A New IO Strategy: Prevention and Disengagement, Strategic Insights, v. 5, issue 5 (May 2006)

Abstract

Recent IED events in the Middle East and Iraq have witnessed the Baghdad Al-Aimma bridge incident, where several hundred children and women were trampled to death at the mere mention of a suicide bomber in the vicinity; a female involved in the Jordan bombings, allegedly because her brothers were killed by Coalition forces; soaring Iraqi casualty rates; increasing frequency of Iraqi children involved in emplacing roadside bombs, and teens now driving suicide bomb vehicles; and most recently, increasing export of terrorism outside Iraq's borders (Amman). More importantly, we are currently letting the terrorist and insurgents pick the time and place of their information operations in today’s Iraq. We appear to be fighting the enemy's fight, and only addressing the symptoms and not the causes of the larger battle by cleverly copying enemy fliers, or mirroring their themes in our psychological operations efforts. We must not continue to 'fight their fight.' If we do the results will be likely prove disastrous.