Even those who continue to support Israel’s war against Hezbollah agree that it is failing to achieve one of its main goals -- to rally the Lebanese against Hezbollah.

“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep on doing it,” John Arquilla, a defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, told me.

Arquilla has been campaigning for more than a decade, with growing success, to change the way America fights terrorism. “The warfare of today is not mass on mass,” he said.

“You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focussed on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.”

Do you have a dog in this fight? Does it hunt?

WATCHING LEBANON, by SEYMOUR M. HERSH | The New Yorker

Those in the openness movement believe that access to information is inherently democratic, and assume the effects of openness will all be good from the movement’s perspective. But means are not ends, nothing is inevitable, and just what will be done with openly available information once achieved is rarely specified. One implicit goal of the openness movement is to create and sustain politically useful memory in situations in which official memory may not suffice, but to achieve this, openness is not enough. With the transition from a panopticon to a panspectron environment, the production of open information not only provides support for communities but also contributes to surveillance. Proprietary ownership of information is being challenged, but there is erosion of ownership in the sense of being confident in what is known. Some tactics currently in use need to be re–evaluated to determine their actual effects under current circumstances. Successfully achieving tactical memory in the 21st century also requires experimentation with new types of tactics, including those of technological discretion and of scale as a medium. At the most abstract level, the key political battle of the 21st century may not be between particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war between mathematics and narrative creativity.

Tactical Memory

The challenges posed by insurgency and instability have proved difficult to surmount. This difficulty may embolden future opponents to embrace insurgency in combating the United States. Both the current and future conduct of the war on terror demand that the United States improve its ability to conduct counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This study makes recommendations for improving COIN based on RAND’s decades-long study of it.

First, organization for COIN must be improved. The Provincial Reconstruction Team model that has been implemented in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan is a good start, but does not go far enough. This model, which unites U.S. civilian and military personnel with local government, should be expanded and made the basis for current and future COIN efforts. Second, amnesty and reward programs should be implemented or expanded. These programs push insurgents out of the movement without having to fight them literally to the last person. A new study of insurgent motivation and morale should also be undertaken. Third, given the cross-border elements of insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, border security systems should be studied for both conflicts. Finally, pacification efforts should be focused on the lowest political echelons and combined with census-taking and national identification cards.

On 'Other War': Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research

Testimony presented to the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Cybersecurity, Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Science, and Technology on August 8, 2006.

Border Security and the Terrorist Threat

Female brains release oxytocin after a 20-second hug. The embrace also triggers the brain’s trust circuits. Ladies: careful who you hug ...

Can we add hugging to MemeStreams? Can that be the one thing? Or maybe the one thing after janelane's "more hot chicks", perhaps?

Femme Mentale

More than half a million people in Canada hold two or more passports, according to the 2001 census. More than half of them are European, with dual British Canadians alone accounting for 90,000. Canadian citizens, whether dual or not, are abroad in large numbers with 250,000 living in Hong Kong, while close to a million reside in the U.S.

What if they all needed to get out in a hurry?

O Canada, do we stand on guard for thee?

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

Does Iran have something in store? | Bernard Lewis

Hezbollah wants an Islamic world and believes such a world to be worth killing and dying for. Recently, that way of organizing society has crept into another corner of the globe. After a 29-year separatist struggle, the Indonesian province of Aceh won the right to adopt Shariah criminal law, becoming the first region of that country (a theoretically secular state) with that privilege. The radicals have beaten the moderates, and now the moderates face a dreadful future.

What Hezbollah wants

As the violence continues, retribution is in the air. Israel has focused its attacks on Shiites, leaving Sunni, Christian and Druse areas (though not their long-term welfare) relatively intact. Amid all the destruction, many a representative of the March 14 movement has denounced Hezbollah’s ‘‘adventurism,’’ provoking Shiite resentment. As one Hezbollah combatant recently told The Guardian: ‘‘The real battle is after the end of this war. We will have to settle score with the Lebanese politicians. We also have the best security and intelligence apparatus in this country, and we can reach any of those people who are speaking against us now. Let’s finish with the Israelis, and then we will settle scores later.’’

This essentially repeated what Hassan Nasrallah told Al Jazeera in an interview broadcast a week after the conflict began: ‘‘If we succeed in achieving the victory . . . we will never forget all those who supported us at this stage. . . . As for those who sinned against us . . . those who made mistakes, those who let us down and those who conspired against us . . . this will be left for a day to settle accounts. We might be tolerant with them, and we might not.’’

Hezbollah's Other War

ACROSS Indonesia's most religious of provinces, the sight of brown uniformed policemen has come to signify one thing. The brutal enforcement of Sharia law which is raising fears about the future of the world's most populous Muslim country.

They haul unmarried couples into precincts and arrest people for drinking or gambling. Increasingly, many of the cases are pushed to the ultimate conclusion, public canings at mosques in front of excited crowds.

In mid-July, a 27-year-old man sentenced to 40 lashes fainted on the seventh stroke of a rattan cane from a hooded man in the yard of a mosque here in the provincial capital.

The caning was televised nationally, with a presenter saying that the man, who had been arrested for drinking at a beachside stall, would receive the remainder of his punishment once he had recovered.

Battered by the Asian tsunami 19 months ago, Aceh is undergoing a profound transformation that is likely to have considerable impact on the nature of Islam in Indonesia.

Indonesia bows to rule of the rod