The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century

The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, USMC Date: 2005-07-18 09:24:25   —   $16.47   —   Book product page Rating:

Last week, a car bomber in Iraq killed a trooper and a bunch of kids as US soldiers handed out candy on a street corner. Many called it an evil, senseless act. Evil it was, but definitely not senseless. That one attack was calculated to send a different message to several groups of people, and displays a sophisticated understanding of propaganda.

To the American people it says the insurgency is alive and well, and we can expect more of the same because the US military, after more than two years of fighting, is still powerless to stop it. To the Iraqi people, it's a warning against getting friendly or collaborating with US forces. To the rest of the world, it reinforces the message that Iraq is the United States' war - it's ugly and it's brutal and you don't want to get involved.

So are these insurgents super-smart? Not particularly. According to Col. Hammes, these guys are operating from a standard insurgent playbook that's been continually refined over the last several decades from Mao to Vietnam to the Sandinistas to the Palestinian Intifada to Somalia and now Iraq. They're waging a nimble, politically oriented, Fourth Generation War (4GW), while the US military - bogged down with heavy forces more appropriate to challenging a no-longer existent super-power - is trying to swat deadly, disease-carrying mosquitoes with a sledge hammer.

Col. Hammes' book documents the evolution of 4GW. He also shows how our political and military leaders are largely ignoring it. The Bush administration dismisses al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents as evil thugs, and the military is focused on a mythical China threat, as is made clear by the Pentagon's Joint Vision 2020 document, which all but ignores the type of war we're fighting right now - and are most likely to fight in the future.

One really interesting thing Hammes brings up is how, just as business and society have abandoned the industrial age and embraced the information age, so have our enemies. The global Islamist insurgency is a loosely connected network where all that's necessary for success is the ability to move people and information around the globe. Just as we saw with the 9/11 attacks and the Madrid and London train bombings, all the destructive material was obtained within the target country by outfits who are inspired by - but not directly controlled by - al-Qaeda. We're in the position of fighting an idea, rather than an organization.

By far, the strongest theme Hammes follows is that the Pentagon must get over its obsession with technology and focus on people,

In China, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Intifada I, the USSR-Afghan War, and Chechnya I, the losing side had superior technology but had no concept of how to apply it to this new generation of war. What really matters are well-trained, intelligent, creative people guided by a coherent long-term strategic approach to 4GW.

And Hammes delivers the goods, making recommendations for transforming the way the military handles promotions, training, intelligence, organization, and just about everything else necessary to meet current and future 4GW threats. Just as Michael Scheuer's book, "Imperial Hubris", is the one book you must read to understand al-Qaeda, "The Sling and the Stone" is the one book you must read if you want to defeat it.