Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004 -keenly insightful commentary on Iraq and other issues:
Let me give you an example the War on Terrorism. I think we do a masterful job at the tactical level. We attack al Qaeda on the ground. We break down the finances. We break down the cells. We get law enforcement cooperation around the world doing wonderful damage to the organization. Yet, as an ideology and a movement, it has grown.
If I were to analyze, from a strategic point of view, al Qaeda – and, Im not saying this is the right analogy, but its just an example – the strategic center of gravity for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is a pool of angry, young men willing to die. What causes angry young men willing to die?
They’re willing to die because theres a political, economic or social reason. Some sense of disenfranchisement. Some sense of oppression that makes them angry, fires them up, and makes them tempted to come to al Qaeda. Now, that isn’t enough to get them to blow themselves up and to do horrific acts. You need a rationale. You need something that justifies what they do.
At the operational level, the center of gravity is the aberrant form of Islam that they’re able to use on them to provide the sense of reward, and rationale and justification for what the do. And then the set of tactics that work so well against us, because it is asymmetric.
If you think about it on those three levels, I have to go after this War on Terrorism, which is even a bad name. I have to go after this movement of extremism at three levels. How do I cut that flow of angry young men? How do I make sure that aberrant form of Islam is rejected? Or encourage others to, and I’ve got some thoughts on all this, but I wont go into it here. And do the things that we do well at the tactical level. But, you don’t have that kind of strategic thinking.