Stephen Coughlin - Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad

Why Me?

I did not set out in life to be astudent of jihad and Islamic-based terrorism. In the fall of 2001, I was areserve officer in the United States Army, called to active duty from theprivate sector due to the events of September 11. My posting was to the JointChiefs of Staff Intelligence Directorate (JS-J2). As I watched America respondto events across the world, I noticed with alarm that decisionmaking seemed tobe increasingly less focused on the threat as it presented itself and more onthe narratives that reduced the threat to a nameless abstraction.

As a mobilized officer brought into the heart of the strategicintelligence world, I knew there would be a large learning curve involved informulating the threat doctrine of an enemy that had brought down the TwinTowers in the name of Islam and according to Islamic law.

I made a point of going to the source. I found actual books ofIslamic law. I read them and found they could be mapped, with repeatableprecision, to the stated doctrines and information that groups like al-Qaedaand the Muslim Brotherhood disclosed about themselves and used when speaking toeach other. My analysis helped me develop a threat doctrine, an understandingof the enemy as he understands himself unconstrained by the influences of theenvironment Sun Tzus Know your enemy. That threat analysis was inline with all the standard doctrines on threat development I had been taughtwhen I learned to do intelligence analysis. Because the declared enemy statedthat his fighting doctrine was based on the Islamic law of jihad, Islamic lawhad to be incorporated into any competent threat analysis. When assessingal-Qaeda in light of the jihad doctrines that the groups members actuallycite, I came to realize that such doctrines did exist, they are generally citedproperly, and that al-Qaeda made plausible claims to be actually followingthose doctrines. In legal parlance, al-Qaedas claims to be operating inaccordance with mainstream Islamic law could at least survive summary judgment.By the same token, any analysis of al-Qaeda that failed to account for such aself-disclosed component of an identified threat doctrine could not becompetent. I assumed everyone with whom I worked in the intelligencedirectorate was aware of the most basic aspects of intelligence, such as threatidentification.

I waswrong. I had entered the Intelligence Directorate adhering to the traditionalmethods of analysis. Soon, however, I discovered that within the division thereseemed to be a preference for political correctness over accuracy and formodels that were generated not by what the enemy said he was, but on whatacademics and cultural advisors said the enemy needed to be, based oncontrived social science theories.

Itseemed the enemy was aware of this as well. Forces hostile to the United Statesin the War on Terror appeared to have successfully calculated that they couldwin the war by convincing our national security leaders of the immorality ofstudying and knowing the enemy. It is not our fault that the threat we faceidentifies its doctrine along Islamic lines, but it is our fault that we refuseto look at that doctrine simply because our enemy wishes to blind us to itsstrategic design.

Sometime ago, I had an opportunity to analyze the Muslim Brotherhood in NorthAmericas strategic documents, which were entered into evidence in a federalterrorism trial. In those documents, the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly statesits designs for civilization-jihad and its intent to sabotage America bygetting us to do the job for them. This doctrine of subversion could likewisebe mapped to mainstream Islamic law. Individuals and organizations named in theBrotherhoods documents were shown in the governments investigative files,surveillance photos, audio recordings, and wiretaps to have been aligned withor members of the Muslim Brotherhood. But while the government was identifyingmany of these people and entities as providing material support to terrorism ina federal court, it was also seeking out those same people as cultural experts,moderates, and community outreach partners.