The War with #ISIS IS a Religious War!

Like it or not, the United States is in a religious war.  We are a country that has prided itself on our freedom of religion and the fact that we don’t fight religious wars.  Until now, this country has not fought a religious war, but it’s time we change our way of thinking from “we don’t fight religious wars” to “we don’t start religious wars.”

We have had – or at least our elected leaders have had – this incredibly arrogant stance toward the Islamic State (IS).  For the longest time, we refused to admit that we were indeed at war with IS.  It was if there can be no war unless it is agreed to by both sides.  How arrogant to think that you don’t have to be at war if you simply choose not to be!  Your enemy has a lot to say about that, you Know?  When war is declared on you, you are at war whether you like it or not.  The aggressor party is the one who decides if there is a war or not.

Similarly, it is the party making the war which sets the character of the war.  If the aggressor party is a totalitarian theocracy which fights in the name of its religion and its god, it’s a religious war.  Both sides do not have to agree to make it one for it to be one.  When the aggressor party declares its intention to subjugate the defending party under its religion and declares the prominent religion in the defending country its number one enemy, you have a religious war on your hands.  You can’t just opt out because you “don’t fight religious wars.”  When you find yourself in a religious war levied against you by a fanatical enemy, you cannot hope to win unless you fight it as a religious war.  When you acknowledge the religious nature of the war and the religious drivers of your enemy’s psyche, you can work to win the war by undermining the legitimacy of your enemy’s ideology.  If you refuse to acknowledge this, everything you do will play into the hands of the enemy.

The U.S. is drowning in an ocean of P.C. B.S. If we are to have hope of continuing as a free nation much longer, we must snap out of it and realize the nature of the war and the enemy and dispatch that enemy swiftly to Hell!

The Private Sector Solution to #ISIS & Radical Fundamentalist Islam – Including Iran

I have written before on how Islamic State (IS) terror has caused the world to go stupid.  I am still convinced that is the case.  I have seen nothing to even suggest otherwise.  I see no glimmer of hope unless we wake up, pull our heads out of the sand, and see reality for what it is.  It seems that in the face of this terrorist entity we have lost all creativity and all ability to conduct critical analysis.  We have lost the ability to think unconventionally on this subject, and that will be our undoing.

We retreat to the comfort of the conventional and eschew the unconventional when we should be doing the exact opposite.  We act as if conventional thought is some sort of magic security blanket that will somehow protect us from evil.  We reject out of hand as pure insanity any line of thought that isn’t inextricably woven into the fabric of that magic security blanket of conventional thought.  I have previously discussed how we retreat into conventional thought on our tactics and strategy to destroy IS, and I will not revisit all of that here.  This entry will discuss an additional and very dangerous way in which we retreat into conventional thought.

A lot of us look for private sector solutions to everything from prisons to healthcare to the economy, but we are stupefied when it comes to IS.  We retreat deep into conventional thought and buy into the idea that Barack Hussein Obama and his sycophant generals have and should have a monopoly on dealing with IS.  That is a dangerous idea.  If the government shouldn’t have a monopoly on these other things, why should it have a monopoly on dealing with IS?  If the private sector can come up with and implement better solutions for a whole host of other problems.  Why not IS?  Nobody can answer that or even give the question any serious thought, because it isn’t woven into the fabric of the security blanket of conventional thought that will surely protect the world from all manner of evil.

The fact is that the private sector can and indeed has come up with a better strategy for destroying IS and eradicating radical fundamentalist Islam, and the private sector is funding and implementing it.  I am talking about Team Swandog’s strategy and operations against IS.  Team Swandog is entirely private sector funded, and our strategy is better for a number of reasons.

First, our strategy is the only one that understands what it is that radicalizes these groups and fighters and why they continue to fight us.  Our strategy is the only one that gets why it is that, after 13 years of piling up tactical victory after tactical victory, radical fundamentalist Islam and its militant groups have grown twenty-fold.  Because we get this, our strategy is the only one that can kill off the radicals without creating exponentially more in the process.

Second, our strategy is the least destructive and results in the fewest noncombatant deaths.  Our strategy doesn’t level cities, and noncombatants are far less likely to be caught up in our style of guerrilla warfare.

Third, our strategy results in the fewest casualties on our side.  Because our tactics all involve us having the ability to choose when and where we fight, we will never fight when we don’t have an extreme advantage and therefore will suffer far fewer casualties than a large conventional force fighting both on the enemy’s ground and on the enemy’s terms.

Fourth, our strategy is far and away the cheapest.  A decades-long war to destroy IS alone, not even getting into the eradication of radical fundamentalist Islam, will cost many hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions.  We can destroy IS in 9 months of operations for $20B, and these are not taxpayer dollars.  They are dollars invested by big business, small businesses, and churches in the security of our future as a free nation.  Where there has been no strategy advanced to eradicate radical fundamentalist Islam, any conventional strategy advanced would certainly cost trillions if not tens of trillions and take decades if not tens of decades.  Our strategy can do it for $100B to $150B in just five or six years.

Fifth, our strategy is the best answer to Iran.  That’s right … Iran.  Iran is radical fundamentalist Islam, and understanding this as well as their shia sectarianism allows us to formulate a strategy for them.  I have repeatedly stated that our strategy is not just one to destroy IS but to eradicate radical fundamentalist Islam.  Our strategy will result in the collapse of the ideology worldwide, including in Iran, and it is a far better alternative to letting them get a nuke or going to war with them.  We will do this by undermining the legitimacy of the ideology as a whole as described in previous posts and taking other actions.  Once you have undermined the legitimacy of a regime, you can very easily and cheaply engineer its collapse.  Yes, our strategy to eradicate radical fundamentalist Islam includes a plan to collapse the Iranian regime, and it can and should be done by the private sector.

So, there is indeed a private sector solution to the Islamic State and radical fundamentalist Islam.  It is the most informed, most creative, and most thoughtful strategy, and it cannot fail, because it is based on sound principles of psychology, sociology, and unconventional warfare, employs a thorough knowledge of radical fundamentalist Islam, and it isn’t beholden to the whim and caprice of any political body – only to the future of America as a free nation.

The Only Truly Informed #ISIS Strategy Is Team Swandog’s

All day long yesterday, February 26, 2015, FOX News promoted the O’Reilly Factor segment where O’Reilly and Krauthamer were presumably going to offer some enlightened and novel strategy to defeat the Islamic State.  What a let down!  The ideas coming from both of them were very unimaginative and very conventional and very much pipe dreams.  Both men talked about what they would do if they were President, but neither one of them is going to be President any time soon, and IS grows every single day.  O’Reilly should and probably does know full well that his idea of the President getting the Arab heads of state together and leading them to organize and destroy IS is never going to happen.  It ignores Arab political reality and overestimates both Obama’s leadership ability and the Arab nations’ willingness to put everything on the line against fellow Arabs and Muslims when the West is seen as the primary beneficiary.  Krauthammer should realize his plan for a 500-sortie-per-day air campaign is nothing but a pipe dream with this President in office.  Also, as a psychiatrist, he should recognize when a strategy relies on tactics that play into why these dogs radicalize and fight in the first place and understand that such a strategy will indeed kill lots of radicals but will create way more than it kills.  Both O’Reilly and Krauthammer advanced strategies which they may think should be implemented but know full well never will.  Both advanced strategies reliant on conventional military brute force, which will only create more radicals resulting in a net gain for IS.  Just look at the last 13+ years.

There is something which should have become painfully clear over the last 13+ years but which the world seems chillingly determined to ignore.  That thing is what radicalizes these people and why they fight in the first place.  There is in Arab Muslim culture a contrived but very powerful – indeed oft all-consuming –  sense of religious persecution at the hands of the West, stemming from the Crusades.  If we don’t understand this simple fact, we cannot hope to win the war.  We will keep doing what we have done for over 13 years – using brute force to win tactical victories all the wile securing our own strategic defeat and the advance of the radical fundamentalist Islamic ideology.  Now, I am not trying to blame the Crusades and Christians.  Far from it!  The blame lies strictly with the practitioners of radical fundamentalist Islam, be they Sunni or Shiite.  There is a difference between blaming Christians and the Crusades on the one hand and understanding the effect the Crusades had on the psyche of the Muslim world on the other.  People don’t seem to get this.  I bring up the Crusades, and I get accused of attacking and blaming Christianity.  No; I am just aware of the cultural state of mind that the Crusades brought about and acknowledge the fact that it has persisted to today as a victim mentality in a large part of the Muslim world.  Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or maybe more correctly the way we fought them, has fed into that victim mentality – that contrived and histrionic cultural sense of religious persecution by Western powers.  The country that defeated the absolute juggernauts of Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan in under four years has not been able to destroy an enemy possessed of far fewer soldiers and resources in over 13!  Has anybody stopped to ask why this is?  In fact, radical fundamentalist Islam has grown by 2,000% during this time.  Has anybody stopped to ask why this is?  Maybe a few have, but they go looking for some convoluted and esoteric explanation, because they simply cannot get their heads around he simple truth: we did it to ourselves.  People are blinded to the fact that, even if you have every right to do something, doing it can still have unintended consequences.  People think because we had the right to act militarily, the increase in radical fundamentalist Islam cannot possibly be a reaction to that.  It must have another, more complicated cause.  This is simply not true, and that mentality assumes that the entire Muslim world is perfectly sane and free of neurosis.  Assuming that because our actions were righteous they cannot possibly be the proximate cause of the increase in radicalization is just stupidity exemplified.  However, the fact that our actions were righteous has become a mental block preventing many, many people from even considering that our righteous actions could be the proximate cause of the increase in radicalization.

Look; when your enemy is driven by a hatred born of a cultural sense of religious persecution at the hands of the West, whether this sense is valid or not, any action that plays into it will just create more radicals.  Our infomercial begins with a quote from Amin Maalouf closing out his book the Crusades Through Arab Eyes.  Maalouf very wisely explained the cultural sensitivity that we so arrogantly ignore.  No strategy which ignores or denies this cultural sensitivity as the most basic driver of radicalization and the jihad can succeed.  So far, no one has offered up a strategy that takes this into account … except for me.  Also, any strategy which hopes to succeed must use the radical fundamentalist Sunni nature of the ideology as the building block upon which all tactics are based.  Everything you do must be designed not only to play into the cultural sensitivity and victim mentality as little as possible but to defeat not just the fighters you engage but the ideology as a whole.  The strategy I have advanced does.  Now, conservatives are all about calling the enemy Islamic, and that is all fine and good, but that’s as far as their clamber goes.  There are simultaneously a near fanatic push to call the enemy Islamic and a complete and utter failure to advance a strategy that is even the least bit informed by the Islamic nature of the enemy.  There is no point in knowing your enemy if you’re not going to put that knowledge to work for you in your strategy.

A strategy informed by the radical fundamentalist Islamic nature of the enemy uses this knowledge to defeat and destroy the enemy while playing into the cultural sensitivities of the Muslim world as little as possible.  Maalouf points out that the Crusases are felt  very deeply in Arab culture as an act of rape.  Even to this day – centuries after the fact – the Crusades are a festering wound.  We reopen this wound and pour salt in it when we use overwhelming force.  Large occupying forces only legitimize this contrived cultural pain.  Kicking in doors turns many innocent lives upside down and legitimizes the grievance in the eyes of a great part of the Muslim world.  Liberating cities by turning them to heaps of rubble is seen as nothing short of a vicious rape of Muslim lands.  These methods may indeed be very successful at killing every radical who now exists, but for every one they kill, 20 more will be created.  Until we learn this basic truth, we cannot win this war.

An informed strategy must therefore avoid the use of overwhelming force.  It must avoid the use of a large occupying ground force.  It must avoid turning lives upside down by kicking in doors.  It must avoid the use of air power in a destructive manner.  It must instead be a strategy of relentless attrition.  It must be a strategy which uses a light paramilitary force highly trained in guerrilla tactics – a mobile force capable of attacking in 30 or 40 locations at once around the theater of operation but never taking and occupying land.  This force must be terrifying to the fighters but not to noncombatants.  The strategy cannot displace noncombatants.  It must use air power only when the enemy has been concentrated by maneuver in deserted areas.  The strategy must have a psychological component which focuses on eroding the morale of the enemy, frustrating recruiting, and undermining the legitimacy of the cause.  Team Swandog’s strategy meets all these requirements.  It is a strategy of relentless attrition.  It’s ground force will not be an intrusive and obtrusive occupying army but a light, mobile guerrilla force employing snipers and small unit tactics to attrit the enemy and erode morale.  It has no use for kicking in doors.  It has no use for employing air power in a destructive manner.  It turns what the enemy perceives as its strengths into weaknesses.  It will very effectively undermine the legitimacy of the Islamic State and the ideology as a whole in the Muslim world.  After all, this cannot be Allah’s cause if he is allowing the Islamic State to be outsmarted, outfought, and outright defeated by a far inferior number of infidels.  This sense will only be greatly legitimized by the fact that Team Swandog is not a force organized and commanded by any foreign government.  It is instead a force of volunteers acting under their own command to defend their way of life against the actions of these corrupted Muslims.  Team Swandog’s strategy is the only one which stands a chance in Hell of succeeding in the long term.

I have not given away the playbook here. I have simply divulged the broad strokes of our strategy, but the broad strokes of every other strategy advanced have also been disclosed.  One cannot expect to show a strategy superior in public discourse without revealing enough information to convince people it is above the rest.  IS knowing our strategy and them being able to prepare for it and defend against it are two wildly different things.  We have an entire repertoire of tactics I have not disclosed, many of which cannot be prepared for or defended against effectively even with full knowledge that they will be employed.  Also, our imaginations are hard at work devising novel tactics every day.  We are smarter and more educated than the enemy, we have vastly superior training, and we have a strategy that will win.  We also have something very magnificent that the enemy will never have.  We have the support of the American people.

The World Has Gone Stupid in the Face of #ISIS! Wake Up & Support Team Swandog!

Yes, the world has gone absolutely stupid in the face of Islamic State atrocities.  As the Islamic State (IS) grows and its atrocities intensify, so does the global race to see whose thinking can become the most ignorant, simplistic, and … well, flat-out stupid.  In this new world of discourse, stupidity is heralded as genius, and intelligent thought is eschewed if it is even recognized at all.  The IS terror has accomplished what it was intended to accomplish.  It has removed from the human race the ability to engage in critical analysis and think creatively and unconventionally.  It has made us forget lessons that we only superficially learned and has presented us with a false dichotomy, and our choice is between two equally ignorant, simplistic, and stupid choices.

On the one side, we ignore the fact that IS is driven by a radical fundamentalist ISLAMIC ideology.  We acknowledge the “legitimate grievances” of IS and its ideological cohorts, but put our politically correct blinders on to the fact that those grievances are the product of a contrived, histrionic cultural sense of RELIGIOUS persecution at the hands of the west.  We claim to understand enough to blame the Crusades, but that’s as far as it goes.  I guess it’s more important to be politically correct than it is to be informed and actually correct in the face of this existential threat.  On this side, there is no will whatsoever to do anything meaningful about IS and its ilk.  We can’t, because they have legitimate grievances, and it would just be wrong to annihilate them.  No; we must seek to bind their centuries-old festering wounds and soothe them with the salve of apologies and superficial understanding which is really no understanding at all.  Thus this side seeks a continuance of the strategy of the last 13 years – only less intense – while we seek an impossible political solution.  If we truly understood them, we would understand what radicalizes them.  I’m not talking about understanding why they hurt and trying to kiss it and make it better.  I’m talking about understanding their major malfunction and refusing to play into it anymore.  In his book, the Crusades through Arab Eyes, Amin Maalouf closes out the epilogue with a very poignant paragraph which explains to anyone with a brain that hasn’t been robbed of all meaningful function by the IS atrocities that we are dealing with a culture in which to this day the Crusades are deeply felt as an act of rape.  If we understood this, we would understand that current strategy, which is heavy on the kicking in of doors and the liberating of cities by turning them to rubble only feeds into this false sense of religious persecution and creates far more radicals than it kills.  Even a substantially toned down version of this strategy has the same effect, and thus it can never prevail.

The dichotomy presents us with only one other option.

On the other side, we have made recognizing the Islamic nature of IS extremely important but place no importance whatsoever – I mean absolutely none – on understanding the Islamic underpinnings and how they must inform our strategy.  On this side, there is an extreme arrogance which rejects the need to understand this enemy in order to defeat it.  After all, we didn’t have to understand Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan in order to defeat them.  Well, those were conventional political entities we were fighting in a conventional war.  In such cases, the enemy can be defeated with brute force alone without the need to understand them.  That is not the case when your enemy is an irregular force driven solely by a contrived and histrionic sense of religious persecution born of a radical fundamentalist Islamic ideology.  In this case, brute force may indeed provide tactical victory after tactical victory, but it will inevitably yield a strategic defeat.  Just take the last 13 years and change.  We have fielded a much larger and far superior fighting force against greatly inferior numbers, and we have achieved tactical victory upon tactical victory; that much is true.  What is also true is that, in that time, the ideology has metastasized and grown by as much as 2,000%.  Each new group seems to have a hatred that burns brighter than that of the one before it.  Applying brute force only feeds the cancer, but we have been stupefied to this fact, and this side calls only for the application of more brute force.  It can never work, because, as stated, it only feeds into this false sense of persecution born of a centuries-old grievance and therefore creates more radicals than it has killed.

This is a false dichotomy where both options will have the same result – the net growth of radical fundamentalist Islam and therefore an increased danger to the West and indeed to all who do not yield to this sick ideology.  Both sides have lost the capacity for creative and unconventional thought, and it is only through creative and unconventional thought that we may arrive at a solution.  For months a solution has existed, and I have been screaming at the top of my lungs about it while the whole world – governments and media and political parties – have been busy putting in ear plugs.  It is a common human character flaw that we do not expose ourselves to – and indeed dismiss out of hand – any arguments or information that do not fit with our worldview, whether that worldview is legitimate or not.  The capacity for critical analysis – especially of one’s own beliefs and opinions – has never been the strong suit of our species, and we tend to lose that ability altogether in the face of terror.  Instead, we retreat into our worldviews and abdicate what capacity we had for logic, reasoned thought, and fact-based critical analysis.  Creative and unconventional thought – the only way to arrive at a solution – is viewed as the province solely of the lunatic fringe.  If we remain caught in this trap, we are doomed.

Why do both sides assume that the solution must have – or even can have at all – a political component?  When in the history of mankind has a political body legislated a religious ideology out of existence?  What logical reason is there to believe that it could happen now?  None!  Why do both sides assume that the military component must be a conventional one?  While one side seeks brute force writ large, the other side seeks brute force light.  The only way brute force could ever succeed is if we killed off or effectively subjugated everyone who doesn’t believe as we do.  Now, isn’t that what IS and their ILK are guilty of seeking to do?

The military solution is an unconventional one.  First we stop the bombing.  Leveling cities in the process of liberating them is just idiotic, and it only feeds into the sense of religious persecution and rape at the hands of the West and makes us the ones who radicalize the enemy.  It is extremely arrogant and stupid to not see that our actions have consequences even though they shouldn’t and even though we have the perfect right to take them.  Brute force begets radicals.  Large occupying armies beget radicals.  Kicking in doors and leveling cities begets radicals.  Unfortunately, these are the only ways we know to win.  We are trapped in conventional thought and must break free.  So, what would not beget radicals?  A light paramilitary force using guerrilla tactics.  Doors are not kicked in, cities are not reduced to rubble, and infrastructure is not destroyed.  The use of such a light force and these less-destructive tactics would not feed into the false sense of persecution that radicalizes so many. But how can such a force win?  Through attrition, the erosion of morale, and the undermining of the legitimacy of IS.  This is what the Viet Cong did with us in Vietnam.  Their strategy was one of attrition which eroded morale and undermined the legitimacy of the war in the American public eye.  We do the same to IS.  We use constant and unyielding attrition through sniping and small unit guerrilla tactics to achieve tactical victories, send their morale into the toilet, and reduce their will to fight.  Recruiting will suffer, because no one wants to join a cause that is getting its ass kicked all over the place.  Daily, they become a more demoralized and less effective fighting force.  With each tactical victory, and with every day of attrition, the very legitimacy of IS will be undermined.  After all, how can Allah be on their side if they are being defeated on the battlefield by a far inferior number of warriors who are INFIDELS at that?  Of course, the government is incapable of such reasoned thought, because it is beholden to a President with a radically skewed worldview.  So, we’re doomed in the long run, unless we open our minds.

In their race to see whose thought can become the most ignorant, simplistic, and stupid, we have purposefully abandoned creative and unconventional thought.  We assume that any military solution must be a conventional one, but this is a false assumption, and it is not only based on other false assumptions, but it ignores the reality of what drives the enemy.  Even the few of us who are capable of recognizing the falsity of the dichotomy and the need for another solution are loathe to accept outside-the-box thinking.  They feel the government must be convinced to act creatively and that is the only option.  Nobody can get their head around the possibility of an extragovernmental solution – a solution arrived at and an end achieved not by the government but by We the People.  Under this line of thought, If the government does not employ the right strategy, we are doomed, and the only option is to convince the government to employ the correct strategy.  Yeah, that’s going to happen.

With a President firmly entrenched in his dangerously Islamophilic worldview and the rest of the civilized world blindly following his lead, the solution MUST be an extragovernmental one – a solution outside of government – a solution of the People, by the People, and for the People.  Of course, the government and the political parties and the media are incapable of contemplating such a solution.  Nope.  It will be an inside-the-box solution, or we can just all die or be subjugated.  We must open our minds and shed these deadly false assumptions.

The first deadly false assumption is that the solution must be arrived at and then executed by the government using the military.  IS having declared war on the United States and having perpetrated acts of war against us (and the United States making war on IS), there is a legal state of war that exists between the United States and IS as recognized by the administration.  Given this state of war, it is perfectly legal for Americans to form a militia and go fight the enemy on their ground.  No federal or international law prohibits it.  Some Americans have even gone over and started fighting with the Kurds and the Christian militia in Iraq.  Such a militia would not be a state militia, so under the Constitution, it would not fall under the command of the President.  It would be free to employ the strategy its commander felt best and would not have to answer to the President.  Last I checked, in this country, the President answers to the People, and not the other way around.

The second deadly false assumption is that nobody can have an idea that is worth a damn unless they are people we know from cable news or have advanced degrees.  The commentators and analysts we see on the news are not the only people capable of intelligent and informed thought and fact-based analysis.  In fact, they may not even be the best.  An offshoot of this way of thinking is that no one can have an idea that is worth considering unless they are verifiably credentialed.  Did you know KarlRove does not have a college degree, but his ideas and opinions matter?  True.  He never completed college, but FOX News and millions of Americans pay attention to him. Another consideration is that, in the lines of work most related to the ability to formulate a viable IS strategy, there are a lot of people who have the right stuff but are not verifiably credentialed.  Think about it.  So, just because you haven’t seen me on TV touting a vast pedigree of education and experience, it does not follow that I am incapable of formulating and executing the only viable IS strategy.  There are a number of reasons I haven’t been on TV and am not verifiably credentialed, but you can still tell I’m the real deal.  Listen to what I say and how I say it.  I obviously know what I’m talking about. Look at the fact that I have hundreds of former military / special operations / CIA signed on with me, and these guys would not be on board with an idiot.

Several friends and I formed Team Swandog in August of 2014, because it was clear our President is not going to be able or willing to destroy IS.  This was not done lightly and was only done after several months of strategy development by 11 men with special operations and intelligence community backgrounds, but, most importantly, a knowledge of history and the ability to think creatively and unconventionally.  In the formation process, it was determined that I would command this new militia and bear the primary burden of adapting the core strategy and developing tactics.  In October and November, we placed our first two advance teams into the theater. Through November and December and into early January, we suffered setbacks including the loss of our website, email, and bitcoin accounts as well as an organized attempt on my life which involved me being drugged, poisoned, and left with a severe concussion.  We returned with an online presence in mid-January, bolstering that presence with increased Twitter activity, a blog, and videos in February.  In the first week, our videos garnered over 21,000 views.  Also in February, we added four more advance teams in the theater.  These six of a planned 40 total advance teams are carrying out various noncombat missions in preparation for major operations beginning in July … if we get the support we need.  We have gotten a lot of individuals helping as well as a lot of churches getting involved, but we need much much more.  It’s all going to hinge on national media exposure, but once that hits, we will have more than enough clear-thinking true patriots and patriotic businesses to fund us completely.  It’s a matter of getting our strategy out there.  Once that occurs, we will be much, much closer to destroying the Islamic State and eradicating radical fundamentalist Islam.