The Pentagon's Plan for Winning the War on Terror

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

A new article in U.S. News & World Report explains that, on March 3, Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers "signed a comprehensive new plan for the war on terrorism."  While the document, entitled "National Military Strategic Plan for the War on Terrorism," is still secret, U.S. News reports that it will soon be released in unclassified form.  U.S. News explains the plan's development:

[T]he document is the culmination of 18 months of work and is a significant evolution from the approach adopted after the 9/11 attacks, which was to focus on capturing or killing the top al Qaeda leaders.  For the first time since then, Pentagon officials say, they have a strategy that examines the nature of the antiterror war in depth, lays out a detailed road map for prosecuting it, and establishes a score card to determine where and whether progress is being made.  The origins of the new plan lie in an October 2003 "snowflake," as Rumsfeld's numerous memoranda to his staff are called.  Was the United States really winning the war on terrorism, Rumsfeld asked his commanders, and how could we know if more terrorists were being killed or captured than were being recruited into the ranks?  . . .  The initial result was a 70-page draft report, which subsequently went through over 40 revisions as it was shared with Rumsfeld's inner circle, then a larger group, called the senior-level review group ("Slurg," in Pentagon-speak), and then regional commanders and other agencies. . . .  In March, the final 25-page report, plus 13 annexes, was signed and became formal Pentagon policy.

The article discusses several key features of this new plan.  They include defining the enemy in the war on terrorism as "Islamist extremism," rather than just al-Qaeda; placing an emphasis on both "encouraging" and "enabling" foreign partners, along with an explicit understanding that this conflict cannot be fought unilaterally, or by military means alone; and using a new set of metrics twice a year to measure progress.

The United States has long been without an explicit blueprint for winning the war on terror, which is a conflict unlike any that our country has fought before.  Regardless of the problems that people have with the specifics of the Pentagon's plan when it's released to the public, the fact that there is now a plan to debate about is encouraging.  The Pentagon's plan will merit sustained attention and analysis once it's released.

TrackBack