Briefly, countering ideological support for terrorism (CIST) is a catch-phrase that predates Dr. Michael Doran’s appointment as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy, as he admits, but he has readily adopted it and is, as far as I can tell, the only person still promoting it "publicly". I put that in quotes because you rarely see his name in print, even if you’re paying attention. However, it’s worthwhile to read what he says, not just because he’s helping to set policy but because he’s got the right ideas.

GovExec.com ran an interview last week with Mike. It’s short and worthwhile read.

The GovExec interview was an overview, but this foreign press briefing with Mike a month ago give the details. Time limits any depth, so here is an excerpt:

…I want to put the focus, actually, on al-Qaida itself. Because I think when you look at it closely, you see that the major reason for the successes against al-Qaida are to be found in the nature of al-Qaida’s ideology itself. The ideology contains the seeds of its own destruction and I think that’s true for four major reasons.

The first is that al-Qaida’s global ideology makes it very unresponsive to the local needs of the population in Iraq and anywhere else where we find people adhering to the ideology. The second reason is that it advocates the killing of fellow Sunni Muslims. And the third reason is that it advocates the killing of innocent civilians of all kinds. And the fourth reason is that the teachings of al-Qaida that justify the indiscriminate killing of innocents flies in the face of about a thousand years of traditional Islamic teaching.

Now this was a foreign press briefing. I’ll highlight some of the questions and then I want you to think whether you could imagine an American journalist asking the same question.

Mounzer Sleiman with Lebanon’s Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi. The success that you’re mentioning in Iraq, you associated it with the surge, while there was more — it is about local solution than being associated with military operations. That would lead to the narrative that has been used by the administration about waging this ideological warfare, the long war. And I think it needs to be examined if the solution to this is not military. But it’s based on the local intervention, even with the absence of governments. But this danger, if even when government exists, it’s better to be left to the government to deal with it, to the local to deal with it. How about — do you think it’s serving the purpose of throwing words like Islamo-facism and other terms associating with Islam when dealing with ideological warfare against al-Qaida and other extremists?

and…

Hi, my name is Arshad Mahmud and I represent the daily Prothom Alo of Bangladesh. Your title says that you are the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy and I expected you to focus more on how public diplomacy can help the problems related to al-Qaida and other extremist groups. And I agree with this gentleman that you attached more importance to the success of the surge in undercutting al-Qaida.

Do you personally feel — and I also see that you are from the academia, you were a professor at Princeton. Do you sincerely believe that the military might can actually defeat these problems? Because worldwide, the American foreign policy is perceived to be lopsided: It helps the people like Israel, the Government of Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians; and also, it supports the repressive regimes in the Middle East. And that’s how all these al-Qaida and other groups have come up. And if you even — I take for argument’s sake that if you defeat them, there will be another group that will be launched from somewhere else because they are fed up with these kind of policies. And how you do deal with this as a person from public diplomacy? Thank you.

This last question is very good and one that should have been addressed by Karen Hughes and will hopefully be better answered and synchronized with actions under James Glassman.

For Mike’s answers and other questions, read the transcript (PDF).

The Los Angeles Times today has a story, new to some old to others, on getting Iraqis to participate in government, as well as giving them something positive to do. The U.S. has created Concerned Local Citizen groups, or CLC, around the country. Going by different names here and there, CLC’s give locals the opportunity to fill gaps in security but more importantly, to become part of the solution. In some areas, they have been instrumental in pushing out al-Qaeda, not because AQ was killing Americans, but because AQ and the Iraqis didn’t get along (which, if you check your program, has been part of our messaging for a while).

The important ‘twist’ to Peter Spiegel’s report is the transition from security to reconstruction.

…U.S. officials have begun a pilot program to develop a civil service corps to employ the men.

"We’ll teach them skills, like repairing pipes, electricity, sewage," [day-to-day commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T.] Odierno said. Still, officials aren’t certain such programs can absorb the huge numbers of the concerned local citizens.

The last sentence is important for two reasons. Note the focus on SWET: sewage, water, electricity and trash, the basic services necessary for civil life. The military hard proof that focusing on SWET reduces insurgent attacks.  General Stone has talked (raw transcript here) about the need and pressure for a New Deal-style employment option, which would extend this across the board.

As I wrote before, we must focus on the reconstruction efforts if we are to win the struggle. Those who think surgical kinetic strikes are all that is necessary are smoking something.

Read Noah’s pre-emptive post on today’s hearings on strategic communications before the House Armed Services Committee’s panel on terrorism.

My thoughts on State’s blogger outreach team: not impressed. (Thanks Noah for the link.)

DoD’s Mike Doran, testifying to the Committee, has the right ideas. 

When al-Qaida launched its attacks on 9/11 its primary goal was not to cripple the United States, but to create a perception of American weakness and vulnerability among key audiences. Similarly, when terrorists launch IED attacks in Iraq today, we see them expending great effort to capture the event so that it can be posted on the Internet, often within hours. The spectacle of the attack is as important to them — sometimes more important — than the destructive effect itself….

The Iraqi example underscores the idea that CIST [Countering Ideological Support to Terrorism] is not primarily about creating “Brand America.” It should not be reduced solely to public diplomacy campaigns with the objective of burnishing the image of America. Those are laudable and important efforts, carried out principally by the US Department of State, and we fully support and encourage them. They are a critical element of the CIST mission, but they are not its essence.

The key to the CIST mission is influencing a primarily intra-Muslim conversation, with the goal of undermining the intellectual and perceptual underpinnings of terrorism. Much of the appeal of terrorist groups rests on a collective sense of victimization, a sense of an impending existential threat. Terrorist leaders actively foster the perception that the global Islamic community is under threat of extinction. To counter the terrorists, we must inject critical doubt among key populations about the terrorists’ singular vision of hate and fear. It is important for us to realize that this sense of threat often derives from internal Muslim political processes as much as it does from perceptions of American intent.

Shouldn’t some of these thoughts be visible not only in DoS policy and programs but in the language DoS uses in its public diplomacy?

Will we see a change when Karen Hughes leaves office? Is this IIP’s fault? Should we gift Duncan MacInnes an account with a blog aggregator so he can see what’s going on out there?

How is it possible for the type of inane activity of State’s bloggers get condoned? Is it true that none of the people behind the policy actually read blogs or participate in the blogosphere? We’re talking a certain kind of culture here, and God help us when State ventures into Second Life, hopefully they’ll have the help of the Center for Public Diplomacy’s after their half-mil grant. State’s demonstrated at the highest levels, not at the hamstrung and overworked tactical levels, an inability to comprehend anything other than mirrored imaging U.S. politics.

State used to be able to understand foreign audiences, but that was in the first decades of the Cold War. Now, not so much. Back then, State was on a war footing. Now, not so much.

It is no wonder State’s budget is so low. Not only do they not hammer on Congress for more money, but Congress doesn’t see a real payback for what they are receiving now. Where’s the leadership at State to bring them into the 21st Century, into Information Age conflict?

Should State just abdicate to DoD’s Support for Public Diplomacy, as Thom Shanker closed in his NYT article today? I don’t know, but this will be default if State doesn’t get a capable leader soon.

Update: Rep. Adam Smith comments on the Danger Room post:

We gaveled our hearing about an hour ago. My sense after the hearing remains that we are not adequately resourcing our online activities, both in terms of funding and in terms of giving the people on the front lines authority to act outside of a lengthy bureaucratic review process. We’re also not doing enough to reach out to online communities and bloggers based here in the U.S. to get the benefit of their expertise.

Your point about having two bloggers posting with a moderate number of page views illustrates my concern, and I agree with Matt Armstrong’s comment about our post hoc strategy…if we are serious about fighting the battle of ideas, waiting until after the messages hit the Internet to get active on them is not the best way to go.

A lot of that has to do with the way government bureaucracies work; the person posting for us has to get approval in advance for whatever they are going to send to or post in an online community, and that means we’re constantly behind. One of our subcommittee members suggested to State and DoD that they empower their people to act quickly outside that process in order to be more effective, and I think that is an excellent suggestion.

Just finished a Blogger’s Roundtable call with Colonel Donald Bacon, Chief of Strategy and Plans, Strategic Communications at Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I). Since COL Bacon is a strategic communications guy, I figured I’d ask an SC question. The Colonel’s opening statement went on about the numbers of weapons of caches found, the fact that what appeared to be Iranian-provided weapons caches pre-dated the Iranian pledge to Iraq to stop providing explosives, and then briefly the Colonel mentioned the Concerned Local Citizen (CLC) program.

CLC is the over-arching name of the country-wide program of empowering local citizens to defend and engage al-Qaeda and others fighting against the state (i.e. insurgents). They are a local militia, in the spirit of pre-US Civil War militias, often paid by MNF-I.

With most of the Colonel’s remarks on operational successes — weapons caches discovered, AQ leaders captured or killed — and very little, save the mention of CLC’s discovering 40 of the 72 most recent weapons cache finds, on motivation, a prime target of strategic communication, I asked what he was doing.

• How was MNF-I engaging in the struggle of minds of wills of the people?
• How was MNF-I communicating the functional successes to the local population?
• Are they developing organic information pathways to get the information out?
• Are they developing and enhancing USG information pathways?

His answer? To paraphrase (transcript will be available later):

We’re still not doing a very good job of this.

Really? Yes. The informational value that CLCs, in their various names in various locations around the country, are rejecting AQ because of the severe punishment for smoking and forced marriages to create bonds is not exploited. All "the terrible deeds done by AQ" are not exploited. You’re not winning if no one knows it. If AQ is really getting beaten back, killed & capture stats don’t tell that story and are the wrong thing to focus on.

I followed up with a question asking whether there’s a strategic communications plan for Iraq like the one recently released for Afghanistan. Apparently there is one and I missed it. Does anybody have it or can point me to it?

The Colonel was honest. Which is good. But what we have is a problem when a competent person is put into a role in which he’s not trained for.

"We can do better" is the refrain I hear too often in terms of Iraq public diplomacy, information operations, and strategic communications (all the same thing or different pieces of the pie, depending on who you talk to). Isn’t it about time we actually start to do better?