I have an RSS feed to my desktop of newly published Rand reports. I tend to read the summaries instead of the long studies, as even a student of the world doesn’t need to know the detail invovled in 700 pages treatises on a particular subject.

The report cited in the title, War by Other Means — Building Complete and Balanced Capabilities for Counterinsurgency, is typical of Rand works: a wonderful read. I give you this quote as proof:

Information resourcefully gathered, widely shared, and wisely used can engender healthy pluralism and expand the awareness and options of individuals. It can be used to pry apart local insurgency and global jihad, improve operational decision making, and sharpen the precision and effectiveness of force. When seen and treated as a strategic asset, information power can help redefine the struggle with Islamic extremism from one of spiraling violence to one of competing truth, from a self-perpetuating war of attrition to a winnable war of cognition.

I only worry that the ideal of pluralism sponsored from information is a very “western” ideal and doesn’t jive with how Islamic societies seem to function. The need to pray 5 times a day, and in particular how the prayers come up on the TV and people drop to the ground quickly 5 times a day feels very big brother like. I have no real direct proof of this, but the homogeneity of at least subsets of Muslim peoples is driven by Islam itself, or perhaps the current rightist inclination of Islam. This translates into a lack of a desire for plurality. Think Catholic controlled medieval Europe.

Next, I hope all the neo-con idiots read this one:

The greatest weakness in the struggle with Islamic insurgency is not U.S. firepower but the ineptitude and illegitimacy of the very regimes that are meant to be the alternative to religious tyranny—the ones tagged and targeted as Western puppets by jihad. Success thus hinges on improving the performance and accountability of governments in the Muslim world.

Got it yet? Just like in Latin America, supporting the government that likes us is NEVER in our best long term interests. Supporting a government that supports the people, that certainly is.