The Pentagon has a new plan, and from what I’ve read so far…I’m wondering why this hasn’t been the plan from the very beginning.

From the NY Times:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 â€â€? The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has completed a new, classified counterterrorism strategy that for the first time orders the military to focus on nine areas identified as necessary for any terrorist network to operate, senior Pentagon officials say, and warns that ill-conceived military operations could add to terrorists’ ranks.

Dated Feb. 1, signed by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and endorsed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the strategy document orders the Defense Department to undertake a broad campaign to find and attack or neutralize terrorist leaders, their havens, financial networks, methods of communication and ability to move around the globe. It also orders the military to focus on terrorist information-gathering systems, personnel and ideology.

The document orders the military to defeat terrorists, specifying that doing so requires “continuous military operations to develop the situation and generate the intelligence that allows us to attack global terrorist organizations.”

And quite possibly the most intriguing piece of this new plan is what it hints at regarding how we should use military action:

The document’s unusual admission of the negative impact military actions can have cited no examples, but said: “The way we conduct operations â€â€? choosing whether, when, where and how â€â€? can affect ideological support for terrorism. Knowledge of indigenous population’s cultural and religious sensitivities and understanding of how the enemy uses the U.S. military’s actions against us should inform the way the U.S. military operates.”

In other words, be damn sure you’re fighting the right war at the right time or it could help the enemy recruit even more terrorists and will hinder our efforts in the larger struggle against global terrorism. In fact, the report also notes that 30 new Al Qaeda operations have sprung up after 9/11, which is quite a sobering fact if you think about it. I wonder how many Al Qaeda cells we’ve actually put out of commission?

And one last thing people: hearts and minds:

Pentagon officials involved in writing the strategy point out that the American military’s efforts to aid tsunami victims in southeast Asia and to assist victims of Pakistan’s earthquake did more to counter terrorist ideology than any attack mission.

Well said. If we’re going to show the world how we are different than them, we can’t go around kidnapping and torturing people, and we certainly can’t give up our freedoms for just a little bit of saftey. In fact, as this story points out…

Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Listen, the basic message to all of this is we have to start getting smart about how we fight the WOT. Brute force isn’t working. Sure, it’ll frame us a liberators, but if you kill a bunch of people’s family members while liberating a country, you’re potentially creating more terrorists. In fact, in the war-torn regions where Islamic extremism is the norm, it’s almost a certainty.

In any event, I’m glad to see this new plan is focused more on hearts and minds and less on shock and awe.