Global Guerillas

Setbacks in the war on terror don’t only flow from the mistakes of individual leaders and generals. They’re structural. It’s pointless to decapitate the head of the insurgency or disrupt its command structure, because the insurgency doesn’t have these things. Instead, it is a swarm of disparate companies that share information, learn from each other’s experiments and respond quickly to environmental signals. Democratic nations need to build their own decentralized counterinsurgency networks.

Look on the Global Guerillas blog of John Robb. And read this op-ed of David Brooks in today's NYT:

May 18, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Insurgent Advantage
By DAVID BROOKS
The war on terror has shredded the reputation of the Bush administration. It’s destroyed the reputation of Tony Blair’s government in Britain, Ehud Olmert’s government in Israel and Nuri al-Maliki’s government in Iraq. And here’s a prediction: It will destroy future American administrations, and future Israeli, European and world governments as well.
That’s because setbacks in the war on terror don’t only flow from the mistakes of individual leaders and generals. They’re structural. Thanks to a series of organizational technological innovations, guerrilla insurgencies are increasingly able to take on and defeat nation-states.
Over the past few years, John Robb has been dissecting the behavior of these groups on his blog, Global Guerrillas. Robb is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and Yale University, and he has worked both as a special ops counterterrorism officer and as a successful software executive.
In other words, he’s had personal experience both with modern warfare and the sort of information management that is the key to winning it. He’s collected his thoughts in a fast, thought-sparking book, “Brave New War” that, astonishingly, has received only one print review — distributed by U.P.I. — in the month since it’s been published.
Robb observes that today’s extremist organizations are not like the P.L.O. under Yasir Arafat. They’re not liberation armies. Instead, modern terror groups are open-source, decentralized conglomerations of small, quasi-independent groups.
There are between 70 and 100 groups that make up the Iraqi insurgency, and they are organized, Robb says, like a bazaar. It’s pointless to decapitate the head of the insurgency or disrupt its command structure, because the insurgency doesn’t have these things. Instead, it is a swarm of disparate companies that share information, learn from each other’s experiments and respond quickly to environmental signals.
For example, the U.S. has spent billions trying to disrupt attacks from improvised explosive devices, but the I.E.D. manufacturing stream has transmogrified and now includes sophisticated metallurgy, outsourcing and fast innovation cycles. The number of I.E.D. attacks has remained pretty constant throughout the war.
Superempowered global guerrillas — whether it’s Al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, Nigerian oil fighters or the Brazilian gang P.C.C. — specialize in what Robb calls systems disruption. They attack the networks that support modern life. In one case, Iraqi insurgents spent roughly $2,000 to blow up an oil pipeline in Southeast Iraq. It cost the Iraqi government $500 million in lost revenue. For the insurgents, that was a return on investment of 25 million percent.
The 9/11 attacks, the Madrid bombings, the Niger Delta oil well attacks and even the Samarra mosque bombing were all attempts to disrupt the economic and social systems of target nations.
But, Robb continues, these new groups are not seeking to take over their countries the way 20th-century guerrillas did. They have a prenational, feudal mind-set to go along with their postnational Silicon Valley-style organizational methods. They merely seek to weaken states, so they can prosper in the lawless space created by collapse of law and order. That way the groups don’t have to construct anything or assume responsibility for anything.
In fact they’ve learned, as Lawrence of Arabia learned decades ago, that it’s better to weaken target governments, but not actually destroy them. When nations don’t feel existentially threatened, they don’t mobilize all their resources to defeat their foes. They try to fight wars on the cheap, and end up in a feckless semibelligerent state somewhere between real war and nonwar.
Robb is pessimistic (excessively so) that top-heavy, pork-driven institutions like the Defense Department or the Department of Homeland Security can ever keep up with open-source insurgencies. Since 9/11, he believes, big government institutions have engaged in a process of hindsight re-engineering designed to reduce future risk, when in fact, the very nature of the threat is that it’s random and cannot be anticipated.
He thinks democratic nations need to build their own decentralized counterinsurgency networks, though he goes over the top in imagining local squads of grass-roots terror fighters.
But time and again, he hints at the core issue, which is that nation-states are inefficient learning organizations, at least compared to their feudal and postnational foes. If the Iraqi insurgents defeat the U.S. then every bad guy on earth will study and learn their techniques. The people now running for president will find themselves in bigger heaps of trouble than the current one now is — trouble that this presidential campaign hasn’t even dealt with.

Un film esential - Intolerance (1916)

O tanara mama, alaturi de pruncul aflat in leagan. Imaginea revine de nenumarate ori in Intolerance, filmul lui Griffith, facut in 1917. Scena leaga intre ele episoadele filmului, desfasurate fiecare in spatii geografice extrem de diferite si in perioade istorice extrem de diferite. Sa observam ca imaginea tinerei mame aflata langa pruncul din leagan nu are o localizare in timp sau spatiu: imaginea aceasta este liantul filmului tocmai pentru ca poate fi oriunde si oricand. Este imaginea esentiala a rostului vietii, ne spune Griffith. Viata inseamna dragoste care creaza.
Tanara mama este interpretata de o actrita celebra a acelor ani, Lilian Gish. In maini tine o carte. Este greu, desigur, sa vedem titlul cartii. Diversi comentatori ne asigura ca este un volum de versuri: Leaves of Grass, al lui Walt Whitman. Iar cartea este deschisa la un poem intitulat Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking:

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d alone, bare-headed, barefoot,

Down from the shower’d halo

Asocierea imaginii din film cu versurile avantate ale lui Whitman creaza un contrapunct superb. Pruncul va parasi leaganul ca sa isi traiasca din plin viata, dar aici este inceputul vietii, este esenta din care se va dezvolta totul:

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories, sad brother—from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist

Iar filmul este despre opozitia dintotdeauna intre aceasta imagine esentiala a vietii si raspunsul pe care il da societatea. Intoleranta, oarba la esenta vietii, distrugand viata. Societatea care distruge Evanghelia Iubirii in numele Legii si care distruge Iubirea in numele Evangheliei. Razboaiele dintre cei care cred in Isus si cei care cred in Iisus. Societatea care distruge zeii tai pentru a pune in loc zeii mei. Terorizarea saracilor in numele operelor de binefacere.
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Iar imaginea tinerei mame, langa pruncul din leagan, revine, mereu si mereu:

From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither—ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man—yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them—but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

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Daca e sa incerc o ierarhizare, Intoleranta mi se pare mai important decat Potemkin sau Octombrie, pentru ca le premerge.
Sigur, Eisenstein, la zece ani dupa Griffith, e matur, putem vedea filmele lui fara sa zambim ingaduitori - filmele lui nu dau nici un semn de batranete. Si este apoi o alta deosebire: sentimentalismul filmului lui Griffith si patosul filmelor lui Eisenstein.
Intoleranta este plin de naivitatile inceputului, de melodrama - este pe de alta parte extrem de ambitios - ceea ce poate ca il aduce periculos de aproape de ratare (dar ii da si marca geniului) - insa tot mestesugul cu care ma delecteaza filmele lui Eisenstein - ei bine, totul, se afla acolo, in Intoleranta.
Ritmul fantastic - filmul dureaza trei ore, mergand in paralel pe patru naratiuni - in America inceputului de secol, in Iudeea Evangheliilor, in Parisul Noptii Sfantului Bartolomeu, in Babilon - nu te plictistesti, nu te enerveaza toata naivitatile si ingrosarile, nu te enerveaza didacticismul evident - in primul rand pentru ca ritmul viguros al filmului nu iti da o clipa de ragaz. Iar David Wark Griffih trece genial dintr-o poveste in alta, are grija sa le evolueze in acelasi tempo - si are siguranta trecerii de la filmarea de departe la close-up - si are mai ales geniul scenelor de masa - furnicarul de oameni aia care se misca apoi in Potemkin si in Octombrie, se misca magistral mai intai aici, in Babilonul inchipuit de Griffith - si are suflu, nu si-l pierde, exact cum Eisenstein va avea acelasi suflu peste zece ani - respiratia unui atlet, a unei locomotive, vigoare.
Iar scena marii piete publice din Babilon, filmata de sus, cu miscarea oamenilor peste tot, pe scari (scarile din Potemkin sunt deja acolo, in Babilonul lui Griffith), pe marele platou, pe balcoanele palatelor - poate ca este cea mai extraordinara scena de masa din toata istoria filmului. Sigur ca Griffith isi imparte meritele cu cameramanul, Billy Bitzer.

Trei mari regizori care au avut alaturi de ei trei mari cameramani: Griffith cu Billy Bitzer, Eisenstein cu Eduard Tisse, Wong Kar-Wai cu Chris Doyle. Ei au creat acele cateva momente esentiale care marcheaza istoria cinematografului.

Da, Intoleranta este un film esential. Se gaseste pe web, impartit in trei bucati de cate o ora - partea intaia, a doua si a treia.

Eisenstein

Click here to see the movie