Albert Einstein famously stated that: "Any fool can know; the point is
to understand." Over the past 20 years, the United States has known that
there exist people with a profound hatred of all that it and the West
are, and all that it stands for. During that time the American people
and our allies abroad have known war in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and we
know that today in Syria, Iraq, in Nigeria and North Africa those
enemies plan and plot more violence and more hatred against us. Yet, do
we really understand? If there is one observation that has been repeated
by military commanders and policymakers alike from almost every nation
in our various coalitions, it is the idea that we have not understood
our adversary properly. Our nations have the world's most sophisticated
intelligence gathering capabilities. We are masters of electronic
intelligence, of human intelligence, of signal intelligence, open-source
intelligence, and technical intelligence.