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Going global. The new strategy, for the first time, formally directs military commanders to go after a list of eight pressure points at which terrorist groups could be vulnerable: ideological support, weapons, funds, communications and movement, safe havens, foot soldiers, access to targets, and leadership. Each U.S. geographic command is to follow a systematic approach, first collecting intelligence on any of the two dozen target groups that are operating in its area of responsibility and then developing a plan to attack all eight nodes for each of those groups.
Going after high-value targets like Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab Zarqawi, his emir in Iraq, is still a big part of the strategy but only a part. Three less direct approaches will now receive much greater emphasis: helping partner nations confront terrorism, going after supporters of terrorist organizations, and helping the State Department-led campaign to reduce the ideological appeal of terrorism. The latter category includes such things as military-provided humanitarian aid. U.S. aid to tsunami victims, for example, dramatically swung Asian public opinion from a negative to a positive view of America. Despite fears that the U.S. military is waging a duplicitous propaganda war, many military officials say that "information operations" are an inevitable dimension of warfare and must play a role, along with the State Department's public-diplomacy efforts. One particular area of emphasis: educating soldiers in religious and cultural sensitivities. Caslen showed a reporter two photographs as examples of what not to do--one of marines bivouacked inside Fallujah's Khulafah Rashid mosque after driving out insurgents, another of a soldier's rosary dangling from a tank barrel.
