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08/31/2006
Are We Winning?
[Next column...9/14]
In the September 2006 issue of The Atlantic Monthly,
correspondent / author James Fallows has an extensive piece on
the war on terror titled “Declaring Victory.” Fallows talked with
about sixty experts on the current state of affairs. A few excerpts
follow.
“The initial surprise for me was how little fundamental
disagreement I heard about how the situation looks through bin
Laden’s eyes .there was consensus on the main points.
“The larger and more important surprise was the implicit
optimism about the U.S. situation that came through in these
accounts – not on Iraq but on the fight against al-Qaeda and the
numerous imitators it has spawned. For the past five years the
United States has assumed itself to be locked in ‘asymmetric
warfare,’ with the advantages on the other side. Any of tens of
millions of foreigners entering the country each year could, in
theory, be an enemy operative – to say nothing of the millions of
potential recruits already here. Any of the dozens of ports, the
scores of natural-gas plants and nuclear facilities, the hundreds of
important bridges and tunnels, or the thousands of shopping
malls, office towers, or sporting facilities could be the next target
of attack. It is impossible to protect them all, and even trying
could ruin America’s social fabric and public finances. The
worst part of the situation is helplessness, as America’s officials
and its public wait for an attack they know they cannot prevent.”
But the struggle “may have evolved in a way that gives target
countries, especially the United States, more leverage and control
than we have assumed. Yes, there could be another attack
tomorrow .But the overall prospect looks better than many
Americans believe, and better than nearly all political rhetoric
asserts. The essence of the change is this: because of al-Qaeda’s
own mistakes, and because of the things the United States and its
allies have done right, al-Qaeda’s ability to inflict direct damage
in America or on Americans has been sharply reduced.”
---
“ ‘Does al-Qaeda still constitute an ‘existential’ threat?’ asks
David Kilcullen [a senior advisor on counterterrorism at the State
Department] . ‘I think it does, but not for the obvious reasons.
If you add up everyone they personally killed, it came to maybe
2,000 people, which is not an existential threat.’ But one of their
number assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
The act itself took the lives of two people. The unthinking
response of European governments in effect started World War I.
‘So because of the reaction they provoked, they were able to kill
millions of people and destroy a civilization.
“ ‘It is not the people al-Qaeda might kill that is the threat,’
Kilcullen concluded. ‘Our reaction is what can cause the damage.
It’s al-Qaeda plus our response that creates the existential
danger.’”
---
Terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins of the Rand Corporation.
“Any al-Qaeda briefer would have to acknowledge that the past
five years have been difficult. [After 9/11] the Taliban were
dispersed, and al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan were
dismantled.” Fallows: “Al-Qaeda operatives by the thousands
have been arrested, detained, or killed. So have many members
of the crucial al-Qaeda leadership circle around bin Laden and
his chief strategist, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Moreover it has
become harder for the remaining al-Qaeda leaders to carry out
the organizations most basic functions: ‘Because of increased
intelligence efforts by the United States and its allies,
transactions of any type – communications, travel, money
transfers – have become more dangerous for the jihadists.
Training and operations have been decentralized, raising the risk
of fragmentation and loss of unity. Jihadists everywhere face the
threat of capture or martyrdom.’ [Jenkins]”
---
Seth Stodder, former official in the Department of Homeland
Security, on damage inflicted on “Al-Qaeda Central”:
“Their command structure is gone, their Afghan sanctuary is
gone, their ability to move around and hold meetings is gone,
their financial and communications networks have been hit
hard.”
David Kilcullen:
“The al-Qaeda that existed in 2001 simply no longer exists. In
2001 it was a relatively centralized organization, with a planning
hub, a propaganda hub, a leadership team, all within a narrow
geographic area. All that is gone, because we destroyed it.”
Fallows:
“Where bin Laden’s central leadership team could once wire
money around the world using normal bank networks, it now
must rely on couriers with vests full of cash .Where bin
Laden’s network could once use satellite phones and the Internet
for communication, it now has to avoid most forms of electronic
communication, which leave an electronic trail back to the user.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri now send information out through
videotapes and via operatives in Internet chat rooms.”
---
One downside, via Seth Stodder:
“It is harder to get into the country – to a fault.” Tougher visa
rules, especially for foreign students, while keeping future
Mohammed Attas out of flight schools are also keeping out
future Andrew Groves and Sergey Brins. “The student-visa
crackdown was to deal with Atta. It’s affecting the commanding
heights of our tech economy.”
---
John Robb, former clandestine-operations specialist for the Air
Force:
“There are diminishing returns on symbolic terrorism. Each time
it happens, the public becomes desensitized, and the media pays
less attention.” To maintain the level of terror, each attack must
top the previous one, and in Robb’s view “nothing will ever top
9/11.”
[Ed. Robb said this before we learned of the British plot to blow
up airlines over the Atlantic.]
---
Fallows:
“Something about the Arab and Muslim immigrants who have
come to America, or about their absorption here, has made them
basically similar to other well-assimilated American ethnic
groups – and basically different from the estranged Muslim
underclass of much of Europe .
“The median income of Muslims in France, Germany, and
Britain is lower than that of people in those countries as a whole.
The median income of Arab Americans (many of whom are
Christians originally from Lebanon) is actually higher than the
overall American one .The difference between the European
and American assimilation of Muslims becomes most apparent in
the second generation, when American Muslims are culturally
and economically Americanized and many European Muslims
often develop a sharper sense of alienation.”
---
“A state of war encourages a state of fear. ‘The War on Terror
does not reduce public anxieties by thwarting terrorists poised to
strike,’ writes Ian Lustick of the Univ. of Pennsylvania. ‘Rather,
in myriad ways, conducting the antiterror effort as a ‘war’ fuels
those anxieties.’ John Mueller writes in his book that because
‘the creation of insecurity, fear, anxiety, hysteria, and
overreaction is central for terrorists,’ they can be defeated simply
by a refusal to overreact. This approach is harder in time of
war.”
---
Fallows:
“Internationally, the effort to pin down bin Laden – to listen to
his conversations, keep him off balance, and prevent him from
re-forming an organization – has been successful. It must
continue. And the international cooperation on which it depends
will be easier in the absence of wartime language and friction.
The effort to contain the one true existential threat to the United
States – that of ‘loose nukes’ – will also be eased by smoother
relations with other countries.
“Militarily, the United States has been stuck in an awkward
middle ground concerning the need for ‘transformation.’ Donald
Rumsfeld’s insistence that the Army, in particular, rely on
technology to become leaner and more ‘efficient’ led to steady
reductions in the planned size of the ground force that invaded
and occupied Iraq. By most accounts, Rumsfeld went too far
with that pressure – but not far enough in changing the largest
patterns of Pentagon spending. This year’s Quadrennial Defense
Review, which is supposed to represent a bottom-up effort to
rethink America’s defense needs, says that the nation needs to
prepare for a new era of fighting terrorists and insurgents (plus
China) – and then offers programs and weapons much the same
as when the enemy was the Soviet Union .Most counterrorism
authorities say that a transformation is also needed in the nation’s
spy agencies, starting with a much greater emphasis on language
training and agents who develop long-term regional expertise in
Muslim-dominated parts of the world.
“Diplomatically, the United States can use the combination of
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ assets that constitute its unique strength to show
a face that will again attract the world. ‘The only answer to a
regime that wages total cold war is to wage total peace.’ So said
Dwight Eisenhower in his State of the Union address in 1958,
four months after Sputnik was launched. He added, ‘This means
bringing to bear every asset of our personal and national lives
upon the task of building the conditions in which security and
peace can grow.’ A similar policy would allow the modern
United States to use its diplomatic, economic, intellectual, and
military means to reduce the long-term sources of terrorist rage.
“America’s range of strengths is, if anything, greater than when
Eisenhower spoke nearly fifty years ago. The domestic
population is more ethnically varied and accepting of outsiders.
The university establishment is much larger. The leading
companies are more fully integrated into local societies around
the world. The nation has more numerous, better-funded, and
more broadly experienced charitable foundations. It is much
richer in every way. With the passing of the nuclear showdown
against the Soviet Union, the country is safer than it was under
Eisenhower. We should be able to ‘wage total peace’ more
effectively.”
Hott Spotts will return Sept. 14.
Brian Trumbore
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