Global Battle of Ideas

Further explanation on how we can advance counter-terror.

The struggle against Islamic-based terrorism will be not simply a military campaign but a battle for public opinion in the Islamic world, among our allies, and in the United States. Osama bin Laden understands that he cannot defeat or even incapacitate the United States in a conventional war. What he and his allies can do is inflict enough pain to provoke a reaction of the sort we've seen in Iraq-- a botched and ill-advised U.S. military incursion into a Muslim country, which in turn spurs on insurgencies based on religious sentiment and nationalist pride, which in turn necessitates a lengthy and difficult U.S. occupation, which in turn leads to an escalating death toll on the part of U.S. troops and the local civilian population. All of this fans anti-American sentiment among Muslims, increases the pool of potential terrorists recruits.

That's the plan for Bin Laden for winning the war from a cave, and so far, at least, we are playing to script. To change the script, we'll need to make sure that any exercises of American military power helps rather than hinders our broader goals: to incapacitate the destructive potential of terrorists networks and win this global battle of ideas.

-Excerpt from the Audacity of Hope