which HEARTS and MINDS

Iain Duncan Smith is the official Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Conservative Party in Britain

Dear Mr Duncan Smith

I heard you on the radio today. You praised our Prime Minister but challenged his ability to "win over the hearts and minds of the British public". I also read about it here.

You were until recently a soldier and with a military training you will obviously understand the concept of strategy. In original terms it simply meant the "art of generalship" i.e. deciding what to try and achieve. So a good general will decide that to win the war this town must be cut off, that road must be controlled, these troops must be increased and so on.

As the Leader of Britain's main opposition party you are a general of sorts. Now tell me: is "winning over the hearts and minds of the British public" an important strategic aim for conquering terrorism?

Of course not. The essence of the problem, the very nature of the problem is that the hearts and minds that have to be won are the hearts and minds of the terrorists - and would-be terrorists. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "I destroy my enemy when I make him my friend". Your inversion of that wisdom is terrifying.

You will want to know how to turn our enemies (and would-be enemies) into friends. Well, there are ways that have been shown to be very effective, evidence based solutions that have been described in prestigious, peer reviewed learned journals, but I won't go into those now. If you like you can read about them here or here. It is enough to say that if we drop bombs on villages and towns, if we disregard the sovereignty of countries, then the inhabitants and their relatives and friends, far and wide, will inevitably become our enemies. Just as, in the same circumstances, we have become theirs due to the attacks on America on 11th September. Those attackers were just as wrong in the way they responded to their perceived grievances as we are in ours. I even wrote to Osama Bin Laden about it, on 16th September, before it had been publicly clarified that he was the organiser of the attacks.

The truth is that friendship and enmity are states of mind, of emotions. One day politicians like yourself and the Prime Minister will wake up, realise it and begin to address those states of mind directly. You are surely a pragmatic person. If your wife wants a yellow front door, you will buy a tin of yellow paint and with a bit of work, bingo! it is done. If you want nations and peoples to be our country's friends then be just as direct - give them friendship - at the deepest level. The technology for painting doors is easily understood and implemented. In truth, the technology for delivering friendship and harmony to the world is just as readily available and understandable. Take a few minutes to look at the evidence and ask your scientists (you do have some, don't you?) to evaluate it properly.

Lastly - how good is military might at defeating terrorism? Awful. Israel is an excellent example. Israel is mightily armed, powerful and brave*. Yet day by day, Israeli citizens are plagued by terrorism. The combined might of the Indian and the Sri Lankan armies was unable to prevail against the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan guerrillas and terrorists. Indeed Major General Kulwant Singh who spent over 15 years fighting terrorism in that war is now one of the strongest proponents of our solutions. He has tried the conventional ways and like all who understand terrorism knows they are fundamentally flawed. Even the British army was unable to defeat terrorism in Northern Ireland. In the end it took negotiation with the terrorists to bring the relative peace we enjoy now.

Come on Mr Duncan-Smith. You receive a handsome public salary to oppose the government of the day. Earn your salt and make our Prime Minister think things through properly. Start by supporting Paul Marsden's Early Day Motion (1/11/2001) to stop the bombing of Afghanistan. Then go on, be a bit braver, challenge the Prime Minister to explain exactly what alternatives to war he has tried. He keeps saying that there aren't any. Ask him if his heart is really inclined to seek alternatives - I don't believe it is, see the PS to the letter I wrote to him on 16th September.

Work properly at your job now and you will win the hearts and minds of the British public.

Yours sincerely

William Hite
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Footnote

So powerful that even though a tiny nation it was able to beat off the combined attacks of Syria and Egypt during the Yom Kippur or October war of 1973.

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original (with hyper-links) is at
http://www.wrc-solutions.com/twentyminutes/oplet/ids1.htm