" and the outfall of a successful campaign against communist encroachment thatn we are now having.
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