April 13

“It is supposed to be a sequential process in which guidance originates from the National Command Authorities (NCA), through the various departments within the government and performed simultaneously at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels

through public diplomacy, foreign aid, cultural exchanges, education, law enforcement, electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations (PSYOP), deception, and operation security (OPSEC) to influence, disrupt, or usurp the adversary.”

--Major Matthew Orris, Small Wars Journal, regarding strategic information operations (IO), “in theory, a continuous loop that runs the entire ‘spectrum from peace to war and back to peace and it involves all elements of the national government, not solely the military’”; image from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Obama Can Make a Difference in Darfur: Solving the crisis will require U.S. leadership - Jim Wallis and John Prendergast, Wall Street Journal: "[T]he overt use of starvation as a weapon of war is distasteful even to ardent supporters of the Sudanese regime who understand that [Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir] is increasingly a source of instability. The Obama administration should embark on a public diplomacy blitz to ensure that as many countries as possible will demand that humanitarian aid be unfettered by politics." Image from

Three Areas Where the Right Get Ahead of the Curve on Foreign Policy - Matt Moon, The Next Right Thing: "After President Obama's trip to Europe, it's clear that the administration's public diplomacy strategy is centered around a personality (the President) instead of a set of principles and ideas, which is both naive and dangerous. Lately, there has been some battling within the Democrat caucus over whether or not to fully fund public diplomacy operations. Republicans should be all over this, continuing their message of reform and transparency not only on economic issues, but on issues of foreign policy and how we communicate America's message to the world." Image from

Progress in Social Media in Gov't from Mark Drapeau, National Defense University - Craig Newmark, Huffington Post: "I've gotten a glimpse of a paper from Mark Drapeau of the National Defense University.

Their mission is to help out top defense, diplomacy, and development decision makers (Principal Dep Assistant Secretary, Rear Admiral, Ambassador (or equivalent.) … They outline an overall framework for understanding how social software fits into government. The four 'pillars' are inward, outward, inbound, and outbound. … outbound is pushing info to lots of persons outside your org (think public affairs, public diplomacy, etc). Me, I'm very interested in the public diplomacy thing, and observe this is applicable to all organizations, public and private." Image from

Lexicon and Struggle - Matthew Orris, Small Wars Journal: "Winners and losers of a war may already be known long before the first shot is ever fired if a belligerent has prepared or long term strategic information operations (IO). This is the one weapon of mass destruction we as a nation can ill afford to lose control of, but yet it seems it is the one ‘weapon’ that lacks a priority commensurate to its power." Image from

Prop it up - - adriennevogt,Your Advertisement Here - "After the initial declaration of 'war on terrorism,' a more subtle propaganda spin war needed to be waged on the American public. Patriotism was high, people were mad and willing to take action, and the time was ripe for shaping perceptions. Action demands actors. According to this article, these actors came in the form of four women advisers: Karen Hughes (Image of Karen Hughes Clinton below from),

counselor to the president, Charlotte Beers, under secretary of state for public diplomacy, Victoria Clarke, chief Pentagon spokeswoman, and Mary Matalin, chief political adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. President Bush focused on feminist discourse and surrounded himself with these women to embed feminism into the war (in Hunt and Rygiel’s book ‘Engendering the War on Terror,’ 52-53). His advisers, in a unique role high up in the Bush administration, focused on gender-centric issues to facilitate the war for Bush and gain public support." Left image of Karen Hughes from

The Dawn Media Group & Manufacturing Consent - 1 - Aamir Mughal, Chagatai Khan: “In effect, the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access by their contribution to reducing the media's costs of acquiring the raw materials of, and producing, news. … It should also be noted that in the case of the largesse of the Pentagon and the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, the subsidy is at the taxpayers' expense, so that, in effect, the citizenry pays to be propagandized in the interest of powerful groups such as military contractors and other sponsors of state terrorism." Image from

RELATED ITEMS

Obama versus Bush in the Middle Eastern media - Kim Andrew Elliott Discussing International Broadcasting and Public Diplomacy

Don't Be So Sensitive, Mr. President: Truth comes before reconciliation - Christopher Hitchens, Slate:

President Barack Obama's visit to Europe afforded us an opportunity to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of his style in operation. And, even though he has almost attained the Holy Grail of public relations -- in other words, he is practically at that ineffable and serene point where he gets good press for getting good press -- there may come a time when even his trans-Atlantic admirers will have to take a second look. Image from

The great right-wing freak-out: Symptoms of the conservative crack-up were on full display after President Obama's trip abroad. Bill Kristol, take a bow - Juan Cole, Salon: President Obama's recent trip to Europe, Turkey and Iraq was a fairly bland freshman outing in foreign affairs, notable for the enormous good will it generated toward the U.S., along with some practical achievements and a few minor errors. On the American Right, however, Obama's trip produced hysteria.

Taliban, terrorists love Great Satan's great servers: Here's an odd endorsement of US Internet infrastructure: American Web-hosting services are good enough and cheap enough that even the Taliban prefers them - Julian Sanchez, ars technica: There's reason to think American intelligence officials are only too happy to have the enemy's data flowing across US soil.

McKiernan Raises Effort to Win Afghan Hearts and Minds to a New Level - Brandon Friedman, Huffington Post: The top American general in the country, Gen. David McKiernan, has sharpened his focus on the long-neglected practice of winning hearts and minds. But rather than simply paying the technique lip service -- as has often been done in the past -- McKiernan, in a concerted shift, is now placing more importance on effective communication with tribal leaders than on killing militants.


Just Back from Afghanistan - Rep. Jared Polis, Huffington Post: “I harbor a deep degree of ambivalence about the military surge [in Afghanistan]. The diplomatic surge is good, increasing our covert ops and intelligence abilities focused on Al Qaeda is good, but adding tens of thousands of American troops for years doesn't necessarily get us closer to defeating Al Qaeda.”

Pakistani Taliban Moves to Within 60 Miles Of Islamabad - Ian Welsh, Huffington Post: The realpolitik problem with the Afghani war is that it's destabilizing Pakistan so much. Afghanistan falling to fundamentalists really doesn't matter -- Pakistan doing so changes world geopolitics significantly.

Realpolitik for Iran - Roger Cohen, New York Times: It’s almost certainly too late to stop Iran achieving virtual nuclear power status. Israel has made clear it won’t accept virtual nuclear power status for Iran, despite its own nonvirtual nuclear warheads. Obama will have to get tougher with Israel than any U.S. president in recent years.

Don't Flash the Yellow Light: Mixed Messages from Washington Could Lead to Catastrophe in Iran - Roane Carey, TomDispatch:

Given the Netanyahu government's visible determination to attack, an ambiguous signal from Washington, something far less than a green light, could be misread in Tel Aviv. Anything short of a categorical, even vociferous U.S. refusal to countenance an Israeli attack might have horrific consequences. Image from

Obama enters the bazaar - Editorial, Boston Globe: President Obama's overtures to Iran are a positive step along the path to denuclearizing the volatile region.

What Iran Really Thinks About Talks: It's a game of diplomacy without sincerity - Michael Rubin, Wall Street Journal: When Mr. Obama declared on April 5 that "All countries can access peaceful nuclear energy," the state-run daily newspaper Resalat responded with a front page headline, "The United States capitulates to the nuclear goals of Iran." With Washington embracing dialogue without accountability and Tehran embracing diplomacy without sincerity, it appears the Iranian government is right.

On Cuba, Obama must first think of Latin America – and democracy: The region's democracies need to be defended, as does US nurturing of liberty - Editorial Board, Christian Science Monitor: Obama can lay out a plan for the Castro brothers to enjoy a slow easing of sanctions if they also move toward joining the region's liberty club.

Toward a New Cuba Policy: Neither engagement nor isolation have worked - Maria Werlau, Wall Street Journal: What is needed is a policy of comprehensive conditional engagement.

The Next Guantánamo – Editorial, New York Times: The Obama administration is basking in praise for its welcome commitment to shut down the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay. But it is acting far less nobly when it comes to prisoners held at a larger, more secretive military detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

A hard history lesson on torture – Editorial, San Francisco Chronicle: The use of torture remains a blot on the nation's record. Understanding how it happened may be the only way to remove it. It's time for full and open investigation.

No Nukes - Steve Coll, New Yorker: Along with two unfinished wars and economic freefall, President Barack Obama has inherited a less visible crisis, which may, in time, trump the others: the deterioration of the global nuclear-nonproliferation regime, which has lately reached its most fragile state of disrepair since the nineteen-eighties. Image Boston Globe: If President Obama is as determined as he says to take on the huge issue of eliminating nuclear weapons, surely he can get rid of land mines and cluster bombs now.

Now, we must continue giving to the world's poor - Michael Castaldo, UnionLeader.com: We need to stand behind results-focused programs that deliver systemic change by partnering with countries to build their own capacity and reform their own policies to create the very conditions necessary for sustainable poverty reduction and long-term economic growth. The U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation is one such innovation, partnering with countries worldwide that pursue good policies, define and implement their own homegrown, antipoverty programs, and generate measurable results that count in the lives of the poor. Image from

Will Obama be a no-go to racism conference? - Marlene Nadle, Boston Globe: There is a bitter irony in America's first black president continuing to boycott the UN's international conference on racism scheduled for this month.

Let's Fight Wars on Earth, Not in Heaven: How to define, and avoid, a cosmic war - Alan Wolfe, Slate: Reza Aslan, the author of No God but God, devotes his new book, How To Win a Cosmic War, to explaining how some people in the world come to view their struggles in cosmic terms. Despite his title, he then goes on to propose ways not to win such a war but to make it more manageable.

Finding some ways in which we can accept the power of religious identity while stopping short of cosmic war is Aslan's ultimate objective, and his book asks all the important questions. We cannot prevent wars. But he is right that we should realize that they are best fought on earth rather than in heaven. Image from

Our Reprimitivized Future: When all the world’s a “distraction,” maybe you’re not the main event after all - Mark Steyn, National Review: Don’t be surprised if “the civilized world” shrivels and retreats in the face of state-of-the-art reprimitivization. From piracy to nukes to the limp response of the hyperpower, this is not a “distraction” but a portent of the future. Image from

Scholars on the Sidelines - Joseph S. Nye Jr., Washington Post: Scholars are paying less attention to questions about how their work relates to the policy world, and in many departments a focus on policy can hurt one's career.

War By Any Other Name: Obama's new terminology has started a trend [satire]: Joe Queenan, Wall Street Journal: The Obama administration has come under intense criticism for replacing the term "war on terror" with the emaciated euphemism "overseas contingency operations," and for referring to individual acts of terror as "man-caused disasters." This semi-official attempt to disassociate the administration from the fierce rhetoric favored by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney has enraged Americans on both the right and left.

German Propaganda Websites: Compare and Contrast – esantra, Bukisa

AMERICANA

'Superman' artist Joe Shuster's lurid comic world exposed - David Colton, USA Today:

Jeepers, Mr. Kent! That's what a shocked Jimmy Olsen might say after seeing the hundreds of racy, violent and sadomasochistic cartoons by Joe Shuster, one of the creators of Superman, that have been unearthed by comic-book historian Craig Yoe.