In January of 2009 as Barack Obama and Joe Biden took the oath of office the United States stood at the peak of military power – our country proudly maintained the most lethal, most
experienced, best educated, most technologically advanced and most expensive military establishment in history.
How then did we go from that proud moment to being defeated by an irregular force using mostly World War II and Cold War era weapons in a country where we had spent trillions of dollars and more than 2,300 lives and won battle after battle?
The answer to that seemingly complex question may be found in a slim volume Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad by our friend Steve Coughlin.
Coughlin, who is now retired from the Army, had a distinguished career as an attorney, decorated intelligence officer and noted specialist on Islamic law, ideology and associated issues as they relate to terrorism and subversion. In September 2001, right after 9/11, he was mobilized from his private sector career and assigned to the Directorate for Intelligence, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Targeting (JCS-J2T). Over time, his responsibilities evolved into intelligence support to information operations and strategic communications from a targeting perspective.
In 2007, Coughlin was awarded a Master of Science of Strategic Intelligence from the Joint Military Intelligence College / Defense Intelligence Agency on the threat analysis aspects of Islamic law and related doctrines. As a Major in the United States Army (res.), Coughlin was later assigned to USCENTCOM where he served in both an intelligence and strategic communications / information operations role.
From 9/11, to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the “Arab Spring,” and the rise of the Islamic State Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad explains how we got where we are in the war Islam has declared on the West and how we were destined to fail due to the decisions made by Obama and Biden.
What Coughlin discovered once he entered the Intelligence Directorate was that in the Pentagon there was a preference for political correctness over accuracy and for models that were generated not by what the enemy said he was, but for what academics and "cultural advisors" said the enemy needed to be based on contrived social science theories.
And then the 2008 election brought Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the White House, and put ideologues associated with them in charge of the Pentagon, CIA and State Department.
Suddenly telling and teaching the truth about Islam, its goals, and its doctrine of information warfare, was no longer welcome at the White House, CIA and especially at the Pentagon.
And while the roots of this problem were there in the George W. Bush administration, they accelerated during the Barack Obama years – to the point that Coughlin’s “Red Pill” briefing explaining how Islamic law and the doctrine of jihad underlies and motivates every aspect of our Muslim enemy’s warfighting was banned from the Pentagon.
The result of this was a generation of military leaders who are completely clueless about who and what we were (and still are) fighting.
As Coughlin explained, because most American military and political leaders operate on a false reality constructed by Islamist academics the result was and is that senior leaders remain profoundly ignorant of the Islamic doctrines that frame the war Islam has declared on the West and motivate the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And, most importantly for the purposes of proving our claim that Obama and Biden broke our military, the result has been that, because they are ignorant of the Islamic doctrines that frame our enemy’s warfighting, the United States basically outsourced the decision-making on how to fight the wars (actually theaters in the larger war) in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to these Islamist academics and so-called community partners – many of whom are themselves suspected of providing material support to terrorists.
What's the bottom line?
Because we have a generation of military and political leaders who are completely ignorant of Islam and its military doctrines, there has been a purposeful ratcheting down of standards to the point that we now have a Pentagon, CIA and White House where military decision-making defers to anthropologists and "cultural experts," many of whom are actually on the other side in the war Islam has declared on the West. The result is a broken military bereft of direction and ignorant of who and what the enemy is and how to defeat him.
If you want to understand how we got where we are in Afghanistan, and why things are going to get worse in the war Islam has declared on the West before they get better read Steve Coughlin’s Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad.
U.S. military
Joe Biden
Barack Obama
Taliban
Afghanistan
Al Qaeda
Steve Coughlin
Islamic Law
Political Correctness
cultural advisors
Iraq
Syria
War on Terror
Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad