Read an excerpt from Stephen Coughlin’s book, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad, a chapter called Day of Rage:
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“The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.” —V. I. Lenin, Russian Revolutionary Leader
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The OIC wasted little time initiating its Ten-Year Programme to “combat Islamophobia” after it was ratified in late 2005. It began with a full-blown information campaign directed at a set of cartoons.
On September 30, 2005, a Danish satirical newspaper called Jyllands-Posten published a series of unflattering cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Outrage in the Muslim world quickly intensified, creating what has been called the Danish Cartoon Crisis.
On the heels of the OIC’s announcement of its Ten-Year Programme, which called for legislation and punishment for violations of Islamic law on slander and blasphemy, I noticed the addition of new players, an acceleration and intensification of provocative events, and an echo-chamber pointing in a single, unified direction.
Something big was happening, and I could see the gathering storm.
In January 2006, I sent emails to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Special Operations Command warning of what was unfolding and explained their seriousness.
At the time, nobody took the message seriously.
By mid-February, the Muslim world worked itself into such a convulsive rage that the Cartoon Crisis gained intense media attention.
Later, I was asked to brief Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM) Strategic Communication Synchronization Conference in early March 2006.
They asked me to explain how I had been able to warn them of these events by identifying and forecasting them with such precision before they occurred.
The briefing brought the conference to a standstill.
The calculated manufacture of outrage is among the principle lines of operation that the OIC uses to implement its Ten-Year Programme of Action.
The Cartoon Crisis was the prototype event in a campaign towards implementing Islamic principles of slander, giving rise to talking points and demands that have remained consistent through similar incidents.
The rhetoric surrounding these events is identical, and will be described and analyzed in detail in the following pages.
The challenge is to identify elements of messaging that find their way into what should be recognized as a sustained strategic communications and information operations campaign. . . . .
Read the Chapter: Day of Rage (pdf)
