Center for a New American Security

Spencer provided the link to the piece itself:

But beyond the term itself, I believe we have walked away from the original intent. By organizing to it—creating whole structures around it—we have allowed strategic communication to become a thing instead of a process, an abstract thought instead of a way of thinking. It is now sadly something of a cottage industry.

 

We need to get back to basics, and we can start by not beating ourselves up. The problem isn’t that we are bad at communicating or being outdone by men in caves. Most of them aren’t even in caves. The Taliban and al Qaeda live largely among the people. They intimidate and control and communicate from within, not from the sidelines.

It doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on it, apparently:

“To put it simply, we need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate,” Admiral Mullen wrote in the critique, an essay to be published Friday by Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.

 

“I would argue that most strategic communication problems are not communication problems at all,” he wrote. “They are policy and execution problems. Each time we fail to live up to our values or don’t follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are.”

JFQ doesn't have the essay online yet, and I can't find this YouTube video Shanker is writing about. There's a video of some pirates stone cold fighting the U.S. Navy, though.