Stuart a Green LTC USN Cognitive Warfare and the Role of the Media Final

8/9/2019 Stuart a Green LTC USN Cognitive Warfare and the Role of the Media Final

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Cognitive Warfare and the Role

of Mainstream Media

By Stuart Alexander GreenSeptember 2009

INTRODUCTION

In an early 1980s interview, KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov claimed that theSoviet intelligence service only spent about 15% of its effort on intelligence collection.

The rest was spent on the slow process of ideological subversion, or active measures.More than a simple dump of leaflets or strident use of loudspeakers, it was the alteration

of the perception of reality in America to such an extent that no one is able to cometo sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their

communities and their country.1

The targets become so demoralized, so contaminated,so programmed to think and react to stimuli in a certain pattern that their minds cannot

be changed, even if exposed to authentic information, even if you prove that white iswhite and black is black.

This psychological condition is not induced with truth or at least by truth alone, but by a decades-long bombardment with propaganda, disinformation and lies. Unlike

the American doctrinal concept of employing only truth in psychological operations, theSoviets imposed no such restrictions on themselves.

2Latislav Bitman, former Deputy

Director of Czechoslovakias Intelligence Service Department of Disinformation,

explained that Deliberately distorted or manipulated information [was] leaked into thecommunication system of the opponent [to] be accepted as genuine information andinfluence either the decision making process or public opinion. One of the more

pointed examples, if lesser known, is the right-wing cabal conspiracy theory of John F.Kennedys assassination. Moscow pinned the act on an alleged gang of U.S.

conservatives literally hours after the presidents death.3

Soviet active measures depended on agents of influence, or individuals within

the target society who facilitated the process. Jean Franois Revel, French author andformer director of LExpress Magazine, noted that Disinformation is not simply lies. It

is the art of having your enemy say what you want them to say. 4 In many cases the journalists or authors do not know they are being used. The head of Soviet active

measures in Tokyo explained that articles would be written by local, in many casesprominent, journalists who would express [them] as his or her own opinion. These kindsof things normally [would not] be traceable back to the Soviet Union.

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Bezmenov claimed that the Soviet hopes for demoralizing the American publichad been overfulfilled. The result you can see, he said, Most of the people who

graduated in the 60s, drop outs or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying thepositions of power in the government, civil service, business mass media, and educational


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systems. You arestuckwith them. You cannot get rid of them. The Soviet strategyssuccess was impressive, if unquantifiable.

In essence, the Soviets intended for us to do it to ourselves. I am reminded of aMuslim Brotherhood-linked document exposed in the course of the U.S. v Holy Land

Foundation trial, a strategic memo for internal dissemination that envisioned bringing the

United States down by its own miserable hands.

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Like in Judo, the intent is to exert aminimum of kinetic effort and have us collapse under our own intellectual weight. But itis a long-term investment; Bezmenov claims it takes 15 to 20 years before the first

returns are noticeable, and it would take at least that amount of time to reverse the process. That period, by the way, is about the length of time it takes to educate one

generation of activists.In Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West, Walid Phares explores a

similar, Saudi Arabian penetration of the American education system. In this strategy, petro-dollars fund universities, libraries, and research centers, which willingly mute

serious exploration of Islamic conquest. In the new textbooks, there was no Islamicconquest, no fatah, no conquered peoples. Jihad was painted as a spiritual inner

experience, almost a yoga exercise.

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Groups like the Middle East Studies Association ofAmerica (MESA) would anoint new generations of Middle East studies graduates

[thereby putting] even more teachers in the classrooms. From the classroom, thegraduates were picked up to serve either as teachers for future classrooms or as public

servants in agenciesState Department, Congress, embassies, and beyond. MESAs presidents have included Juan Cole and John Esposito, who defined the American

discourse on jihad and Middle East studies for decades.8

Intelligentsiaincluding press, policy and intelligence circlesare probably no more or less immune to this

phenomenon than the rest of the public. Jacques Ellul brilliantly argued that education isthe veryprecondition for successful propaganda. It is a kind of pre-propaganda that is

slow, constant, and paves the way for the harder stuff, when agents of influence aretriggered to action.

If jihadists have really penetrated the American discourse, then Bezmenovpredicts no amount of contrary evidence or authentic information can sway us. Ellul,

for his part, argued that propaganda is successful precisely because it circumvents thethinking parts of our brains. So, without the obstacle of critical thought, which we should

have all learned in our education, jihadists can leverage Espositos tendency to see onlythe positive in Islam in order to disguise their real intent. When raw and unfavorable

evidence turns up showing jihad to be hegemonic and violent, Muslims can dismissivelywave their hands in a manner reminiscent of Obi-Wan Kanobe in Star Wars, and suggest

that this isnt the jihad youre looking for.9 So, in the midst of an ideological war, jihadists may have convinced Western intelligentsia that the root sources of their

ideology are just fine.

INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN CONVENTIONAL WARFARE

In 2007 and 2008 I developed a theory that attempts to explain this process usingthe Arab-Israeli conflict as a case study. I went beyond what the Soviets would call

political warfare or active measures, though that is the closest approximation. My broadapproach reaches down to the most basic element of cognitive warfarethe memeand


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follows it through culture to the civilizational level. In explaining how violent ideologiescan come about, I consider religion and other taboo subjects, explain how some ideas can

attack others, how cultural traits canassist with both the cognitive

defense and attack, how entire

societies discourses can be made tochange, how this process can last fordecades etc. Counter-insurgency

analyst David Galula once noted thatguerilla warfare, Is not like

ordinary wara continuation ofpolicy by other meansbecause [it]

can start long before the insurgent resorts to the use of force.10

But the Western approach to war is a binary one wherein there is a state of either

war or peace, but seldom both. It is either on or off.11

American IO is accordinglylimited to the time and space of the physical battlefield, with particular emphasis on

technological means and solutions, the goal being to make the soldier more effective incombat.12

A DIFFERENT VIEW

Terrorists and insurgents

essentially flip the U.S. paradigm.They use violence to underpin

many key activities, including IO.A single violent act can introduce a

new terrorist organization as asignificant player, raise awareness

of or create a crisis, begin polarizing the public into

supporting and opposing camps,and accelerate recruitment. In

essence, they have turned terrorismand violence into what has often

been called propaganda by deed, but it is in the supporting, rather than the supportedrole.

13Moreover, cognitive warriors may recognize the impossibility of ever destroying

their enemys armed forces, and they consequently seek to remain in the cognitive arena,with an apparentemphasis on terrorism and guerilla warfare. Their violent operations,

however, represent only a fraction of what goes on in a cognitive war.

COGNITIVE WARFARE (BRIEFLY)

Let us turn to a very brief overview of cognitive warfare, so that the role of the

media can be better put in its proper context.

TheRoleofViolenceinCognitive

Warfare


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MemeticsIn the beginning, there is the meme. This is a replicator that behaves like a gene

or a virus, depending on how you see it, but one that lives in the mental realm. Any ideaor information passed from one human to another can be considered a meme, or a unit

of cultural replication. Like biological genes, memes are selected by their environments

and they can become more complicated with evolution. Some simple examples includesongs, styles of architecture, words, and popular symbols. Memetics is a tremendouslyuseful tool for understanding and harnessing intangible abstractions. Perfectly suited for

analyzing cognitive warfare, this approach can break down ideologies, psychologicaloperations, religions, cultures, discourses, and virtually any other abstractions into their

basic constituent parts. I can lay them out for examination as entities that existsomesay livequite apart from the needs of the humans who carry them. Richard Dawkins,

the theorys inventor, suggested that they are semi-independent life forms. In any case,this theory helps us understand how ideas can thrive or fail whether they are good for

humans and empirically true, or bad and/or false. Mapping large memeplexes likereligions and violent ideologies will be complicated, but it is as promising a concept for

war as the human genome project is for medicine.

Culture and Religion

We then move onto the development of violent ideology. Many have tried their

hands at creating a model to explain rebellion in universalist terms, but few allow formore than a few factors at a time. Moreover, some of the important ones have been

shelved and removed from debate. By this I mean culture and religion, which we arediscouraged from looking at criticallyunless of course they are Western. Because

honest criticism of non-Western cultures and religions

has essentially been off limits,we find ourselves in a position

where the root sources of aviolent ideology cannot be

seriously examined. Religionsmay only by celebrated for

their aesthetic differences and presumed to be fundamentally

the same. So, I explain whythat approach has been wrong,

give examples of cultural-religious memes that have a

deep impact on this war, andshow how our reluctance to

criticize other cultures factorsinto the plans of our enemies.

The model allows for varying degrees of many possible factors, including religionand culture of course. Each driver, or motivator, can be considered fuel for the

combustion chamber of an engine. The more fuel and pressuremost likely frommultiple sourcesthe more likely there will be combustion. In some cases, culture may

TheIdeologicalEngine,theViolence-Identity

Wheel,andReinvestmentofEnergy


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be the dominant factor, as, for example in the case of the Arab-Israeli conflict, whereWesterners have tended to project their own values and concerns onto the Palestinians.

But in cultures where it is legitimate, even required that you shed blood for the sake ofhonor, honor-shame dynamics provide an explosive accelerant in already tense situations.

If a civilization sees itself as having been superior for over a millennium, having that

civilizations lowest subjects rise to dominate is unspeakably humiliating. It can begrounds for war. And when all those concerns find voice in a religious ideology in whichthe proof of Allahs greatness is the victory of Muslims over the infidel, you have a

conflict with little of the components Westerners might consider rational or universal.

The Counter-Intuitive Effect

Curing some factors can quell anger, but it can be counterproductive too,

depending who is involved. Unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza mighthave been beneficial in the earliest stages of the occupation, but now the engine is

working on its own power and such an action would likely spur more conflict. Seen as ademonstration of good will or restitution in the West, a withdrawal today would probably

be perceived by Palestinians as a tactical victory and moral confirmation, pushing morefuel into the chamber. In the Arab-Israeli case, this ensured by leaders skill and practice

from many decades of conflict, and a zero-sum mindset that paints concession asweakness. The precedents for this are clear, particularly in Lebanon, where Hezbollahs

struggle to destroy Israel did not abate after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000.14

Hezbollah,having proven that Goliath could be taken down with persistent violence, now had no

need to negotiate when presumably more could be won with the same strategy.Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza took notice, particularly their leadership at Camp

David just a few weeks later.15

The Accepted Discourse

It is time to explain what constitutes the strategic terrain or high ground in

cognitive war. If we control this terrain, then others must work doubly hard in theiruphill battle against us. They must struggle against what we intuitively and morally know

to be true. They must endure our devastating verbal salvos, which our cognitive, ormoral high ground and the safety of numbers make so much easier to launch. If they

control this terrain, of course, then we are the ones to suffer under it. It is the accepteddiscourse.

The accepted discourse can be considered a relatively small memeplex that rootsitself in environmental factors like culture, religion, academic paradigms, economic

traditions etc. It is, simply, what is proper to say, no matter the evidence at hand.Though it is difficult to attack, it is not impervious to attack. With enough skill and a

long enough siege, control might be wrested through transparent, open debate, butperhaps more effectively through a protracted (dis)information campaign that infiltrates

memetic vulnerabilities.In the traditional, pejorative sense, propaganda may be considered an engineered,

infectious meme. As time wears on and the conflicts rhetoric intensifies, propagandamay pull away from empirical and perceived truths. Propagandists, seeking to shift the

intellectual center of gravity, attempt to obscure empirical truth by supplanting it with anew one. The more successful the campaign, the more acceptable debate peels off the


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verifiable data, usually without the targets knowing. The goal may not be an endstatewherein the targets believe all the propaganda. It is enough to have their perception of

reality uprooted and planted in a more advantageous spot. If, for instance, Palestinianscan convince the West that it is Israeli checkpoints that create the humiliation and the

hatred, rather than the very

existence of Israel, they have wonan immense victory.Over time, the empirical

truth gradually becomes lost orobscured. In the most extreme

scenarios, the gap between theempirical truth and accepted

discourse grows so large that theformer is perceived as extreme or

unlikely. Thus, Westerners are asreluctant to believe that

Palestinians teach genocidalhatred to their children in every

medium available to them, asthey are that the Israeli army

actually has high standards in protecting enemy civilians during

urban warfare.The different types of

information do not necessarily begin in unison. It may be that

propaganda seemed extreme in thebeginning, but historical events or

changes in the intellectualenvironment drew the discourse

closer to it. Stephanie Gutmannargues, for instance, that 1967 marked the beginning of the end for Israels positive press

coverage. The paradigm assigning moral legitimacy to the weaker powertherighteous underdog paradigmdid not change. So what caused the shift in Western

perception?After 1967, particularly after the 1982 war, Israels strength and the West Bank

and Gaza occupations deprived the former fledgling state of its favored underdog status.Although realistically Israel did not morally decline after 1967, neither could it retain the

legitimacy of the little guy when it had decisively trounced its most threateningneighbors. The Palestinians now found themselves occupying the moral real estate from

which Israel had just been evicted, enjoying more than the ironic benefits of theirweakness and the revolutionary spirit of the 1960s.

16They also benefitted from the

coincidental development of aggressive political correctness, which tends to marginalizecriticism of non-Westerners. Logically, the West should have come to realize that a

nation or party can be both strong and moral, but this would have created a state of

ChangingtheAcceptedDiscourse


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cognitive dissonance, or psychological discomfort. Giving the Palestinians their new roleavoided that discomfort as well as the need to deconstruct an old, favored paradigm.

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SOME MEMETIC VULNERABILITIES IN WESTERN THINKING

Western discourses are particularly vulnerable to fracture because of the premiumplaced on pluralism, political correctness, and the self-examination of guilt culture. Forall the benefits of self-examination and sensitivity to other cultures, guilt and political

correctness also leave gaping holes that cognitive warriors happily infiltrate with theirmemes. Richard Landes has devoted considerable attention to the function of the

demopath, one who uses the progressive values of Western democracy in order todestroy it. For a simple demonstration of this phenomenon, see the 2006 incident in

which Muslim Brotherhood-connected, Minneapolis imams appeared to deliberatelyprovoke racial profiling so that they might decry anti-Muslim oppression in America.

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I will now go through some examplesby no means an exhaustive listof somevulnerabilities that facilitate jihadist infiltration of the accepted Western discourse. In

each case, because the Westerners who accept these memes fail to apply their principlesto the other, they end up becoming in the name of progressive values and love of

peace agents of influence and a major aid to belligerent authoritarianism.

Freedom of Speech

Along with the notion of an accepted, politically correct discourse that

marginalizes anything within the West considered too right wing, there is a seeminglycontradictory sentiment that, when understanding and empathizing with another culture

all but pariah points of view may be at least considered and most may be deemedlegitimate, if different. Consequently, ideas of unequal merit are often given equal

treatment. Not infrequently, this concept is taken to the extreme, as Deborah Lipstadtmakes clear inDenying the Holocaust. Holocaust deniers play deftly on the free speech

and alternative view imperatives, the deniers want to be thought of as the other side[and] have painted my refusal to debate as a reflection of my lack of tolerance for the

First Amendment and my opposition to intellectual free inquiry.19

Their success can beseen even today in the Spanish newspaper El Pais decision to interview David Irving as

part of their upcoming special on the 70th

anniversary of World War II.20

In the Arab Middle East, one could argue that Holocaust denial is the accepted

discourse. In the West, deniers have not achieved control of the accepted discourse, butthey have at least achieved a level of play that exceeds the quality of their arguments.

This striking lack of rigor in making room for Holocaust denial stands in interestingcontrast to, say, the news medias treatment of the Israeli government. Though Israeli

information has proven significantly more reliable than that derived from Palestiniansources, Western mainstream media range between minimizing the comments of Israeli

spokespeople to treating them with open hostility, while treating Palestinian spokesmenwith considerable deference (more so in Europe than the U.S.). The apparent inversion

suggests that, despite the Wests introspective qualities and the high value it puts onreliability of information, it is the intangible, almost playground notion of in and out

that determines who gets believed, not whether the information in question is empirically


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supportable or unreliable and dubious. Ellul would probably agree that this inconsistentapplication of academic rigor factors deeply into the role of education and propaganda.

Universalism

Taking Edward Saids and others criticisms to heart, the Western intelligentsia

today is quick to assume the members of every culture are fundamentally moderate(relative to us), want similar things, and will react in similar ways to given circumstances.Stephen Lambert, author ofY: Islamic Sources of Revolutionary Conduct,points out that

qualitative analysis in Western, particularly U.S., methodological culture, is not highlyencouraged. Studies may be conducted that do not account for significant religious or

cultural variation on key topics, or if there are such studies, they may be crudely taintedwith the academics overriding intent, which is often to reaffirm that cultures are

fundamentally the same. This came about partly as a corrective measure, the intentionbeing to avoid at any cost the ethnocentric and racism-driven inquiries of previous eras.

The problem is that culture is to humans what an operating system is to a computer; it canlead to vastly different behavior and outputs.

For a good example of universalism, look to Robert Papes Dying to Win: theStrategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Some claim the book to be revolutionary because it

argues that there is strategy and logic to suicide terrorism, and also that religioncontrary to what they believe is popular perceptionis not a significant driver. While

Papeacknowledges the fallacy of using economics alone to understand suicide terrorism,he focuses almost entirely on another universalist driver: military occupation.

Occupation certainly can be fuel for ideological combustion, but Pape bases his thesisentirely on data that he deliberately misreads in order to eliminate Islam as a factor.

According to his own data, Muslims belonging to a variety of groups are responsible for69% of all suicide attacks worldwide, and once we remove the Tamil Tigers as a unique

outlier, for 99% of all such attacks. Pape, however, manages to arrive at conclusions thatcould not better serve the strategy of the other whom he pretends to study, and whose

very identity he obscures.21

War is Not the Answer

It is commonly assumed in the academic community that there can be no military

solution to problems of this nature. Any military component of any solution isinstinctively dismissed as a negative factor and, to put it in Mia Blooms words,

something that will encourage rather than discourage future attacks. She cites noevidence for this in her book, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terrorism. She

demonstrates no logic leading her to this conclusion, and apparently did not check to seeif Israel's military operations have had any demonstrable effects, as, for example, the

dramatic reduction in attacks and casualty figures after Israels Operation DefensiveShield.

The demonstrably false notion that military force leads to no good allows even themost violent groups to claim that they are merely responding to Western use of might,

and that we feed the problem with aggressiveness and disproportionate use of force.In other words, the Jihadi cognitive warriors and the progressive peace camp argue,

unilaterally disarming might soften jihadists hearts and create the basis for dialogue.This meme draws particular strength from the unsupportable universalist notion that 1)


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both sides are equally culpable in a conflict and 2) there is a cycle of violence that thestronger power could stop at any time by ceasing its military activities. What better way

is there to create a permissive operating environment for the weaker military power?

No Bad Guys

While some conflicts are probably rooted in crossed wires, universalists do notoften acknowledge that conflicts may be driven by lucid mutual understanding. Since theend of WWII, but particularly since the end of the Cold War, it seems that we have

become less inclined to believe that there are enemies. Our scorn for rogue nationsnotwithstanding, the days of demonizing the Hun, the Nazi and the Jap are gone. No

more are entire peoples and nations categorized as the insatiable, bloodthirsty enemy.Players of all stripes are fundamentally rational by a common standard. As Jean Bethke

Elshtain writes about the current discourse, we seem to believe that there is autilitarian calculus by which to gauge all human purposes and actions. [If we could

only] get the aggrieved parties to really talk to one another, because that is the wayreasonable people do things.

22From the humanist standpoint, this is a positive and

welcome development, but in the colder memetic context of war, it is another gaping holein our defenses. Kenneth Ballen, head of Terror Free Tomorrow, unwittingly

demonstrates the thinking, Our surveys show that not only do Muslims reject terrorismas much if not more than Americans, but even those who are sympathetic to radical

ideology can be won over by positive American actions that promote goodwill and offerreal hope.

23His view aligns fairly well with the accepted discourse today, but would

have been unthinkable in the context of previous wars, e.g. the Germans reject Naziextremism as much if not more than Americans

We do it too.

Indeed, the Western intelligentsia often inflates its own cultural problems anddownplays those in the other to encourage moderation and avoid harmful stereotyping.

While well intentioned, it is also poor academic practice and requires an artificialimposition of moral equivalency. When discussing the more permissive Islamic take on

lying and deception, for instance, I invariably hear, Well, we do it too. While at leastpartly true, this is an axiom designed to paralyze the opponent and prevent the conclusion

that there are cultural differences beyond food, holidays, and fasting. This kind ofthinking is also the reason that we see so many wistful, but potentially unfounded

assumptions made about the vast majority of Muslims and their views on terrorism.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA

Both the ideological engine and the cognitive offensive require great skill inperception management. They require the creation or reinforcement of favorable memes

and memeplexes that make up a societys chosen reality. Cognitive warfare is, in fact, based on the warriors ability to transform the realities of discourses, social

environments, and ultimately, political and military policies. There are several media inwhich cognitive warriors achieve this, but the most prominent and perhaps powerful is

the media, traditionally understood as radio, television, and newspapers owned bycommercial or public entities and staffed by professional journalists, the mainstream


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news media (MSNM). As the loudest and most current voice for the accepted discourse,the media is both a prized target and a powerful weapon. It can be what we in the

military call a force multiplier, or if you are on the targeted end, a devastating liability. A secret 1942 document from the British Political Warfare Executivethe

nearest British counterpart to the KGB element conducting active measuresclaimed

that the major instrument of political warfare is propaganda. Speaking of the BBC,they write that it must always be borne in mind that [the BBC] was provided not as anact of philanthropy but with a deliberate purpose as an instrument of war. 24 Some 70

years later, Western media is still being used as an instrument of war, but the beneficiaries have changed. Raanan Gissin, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharons

strategic advisor, once told me that the Palestinians recognized the power of mediacontrol at least as early as 1982. Before being expelled from Lebanon, the PLO

requested the return of two media vans the Israelis had captured.25

The IDF kept thevans, but Palestinian militants continued developing their capability, particularly under

the PA in the last ten years.Today, PA TV whips constituents into a fervor when leadership requires

violence or more ideological momentum. Indeed, any terrorist worth his salt recognizesthe central role of publicity and the media. As Brigitte Nacos notes, publicityfar

more than financial resourcesis as essential for terrorists as the air they breathe.26

Hezbollahs al Manar television station represents a sophisticated and evolved form of

perception management directed to both local and international audiences.27

Avi Jorischmaintains that the group uses it to incite hatred and conflict with Israel, thereby ensuring

continued relevance and funding. At the local level, this kind of media activity keeps theright amount of fuel in the combustion chamber for an ideologys survival; it replicates

and reinforces the home populations violent memes.In foreign areas, the media is the most powerful viral-memetic delivery device.

Much of what Pallywood produces is designed for distribution through Western outlets.The Palestinians usually set up and film the faked incidents, while outlets such as France

2, the BBC, CNN, CBS, and al Jazeera contribute by neglecting to verify or question thematerials credibility. Instead they proliferate the images, usually without criticism and

often without the necessary context, on the contrary, because they present staged news asreal, and necessarily in the wrong context. Take, for example what Janine di Giovanni of

the London Times claimed about Jenin, Rarely in more than a decade of war reportingfrom Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction,

such disrespect for human life.28

Thus the MSNM acts as a soundboard, augmenting thePalestinian narrative rather than questioning itthe very job of the media.

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Of course, neither side in the conflict has a complete monopoly on the media writlarge, but right kind of bias can be a powerful force multiplier for cognitive warriors.

This goes beyond the type of reporting that results from mistakes, intimidation, or directmanipulation by militants. The witting and unwitting activism of journalists with strong

and predetermined senses of right or wrong can assist propagandists in effecting newrealities and blocking or omitting pernicious memes, be they true or false. It is rare for

journalists to admit that the content of their reports is manipulated at some point of theprocess, and it is entirely possible that many of those who do justify the practice through

the mechanisms of cognitive dissonance. They may think, Yes, they control or fake


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what we see, but that doesnt mean theyre wrong, or, its the only way this underdogcan fight the IDFits just evening things out.

Joshua Muravchik writes that several studies have shown that journalists,especially in the elite media, are disproportionately Democratic in their personal party

allegiance.30

Is it conceivable that memes associated with the Democratic Party, such as

distrust for strong military institutions, sensitivity to perceived minority oppression,support for minorities and the perceived underdog etc., find their way into news aboutIsrael? Images contrasting the might of the IDF with the weakness of the Palestinians

proliferate, arousing strong emotions within readers and viewers, and ensuring an avidfollowing. When contrasted with the dearth of images showing weaponized

Palestinians, the impact deepens, the complexity of the situation recedes, andambivalence about the conflict disappears.

When the MSNMs democratic bias combines with the fact that college anduniversity faculty are also overwhelmingly democraticapproximately 87% at elite

schools, according to one studythen a kind of memetic, positive feedback loopresults.

31As messages perpetually bounce back and forth between the media and

academia, the incestuous affirmation snowballs and it becomes the accepted discourse ofthe times. Cognitive warriors then find themselves in a far better position to go on and

win the war.

CONCLUSION

Whether by the simple passing of decades or these attempts to recast history, theobscuration of the empirical truth has benefitted Israels enemies. Even outside the

bounds of Arab society, I have had numerous conversations with educated Westernersduring which it became progressively clearer that, despite potent beliefs, the individual

did not know the most basic, historical facts about the conflict. These facts haveincluded: the Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection of a two-state solution in 1948 and

2000; the subsequent, repeated attempts to wipe out the nascent Jewish state byconventional means; that U.N. administered refugee camps are not concentration camps

run by Israel; the pervasiveness of genocidal rhetoric in the Palestinian discourse; thatIsraels alleged mistreatment/oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories is

not the original cause of Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism; that no Arab peaceinitiative includes recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; and that this last point, taken in

the context of the Palestinians so-called right of return, has existential consequences forIsrael.

If this type of ignorance has been increasing over the past few decadesand Isuggest that it hasit tracks neatly with the changing discourse model. Press coverage

became more critical after 1967, implying that the righteous underdog paradigm eithershifted ormore likelythat the new facts couldnt align with it. Rather than search for

a new paradigm, we transferred legitimacy to the other party. The historical memeswhich favored Israel initially aligned with the underdog memeplex, but now that Israel

occupies a new and necessarily sinister position in that paradigm, the historical memeswhich favor the Jewish state are memetically filtered out. That is, the righteous underdog

memeplex works to ensure its own survival by culling the antithetical memes, whether


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or not they were once considered true. The basic facts about Israels history die orbecome buried, a phenomenon that propagandists accelerate.

Both the media and academic institutions are obviously in the thick of this battle.They are the soundboards for the accepted discourse, despite the many vulnerabilities and

biases they bring to the fight. So long as so many of them do not see that they are being

manipulated, or even that we are in a cognitive war, they will not be able to stand up,close ranks, and defend the high ground. One has to wonder, though, if the ego wouldstop an epiphany after so many years of willful and unwitting assistance as jihadist agents

of influence. As American Journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave once said about Sovietactive measures, Its very hard for journalists to accept that this has been going on

because otherwise they have to admit almost in the same breath that theyve been rippingoff their readers and viewers and listeners.

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1Yuri Bezmenov, interview, accessed at http://cicentre.com/videos/yuri_bezmenov.html

2 This is not to say that Americans have never used deceptionfor they clearly haverather that it has not been an accepted industrystandard as with other nations. In U.S. Information Operations doctrine, deception is clearly limited to military actions. PSYOP itself

may support military deception, but it does not doctrinally involve the use of disinformation even in that objective. See Joint

Publication 3-53, Doctrine for Joint Psychological Operations, 5 September 2003.

3Online Soviet media archive, University of Rhode Island, URL: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/History/WC_Period/Soviet_broadcasts/

Soviet_broadcasts.html

4 Soviet Active Measures, 1984 National Archives, ARC: 54826, 306.9798

5Soviet Active Measures, 1984 National Archives, ARC: 54826, 306.9798

6U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation,An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 22

May 1991, Government Exhibit 003-0003 3:04-CR-240-G.

7Walid PharesFuture Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West, (Palgrave MacMillan, New York 2005), 140-142.

8A Different View of the Middle East,Inside Higher Ed, 02 November 2007,

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/02/mideast, accessed 26 March 2009.

9Star Wars, starring Mark Hamill, Alec Guinness, and others, directed by George Lucas, 20th Century Fox, 1977. In the referenced

scene, Obi-Wan Kanobe influences two guards with his psychic powers, making them believe the machines they are staring at are not

the items they have been searching for, although they plainly are. Obi-Wan Kanobe says calmly, These arent the droids yourelooking for, to which the guard responds, These arent the droids were looking for move along.

10 David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), 3-4.

11U.S. President, Presidents Address to the Nation, 10 January 2007, URL:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html, accessed 30 May 2007.

12Pascale Combelles Siegel, Perception Management: IOs Stepchild?Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement13, no. 2 (2005):

117.

13 Stuart A. Green, Lieutenant, USN, Introduction to Israel Research Trip, unpublished research paper funded by JMIC, 7 February

2007, 3. See also Thomas X. Hammes, Colonel, USMC (Ret.), Fourth Generation Warfare Evolves, Fifth Emerges, Military

Review, May-June 2007, URL: http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/ MayJun07/Hammes.pdf

14Asher Kaufman, Understanding The Shebaa Farms Dispute: Roots of the Anomaly and Prospects of Resolution,Palestine-Israel

Journal, Vol. 11, no 1. (2004): 41.

15

Ronen Sebag, Lebanon: TheIntifadas False Premise, Middle East Quarterly, no. 9-2 (2002): 13.16

Americans have a history of at least rhetorically supporting minorities oppressed in foreign lands. This stands in obvious contrast tocivil rights abuses within U.S. borders, but in several cases the oppression of minorities in the Middle East fired early American zealfor universal justice. Such was the case with Jews in the Ottoman Empire, as well as Armenians and Greeks as they endured their own

struggles. See Michael B. OrensPower, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present, W.W. Norton &Company, Inc., New York 2007.

17Please note here that I have assumed Israels Western moral characterin all its ups and downsto be more or less constant over

the course of the last 60 years, and in this instance I am judging it only relative to itself. Post-1967 mistakes or perceivedtransgressions appear to be balanced by at least as many pre-1967 black marks, and one could easily make the argument that Israel has

become more sensitive to civilian casualties and more liberal in its attitudes towards its enemy population, especially given the


13/13

13

development of popular peace movements. The notable point is that perception of Israel appears to have dropped with no discernable,

radical change in its behaviorwherever that lies on the moral spectrum.

18 Minneapolis Airport Incident Update, Little Green Footballs, 21 Nov. 2006,

19 Deborah Lipstadt,Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Plume, 1994), xiii.

20 Herb Keinon, Spanish Paper: Irving Expert on WWII, Jerusalem Post, 3 September 2009,http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804476311&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

21 Robert Pape,Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,New York, Random House, 2006, 15.

22Jean Bethke Elshatain,Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (Basic Books, New York

2003).

23 Kenneth Ballen, The Myth of Muslim Support for Terror, The Christian Science Monitor, online ed., 23 February 2007, URL:http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0223/p09s01-coop.html, accessed 14 May 2007.

24The Meaning, Techniques and Methods of Political Warfare, Political Warfare Executive, 1942. http://www.psywar.org

25Raanan Gissin, Strategic Advisor to Ariel Sharon, interviewed by the author, December 2006. Cited hereafter as Gissin.

26 Brigitte L. Nacos, Mass Mediated Terrorism: The Central Role of the Media in Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Lanham: Rowman

& Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), 193.

27

Avi Jorisch,Beacon of Hatred: Inside Hizballahs al-Manar Television (Washington DC: Washington Institute for Near EastPolicy, 2004).

28 U.N. Reporting on Jenin,Honestreporting.com, 2002, URL:http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/mediaobjectivity/UN_Report_on_Jenin.asp.

29Roni Kitri, Brigadier General (Ret.), former IDF Spokesman, former Head of Central Intelligence School, interview by the author,

14 December 2006.

30 Muravchik, Joshua. Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising. Washington D.C.: The WashingtonInstitute for Near East Policy, 2003, 59.

31Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 29 March 2005, C01

32Soviet Active Measures, 1984 National Archives, ARC: 54826, 306.9798

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