In the name or The One Above, I offer greetings to my fellow warriors!
Today, with His grace, I speak of our great victory over our most evil enemy,
America. A little more than 10 years ago experts thought that what became known
as the Revolution in Military Affairs would leave developing nations like ours
incapable of opposing a high-tech power like the United States. With the help of
The One Above, we proved them wrong. They were guilty, as those who defy the
sayings of the divine usually are, of idolatry - though in this case in this
case they did not worship golden images, but the silicon chip. As though a speck
of sand could defeat the will of The One Above.
At the heart of “The revolution in military affairs” were the amazing new
technologies that Americans believed “would make cyberwar and information war
the distinguishing feature of future conflicts”, as one of their experts,
Richard Szafranski, put it in 1995.
American thinking about the revolution in military affairs was based on grand
visions of long-distance wars - push-button conflicts against cybernetically
inferior foes. Once again, the Americans neglected to study history’s many
examples of supposedly outmatched combatants prevailing over better-equipped
rivals. And they took it for granted that their potential adversaries would
accept the American interpretation of this “revolution”.
But America’s most likely opponents were invariably unlike America and thus
not beholden to the American interpretation. The late 20th and early 21st
century saw the reemergence of what British historian John Keegan called
“warrior” societies. Like us, they are “brought up to fight, think fighting
honorable, and think killing in warfare glorious”. A warrior in such societies,
Keegan wrote, “Prefers death to dishonor and kills without pity when he gets the
chance”. the Americans ignored a warning from one of their own, Major Ralph
Peters, who wrote in 1994 that the “new warrior class already numbers in the
millions”. Peters wrote that:
[America] will often face [warriors] who have acquired a taste for killing, who do not behave rationally according to our definition of rationality, who are capable of atrocities that challenge the descriptive powers of language, and who will sacrifice their own kind to survive.
Too many Americans assumed that warrior societies like ours lacked the
sophistication to integrate new technology in to a war-making doctrine that
could defeat the United States. They neglected those, like Donald E. Ryan, who
cautioned that “even technologically backward societies have a nasty habit of
devising strategies to offset [America’s] high-tech superiority.”
Moreover, that “superiority” was never as great as the Americans hoped. The
cyber space that fueled the “revolution” did not require the mature
infrastructures needed to produce traditional war-fighting platforms like ships,
planes, and tanks. With such platforms the first World’s military power once
dominated global affairs. Information technology changed all that, because its
requirements were far less demanding: Small numbers of people working with
commercially available computers could perform more than adequate high-tech
research and development.
Furthermore, Americans increasingly relied upon commercial, off-the-shelf
cybertechnology. we could acquire the same products on international markets -
and often more quickly than the bureaucratic Americans, fettered as they were by
complex contracting rules and regulations. Though the Americans claimed that
information technology would allow them to get inside an enemy’s “decision
loop”, the irony was that we got repeatedly got inside their “acquisition loop”
and deployed newer systems before they finished buying already obsolescent ones.
with the advent of off-the-shelf armaments, the American military no longer
possessed a monopoly on the most advanced weaponry available.
Americans also underestimated the effect of rapidly declining cyber-costs -
for, as George Gilder accurately predicted, in the year 200 we could purchase
silicon chips for $100 with as much power as the $320 million defense
supercomputers of the early 1990s. The Americans discovered this when they
sought to use information warfare to corrupt and destroy our command and control
systems. The effort proved futile because many communications devices became so
inexpensive and miniaturized that our armed forces could afford to make them
ubiquitous and redundant. It was virtually impossible for cyber-assaults to
negate them all. In the end, attacking al these proliferating methods of
communication typically made as much sense as using a laser guided missile to
disable the rifle of an individual soldier.
Worse yet for the Americans, advances in computer software eroded the demand
for highly trained specialists to operate complex weapons. Easy-to-learn graphic
displays allowed poorly educated soldiers to quickly master elaborate but
user-friendly war-fighting machines, rather like a 15 year old American figuring
out how to dispense Coca-Cola at a fast-food restaurant by pressing the right
pictograph. Praise the One Above, the microchip ended the educational and
training advantage the American military had enjoyed.
Because the Americans believed their information technologies reduced the
need for conventional combat forces, they disbanded such forces in favor of
trendy “information” units. These were filled not with well-trained physically
fit combatants, but rather, as Szfranski put it, “mind-nimble (not necessarily
literate), fingertip-quick youth” who tended to equate their success at video
games with competency to engage in real war. thank the One Above, the easy
capture of a few of these self-styled “digital warriors” yielded a treasure
trove of intelligence data.
we found we could contend with the light, supposedly high-tech combat units
that completed most of America’s remaining battle forces. Since we no longer had
to concentrate our forces to oppose the now-defunct armored formations that
dominated the First Gulf War, we took our cue from methods used by the North
Vietnamese against the Americans and dispersed our army into small, mobile
combat teams that combined only when required to strike a common objective. Not
only did this make our troops harder to find , it also forced the Americans to
expend their limited number of precision weapons on what were often tiny groups
of soldiers.
In any event, we decided not to worry too much if we could not always match
the high-tech equipment of the U.S. military. We consoled ourselves with the
knowledge that reliance on cybersystems was not an unqualified virtue. the
prescient Ryan noted that “technologically advanced, information-intensive
military organizations are more vulnerable to information warfare simply because
they are information dependent.” Besides, our technical deficiencies inspired us
to innovation - approaches overlooked by the gadgetry-obsessed Americans.
For example, we viewed the technology-spurred globalization of the news
industry as a means of making war. by the mid-1990s, international news
organizations using the latest electronic wizardry no longer had to depend on
government help in war zones. Operational security became impossible as news
groups launched information-gathering and communications satellites, monitored
proliferating Internet transmissions, gave their reporters self-contained
communications suites, and even flew their own unmanned aerial reconnaissance
vehicles to transmit real-time views of battle areas.
This phenomenally valuable information was, of course, available to us. We
had no need to build costly satellites or even pay spies; instead, we could rely
on the free flow of data, because the Americans rarely achieved the necessary
political consensus to interfere with these modern “news-gathering” techniques.
Furthermore, whatever patriotic or legalistic pressure the Americans could bring
to bear on their domestic news people was wholly ineffective against
scoop-hungry foreign reporters.
In fact, the technology-empowered media made “information equality,” not
“information dominance,” the key to the “revolution in military affairs.” for
example when the U.S. tried their pathetic cyber-based psychological operations
to mislead our people, the world press quickly exposed the American deceit.
We agreed with those, like George J. Stein, who said that information warfare
“is fundamentally not about satellites, wires, and computers. It is about
influencing human beings and the decisions they make.” And we were confident we
could influence the American public and its poll-sensitive decision makers.
Studying the Vietnam conflict, we were heartened by the remarks of a former
North Vietnamese commander, Bui Tin:
Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable....the conscience of America was part of its warmaking capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.Our strategy was to make warfare so psychologically costly that the Americans would lose their “will to win.” to do so we freed ourselves from the decadent West’s notions of legal and moral restraint. And why not? Their so-called “laws of wars” were conceived by the First World to keep our people oppressed. furthermore, their “law” presented no deterrent because the West demonstrated over and over that it lacked the conviction to enforce it. No, my friends, the One Above called upon us to use every tactic to defeat the cyberscience that the Americans thought would make them so superior. We would rather be feared than respected.
With that in mind, we found that the radical changes in news gathering
and reporting allowed us to develop a strategy to exploit America’s growing fear
of casualties. We carefully noted hoe this obsession enabled far weaker
adversaries to defeat the so-called “superpower.” the deaths of 18 American
soldiers in Somalia - followed by the telecast of a U.S. soldier’ s body dragged
through Mogadishu’s streets - caused a public outcry that forced a humiliated
America to forsake its policy objectives. Similarly, the specter of casualties
was enough to delay intervention in Bosnia in the 1990s despite the occurrence
of outright genocide. the exasperated columnist George Will wrote that the “West
....almost preens about having become too exquisitely sensitive to use force
against barbarism.”
Thus, it became part of our strategy to capitalize on television’s power
to influence decisionmakers by aiming to make war in the most brutish - and
public - way. This strategy fit our warrior nation well. Countries such as ours.
organized as they are around exceptionally powerful ethnic, religious, or
cultural forces and frequently endowed with potent internal security forces, are
much more resistant to vacillations in public opinion than are the diverse,
pluralistic democracies of the West. Because our people truly believed in
America’s wickedness, it was not necessary to hide our ferocity. Rather, we used
ruthless tactics openly to intimidate the American people and break their
resolve.
The “revolution in military affairs”, did not, therefore, make warfare
less murderous; war never developed into the almost genteel electronic exchange
that some foresaw. To the contrary, with our strategy it became more savage than
ever - at least in the eyes of the many Americans who in previous conflicts had
been spared the unedited, real-time “virtual” battlefield presence that the new
communication nets allowed. Families at home could now watch and hear their
loved ones die.
Such hideous experiences destroyed predictions of “non-lethal” conflicts
made by over-enthusiastic cyberprophets. those absurd forecasts, combined with a
memory of a nearly casualty-free First Gulf War, caused many Americans to
conclude erroneously that the occurrence of any casualties was irrefutable proof
that a campaign was inherently flawed, and should, therefore, be abandoned.
We expected that the U.S. would try to wage this supposedly “bloodless”
war by assaulting us from afar with cyberarms. Only the soft, convenience-loving
West would think that the loss of electrical power or phone service would stop
us. Techno-offensives that cripple civilian systems do not deter us. After all,
our people are accustomed to far worse.
To counteract the effectiveness of cyber attacks on our military forces,
we trained them to operate autonomously if normal communications were cut. We
used runners, low-tech signaling devices, and even coded of our leaders,
broadcast on international news programs, to coordinate actions until contact
was restored. As a last resort, our forces struck preplanned targets, martyring
themselves on the process when necessary. Our primary aim, after all, was simply
to cause casualties among the Americans.
We knew we would have that chance. the Americans eventually had to use
troops to try to dislodge us because even in the 21st century, as Bevin
Alexander put it in 1995, “victory comes from human beings moving into enemy
territory and taking charge.” Nothing else succeeds in conflicts waged against
warriors of our zealotry. We anticipated, however, that the U.S. would first
attempt to weaken us with their airpower.
Our analysis showed that we could not stop their high-tech aircraft from
hitting anywhere in our country. To find a way to protect our key facilities, we
once again examined history and recalled how Somali gunmen had effectively used
their wives and children as human shields. We also remembered that after the
uproar following the bombing of the Al Firdos bunker during the First Gulf War,
when hundreds of Iraqi civilians died in an attack on what the Americans
believed to be a command center, very few strikes occurred against Baghdad. The
Americans feared - rightly, we believe - that the spectacle of their pilots
killing “innocent” civilians would be too much for their public (and world)
opinion to bear.
Since our doctrine called upon us to present the Americans with moral
conundrums that would complicate their efforts to attack us, we fully integrated
our military infrastructure into civilian areas. We buried major command posts
and logistics bases below schools, hospitals, apartment complexes, and even
places of worship. Our most vital complexes were built underneath POW camps.
We saw how Serb forces back in the 1990s successfully countered NATO’s
sophisticated airpower by chaining U.N. hostages to targets. We also observed
how rebel Chechens took 2000 hostages at Budyonnovsk and cowed the Russians into
meeting their demands. accordingly, hostage-taking also became an important part
of our “revolution in military affairs.” In full view of the world media, we
shackled captives to vital structures and openly bound them to tanks and
military vehicles. We even put some on air transports and helicopters!
In order to create diplomatic pressure on the United States, we took lots
of hostages from other nations, even neutrals. We used them to coerce the
governments into allowing us access to essential international satellites and
communication centers, while denying the same to the Americans. We also made a
concerted effort to take hostages from militarily weak nations so that America
would not gain valuable allies. Time and again our efforts earned us a bonus:
America - for political reasons - was obliged to accept new “allies” whose
logistical requirements and marginal fighting ability made them more of a burden
than a help.
We constantly looked for imaginative ways to turn our technological
shortcomings into decisive strengths. With material and expertise gleaned from
governments hostile to the U.S., as well as help from criminals in the former
Soviet Union, we were able to assemble a handful of crude nuclear devices by
2006. But America’s powerful information-technology weapons left us without a
way to deliver The Bomb. their F-22 fighters, theatre missile defenses, and
ultra-modern hunter-killer submarines were systems we could not realistically
overcome. Ultimately, we found a way to use our nuclear weapons against America.
Many of you have confused expressions on your faces. You are thinking:
“It was the Americans, not we, who used nuclear weapons in the Great War.” Yes
our Military City was destroyed by an atomic attack that killed 30,000 of our
people. Sadly, it was the Will of the One Above. But my friends, it was not an
American weapon that exploded. It was our own.
I will explain. In warrior cultures such as ours, nothing is more
glorious than dying in battle. For us and many non-Western people, martyrdom and
self-sacrifice are cultural totems more valued than self-preservation.
accordingly, we allowed the people of our Military City the honor of dying for
our cause. It was the will of the One Above.
Shortly before the start of the war, we deployed a nuclear device to the
city hidden in an ambulance (protected from air attacks by its red crosses).
Next, we induced the Americans to strike by constructing a genuine biological
warfare laboratory in the heart of the city - realizing, of course, that their
state-of-the-art sensors would easily identify it.
Predictably, the Americans sent their stealthful F-117 bombers and cruise
missiles against the laboratory. Several journalists reported the progress of
the raid on live TV. Just as the Americans dropped their bombs, we secretly
detonated our atomic weapon. the spectacular fireball vaporized everything for
miles, all to the horror of a global broadcast audience numbering in the
hundreds of millions.
The world reaction to what was thought an American first-use of nuclear
weapons was universal condemnation. The Japanese were especially appalled. Not
only did they cease contributing to the effort against us, they also began
systematically to withdraw billions of dollars invested in American bonds. U.S.
financial markets panicked, and the American economy fell into chaos. Other
important members of the world community turned against America as well.
Of course, the United States vigorously claimed innocence. But few
believed its government, even among the nations’ own people. Clearly, Americans
had grown so cynical of their government that they were quite willing to believe
it capable of anything.
Political dissent soon burned a the fabric of American society, and we
managed to inflame that controversy even more. We told the press that we would
take reprisals against American POWS for the nuclear “attack.” As you know ,
this was the first war in which America deployed large numbers of female combat
soldiers. To carry out our plan, our fighters captures a few dozen .
The Americans believed that their nation could endure the sight of women
as POWs. Perhaps they were right. Whatever the case, America was shocked at what
we did next: We used our infamous Boys Brigade to rape the women, and then
amputate their limbs and burn their faces. Though we let them suffer terribly,
we were careful not to kill them. We told the world that our women suffered much
more in the atomic catastrophe.
the events surrounding the 50th anniversary of the destruction of
Hiroshima taught us that the condemnations would be few. We saw how many people
- including plenty of Americans - overlooked Japanese atrocities during World
War II to castigate the American use of The Bomb to end the war. We likewise
portrayed ourselves as nuclear “victims” and gained a surprising amount of
sympathy despite our acts against the prisoners.
we then returned the POWs to the Americans - we said it was a
“humanitarian” gesture. We converted the repatriation into what they called a
“media circus.” In no way did we try to hide what we did; to the contrary, we
advertised it - using video clips on the Internet - as warnings of things to
come.
However prepared the Americans thought they were to see their daughters
come back in body bags, they were not ready to see them returned home strapped
to wheelchairs, horribly mutilated, and shrieking in agony.
Traumatized relatives frantically demanded the removal of their wives and
daughters from the combat zone, and those demands were swiftly met. but by 2007,
women had become so incorporated into the structure of the U.S. military, that
their sudden withdrawal wrecked the effectiveness of the deployed forces.
As successful as this strategy was, we still wanted to strike the
American homeland. This was not easy. By the turn of the century, America had
developed fairly sophisticated methodologies to protect their critical military
ands civilian computer systems from cyber subversion. Of course, we hired the
best hackers around the world to challenge American safeguards. although they
enjoyed some success, this was really a diversion.
We knew that a direct cyber-attack could not do the kind of damage
necessary to defeat the United States. Adopting B.H. Liddell Hart’s strategy of
the indirect approach, however, led us to concentrate our efforts against
America’s soft underbelly: Mexico. The Mexican economy depended upon computers,
but its machines were not as protected as those tin the U.S.
Our hackers were able to disrupt and corrupt them on a massive scale. At
the same time, we used modern document technologies to print billions in
near-perfect counterfeit pesos to further sabotage the economy. Finally, our
clandestine assistance re-ignited the simmering Zapatista revolt in Chiapas.
The synergistic effect of these schemes was devastating. The Mexican
government collapsed and the economy disintegrated. Millions of refugees flooded
the United States, prompting desperate calls for military assistance to control
the influx. Angry Americans loudly objected to troops fighting thousands of
miles away when a crisis existed quite literally in their own backyard. Our
plan, thanks to the One Above, worked perfectly.
We developed additional methods of bringing the war home to America.
Naturally, we used terror bombings, but we prudently avoided traditional
targets. In the last 10 years industrialized countries have perfected security
techniques that make attacks against defended facilities very difficult. So we
chose a more exposed target: America’s swelling population of politically
influential elderly. We planted bombs in elder-care facilities, public parks,
medical centers, anywhere we thought they would gather. soon, frightened seniors
joined the burgeoning antiwar movement.
Our search for other low-tech ways of attacking America drew us to
environmental warfare. We waged it against U.S. agriculture because agriculture
was virtually unprotected and within our means to strike. Our proxies spread
destructive Mediterranean fruit flies throughout growing areas in California and
Florida, and introduced various plant funguses and blights into Midwest grain
crops. We also secretly inoculated farm animals with highly contagious diseases.
We used the indirect approach again by attacking other vulnerable targets
outside the United States. For example, our agents set huge fires in equatorial
rain forests, raising fears in ecologically conscious America that the world’s
oxygen supply would be jeopardized. From inside our own borders we attacked the
ozone layer by releasing damaging chemicals into the atmosphere. Of course, we
did not concern ourselves with the effects of these actions on our own people
because our faith told us that the One Above would protect us.
We bragged about our responsibility for all these deeds, staggering
Americans with our willingness to attack them in every conceivable way. By the
grace of the One Above, there was no method of warfare that we failed to
consider: We left AIDS infected needles on bathing beaches and polluted
America’s coastlines by scuttling oil tankers we covertly hired. Americans could
not enjoy a meal, relax on a beach, or even breathe the air without wondering if
they were about to become victims of yet another of our assaults. Just as we
destroyed their trust in Government, we destroyed their trust in nature.
You know the rest, my friends. though we rarely defeated the Americans on
the battlefield, we were able to inflict such punishment that they were soon
pleading for peace at any price. With their economy in ruins, their borders
compromised, their people demoralized, and civil unrest everywhere, they could
not continue. We had broken their will! They had no choice but to leave us with
the lands we conquered and the valuable resources they contain.
Of the may mistakes the U.S. made, in adapting to the “revolution in
military affairs”, several stand out: America too often assumed that the
revolution would favor technologically advanced nations like herself. She failed
to consider how enemies with values and philosophies utterly at odds with hers
might conduct war in the information age. Despite what many
technology-infatuated strategists thought in 1995, cyber-science cannot
eliminate the vicious cruelty inherent in human conflict. We taught the
Americans that no computer wages war with the exquisite finality of a simple
bayonet thrust.
Most critically, America failed to deal decisively with barbarism when
confronted by it. Had she demonstrated the will to face her responsibilities as
a superpower in the post-Cold War world, nations like ours might not have dared
oppose her - we keenly understand brute force and its consequences.
Now the Americans beg for our scraps. So desperate are they that they
send their children here to be our servants. We control their future! That is
the price of defeat! this, my friends, is the ultimate meaning of the Revolution
in Military Affairs! Let us praise The One Above!