This Is Not A War On Terror

Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson, the three-star general in charge of the Marine Corps forces in the Pacific Region, gave an address on June 15th at the Naval War College's Current Strategy Forum in which he said that we fundamentally do not understand who our enemy is. He stated:

“This war has a popular label and a political label, but it’s not accurate,” said Gregson. “Terrorism is a means of power projection, it’s a weapon, it’s a tool of war. Think of it as our enemy’s stealth bomber. This is no more a war on terrorism than World War II was a war on submarines. It’s not just semantics . . . Words have meaning. And these words our leading us down to the wrong concept.”

Gregson added, “What we’re fighting is an insurgency defined as a popular movement that seeks to change the status quo through violence, subversion, propaganda, terrorism or other military action. But it’s different from other national insurgencies that we’ve known in the past. This one is networked thanks to the wonders of technology. It’s primarily ideologically driven, fundamentalist and extremist.”

A new class of regional and global actors have linked these movements in a global network of ideology, financiers, document forgers, transportation experts and propagandists, he said. This includes al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and other affiliated theater movements, he said.

“It’s a collection or a confederation of movements empowered by regional and global fundamentalist extremist insurgents,” Gregson said. “You can borrow an old phrase and say they think globally and act locally.”

Winning the war will require more than just victory on the battlefield, he said.

“The center of gravity, the decisive terrain in this war is the vast majority of people who are not directly involved but whose support, willing or coerced, is necessary to insurgent operations around the world,” he said. “Hearts and minds are more important than capturing and killing people.”
Inside Defense.com NewsStand Special: GENERAL: ‘WAR ON TERROR’ IS ‘INACCURATE’ LABEL FOR WAR ON INSURGENCY

I highly recommend everyone, conservative and liberal, stop for a second and read this. It is one of the most thoughtful pieces I have read about the war since day one. I find it extremely encouraging that this comes from a so high in the United States military structure, for lack of a better term.

I would love to hear what you guys think of it.