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Dr. Barnett is now a blogger for TIME Magazine’s Battleland

Right out of John Boyd’s strategy: disconnect, isolate & disempower your enemy

But Osama, looking far older than his 54 years, had none of that.  He was down to just a sad little entourage, and his comms were reduced to thumb drives smuggled in now and then. He is isolated, almost imprisoned, and he looks like a man sapped of all vitality.

…This is right out of American strategist John Boyd’s playbook:  you beat your enemy by isolating him, denying him allies, keeping him in the dark and – bit by bit – wearing down his energy: “Interaction permits vitality and growth, while isolation leads to decay and disintegration.” 

Read the rest here.

[ by Charles Cameron — cross-posted with minor alteration from SmartMobs ]
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Jarret Brachman is one of our brightest analysts of jihadist behavior on the internet. He was the first Director of Research with the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and is the author of Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice.

His blog today featured an extraordinary post titled My One Fan in Abottabad.

First he writes:

Out of sheer curiosity, I ran a google analytics search to see if I’ve ever had any hits from Abbottabad, Pakistan to the blog.

Then he shows us the map his research produced :

and then he comments:

Sure enough, I’ve got one fan there who has been checking the blog randomly over the past couple years.

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As my Watchmen-hip son might say, … Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Tim Hetherington after being presented with a Quilt of Valor by the Quilts of Valor Foundation

I was saddened to hear the news from Kanani Fong that Tim Hetherington, the gifted documentarian and journalist who made the critically acclaimed film RESTREPO was killed today in Misrata, Libya. Preliminary details are sketchy but early reports had Tim and another reporter suffering shrapnel injuries from an RPG during an attack by Gaddafi forces on Libyan rebels:

Leila Fadel, a Washington Post reporter who was at the hospital, reported that Hetherington was rushed from the battle by ambulance along with rebel fighters. He was taken to a triage tent next to the hospital, she said, and appeared pale and was bleeding heavily. He was pronounced dead some 15 minutes after his arrival, according to her account in The Washington Post.

Story: ‘Restrepo’ presents agonizing war closeup

“Tim was in Libya to continue his ongoing multimedia project to highlight humanitarian issues during time of war and conflict,” Hetherington’s family said in a statement. “He will be forever missed.”

Hetherington was best known as co-director of the documentary film “Restrepo” with Sebastian Junger, author of “The Perfect Storm.” The film tells the story of the 2nd Platoon of Battle Company in the 173rd Airborne Combat Team on its deployment in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary. The title refers to the platoon outpost, named after a popular soldier, Juan Restrepo, who was killed early in the fighting.

I did not know Tim personally, though I attended an early screening of RESTREPO where the audience included soldiers who had been at Restrepo and their family members. The documentary was powerful and touched the lives of many people and was a testament to the physical bravery of Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger who stood alongside American soldiers in the firefights of the Korengal Valley. That was Ernie Pyle journalism at it’s best.

Sincere condolences to the friends and family of Tim, who are numerous in this corner of the blogosphere

[ by Charles Cameron ]
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Some people like banking, I prefer religion.

I’m perennially fascinated by the way myths and rituals, meditations and sacraments can not just motivate and move people but change them. That’s just the way I am. I spent ten minutes this morning listening to a zen nun explaining on YouTube how to strike a bell (she preferred to think of it as “inviting” the bell), how to listen to it, how to wake up.

So when it comes time for scenario planning, I find the logistical and economic side of things less interesting than the tada! End of the World! excitement that seems to pop up all over the place from time to time. On billboards here in California (with a date certain: May 21st, 2011), for instance. In videos from Iran (coming soon to a theater of war near Jerusalem). And on Glenn Beck (ditto).

It seems to be a meme that cartoonists and satirists enjoy, too…

.

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The thing is, there are two worldviews here, which we could conveniently label sacred and secular – though there’s no reason why one can’t hold a “sacred” view of the world (as I do) and not expect it to end any time soon (I don’t), or a “secular” view, and expect a new ice age or terminal global warming around the next bend in the road…

Two worldviews. And here’s where we get a “clash of cultures”.

Either there exists a definitive blueprint for the future of geopolitics – in Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation — or the future of geopolitics is something we’ll have to wrangle ourselves, using our best intelligence, wisdom and material resources.

On Sunday, you can go learn about the blueprint in an evangelical church – or you can kick back with the Sunday supplements and “Meet the Press”. And nobody much minds if you do one thing, and your neighbors do the other.

Things get interesting, however, when geopolitical decision times come around, and a great nation must decide what to do about the Palestinians, say, or Iran.

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Okay.

Joel Rosenberg is a writer of popular, well-crafted thrillers – a Tom Clancy for the end times set.

Since his books are engaging, and since Glenn Beck frequently features Rosenberg on his show, his most recent novel, The Twelfth Imam, has been enjoying pretty decent sales, making it to #8 on the NYT best-seller list, #8 on Publisher’s Weekly and #10 on the WSJ hard-cover fiction lists in one week, not so long ago. And since I’m a student of comparative eschatology, I read his work with considerable interest, and follow his blog.

Today, he wrote:

As international support builds for the Palestinians to unilaterally declare their own state at the U.N. General Assembly opening session in September, I am growing increasingly concerned the President Obama is preparing to endorse such a move and even push for it. This would be a terrible mistake.Bible prophecy makes it clear that in the last days the nations of the world will divide up the land of Israel. But the Scriptures are also crystal clear that the nations will face the judgment of Almighty God for doing so. “For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat [“the Lord judges”]. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (Book of Joel 3:1-2).

Let the nations be warned by the God of Israel: they are on a dangerous and disastrous road. Let us pray they turn around before it is too late.

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That’s actually a pitch for geopolitics by Biblical fiat — as Rosenberg explicitly points out:

One could wish the clear warning of the Bible would be enough to dissuade the President from dividing the land of Israel. I am not sure it will. Perhaps sheer politics will help.

If you believe in the sacred “Biblical blueprint” theory, and believe that the end times are very rapidly approaching, this should encourage you. If you believe in the secular “let’s hope our politicians don’t fubar this one” it might worry you – because you don’t trust some writers a couple of millennia ago to have an accurate appraisal of today’s Middle East, when even our intelligence services don’t claim to be able to predict the outcomes of various interventions in a complex situation, with unknown unknowns to boot.

And of course you might also be Israeli (and hold a sacred or secular viewpoint), Iranian (secular or sacred), or just not interested in geopolitics.

In Iran, the holders of a sacred, end times tradition are in power. In the US, the holders of a sacred, end times tradition exert some political influence. If you’re in Israel, you may hope and / or pray the Iranian end timers don’t visit their scenario on your head. If you’re a Palestinian, you may hope and / or pray the American end timers don’t visit theirs on yours.

I think it’s good to be aware of these things, but not get too excited.

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More to follow in A two part meditation, part ii: of monks and maniacs.

[ by Charles Cameron ]

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There’s a book by Douglas Harding that I very much doubt Samir Khan has read, which may still be relevant to the ad in Inspire #4 that Jarret Brachman pointed to in this piece on Cronus Global — in which he notes the parallel between Inspire‘s ad featuring the choice between paradise and hell, and the choice featured in The Matrix between the blue and red pills…

That image, with its headless figure, put me in mind of another image that greatly interests me — a portrayal of the Imam Mahdi by Mahmud Farshchian — so I rescued it from my files to see if it was a good enough match with the ad for me to suggest a possible second graphic influence to Jarret:

Not surprisingly perhaps — considering that Samir Khan’s work is, putting it crudely, an advertising graphic, whereas Farshchian’s is a work of devotional art, and that furthermore Inspire is a Salafi-jihadist journal while Farshchian is a pious Shi’ite — the match isn’t close enough for me to argue influence…

But it did set me thinking.

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The title of the Harding book to which I referred above is On Having no Head, and although it now carries the subtitle Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious it actually draws on Islamic traditions quite a bit, quoting Rumi:

Behead yourself! … Dissolve your whole body into Vision: become seeing, seeing, seeing!

and Attar:

Cover your breast with nothingness, and draw over your head the robe of non-existence.

and proposing — I’m putting this into my own words, now — the notion that the physical form of a human face is in some sense no more than a mask, veil or hijab over that light “which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1.9) — a light too profound for the conventional gaze.

And it is this profundity, attributed in Islam to the prophets in general and superlatively to Muhammad, which makes their literal portrayal a matter of some controversy…

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Farshchian’s Imam Mahdi, like Khan’s Islamist Morpheus, is headless, I’m suggesting, because, to speak figuratively, radiance has taken the place of the face.

Which is also why, in this image of what must be for Muslims one of the holiest nights in the history of the world, the Night of the Mi’raj, the Prophet is portrayed without a face — or veiled — in this Persian miniature:

and transfigured by his own fiery “halo” of illumination in this one: