Wither the War On Terror?

By Michael Kraft

The War on Terror is Dead, sayeth the Washington Post. But the struggle, or whatever we may wish to call it, continues.

Indeed, President Obama, who touched on the terrorism threat in his inaugural speech, already has plunged into the counterterrorism effort. Government officials and non-government organizations have prepared numerous transition papers and recommendations. The Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, for example, released a series of recommendations Friday that include proposals for improvements in using multinational tools. And the Center for International Relations Forum just published a series of essays on challenges for the new president, including an article I wrote last month counterterrorism measures. (See below.)

Here is an overview:

With the Obama administration only three days old, the Washington Post carried a front page analysis article on Friday headlined: “Bush’s War on Terror Comes to a Sudden End.”

The article, by award-winning journalist Dana Priest, stated that President Obama on Thursday eliminated “the most controversial tools” used by the Bush administration against terrorist suspects and “effectively declared an end to the ‘war on terror’ as President George W. Bush had defined it.”

Ms Priest pegged her story to President Obama’s announced intention of his plans to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison facilities, where habeas corpus rights have been denied and the signing Thursday of executive orders to nullify the legal orders and opinions on interrogations issued by executive branch lawyers since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. President Obama declared an end to the use of torture tactics.

He set out his rationale in his inaugural address, saying:

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.”

It is a stretch, however, to interpret these steps as an end or a significant weakening of the overall efforts to stem terrorism. The “War on Terror” phrase was overblown. Most professionals within the government were uncomfortable with it and considered it to be a rhetorical device, not an accurate description of the situation. As others have noted, terrorism is a tactic not a specific entity in itself. The phrase is an example of speech writers’ snappy sounding phrases influencing policy perceptions, sometimes in ways that probably were not intended.

The phrase also implied an overly military approach to a problem that must be addressed with many tools, including arresting, convicting and imprisoning terrorists plus a host of diplomatic efforts, economic sanctions and other measures. Unfortunately nobody has come up with a more accurate but brief short hand phrase.

President Obama, however, made it clear that he will continue the efforts to thwart terrorism. In an implied reference to Al Qaeda and other radical terrorist extremists, he said:

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."

President Obama also addressed the broader context of terrorist acts by groups that attack the “other,” – ethnic groups or nationalities which they oppose for a variety of reasons, for example: religious, nationalism, ideology, revenge. The passage is worth citing in full for convenient reference:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

And in an unusual passage addressed to Muslims, including by implication groups such as Hamas, Al Qaeda, and to some regimes in the Third World, he said:

"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Al Qaeda however shows no sign of unclenching its fist; indeed it seems bent on giving the new American President the back of the hand

The Washington Post carried an article this weekend noting that since al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, last year called Obama "A house Negro," the terrorist group has unleashed a stream of verbal tirades against Barack Obama, each more venomous than the last. Obama has been called a "hypocrite," a "killer" of innocents, an "enemy of Muslims." He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office, the Post noted.

Writer Joby Warrick said “The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda's skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.

“With Obama, al-Qaeda faces an entirely new challenge, experts say: a U.S. president who campaigned to end the Iraq war and to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and who polls show is well liked throughout the Muslim world,” Warrick added.

TWO FRONTS

Meanwhile President Obama moved to deal with terrorism issues on two important fronts: Afghanistan/ Pakistan and the Middle East.

On Friday, the U.S. launched two missile strikes from drone aircraft in the border area of Pakistan that killed at least 20 people at suspected terrorist hideouts. This was the first tangible sign that the new administration is sustaining military pressure on the terrorist groups there, even though Pakistanis broadly oppose such unilateral U.S. actions, the Washington Post reported.

The report said it was unclear whether Obama personally authorized the strike or was involved in its final planning, but military officials have previously said that the White House is routinely briefed about such attacks in advance. This fits in with Obama’s oft- stated intention to step up the campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Bin Laden in the Pakistan border regions.

On the Middle East front, President Obama’s first telephone call to a foreign leader was made to President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. is trying to shore up Abbas’s Palestinian Authority following widespread assessments that the PA lost political support by remaining on the sidelines during the Israeli incursion into Gaza. President Obama picked George Mitchell, the former Senate Majority leader and U.S. negotiator in the IRA-British conflict, to take on the even more difficult task: the pursuit of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. The President expressed his empathy for the Palestinians but reaffirmed that he considers Hamas to be a terrorism organization because of its terrorist acts, including rocket launchings and suicide attacks against Israel.

NEW PAPERS:

On the broader terrorism front, the most recent study was issued Friday by the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, a Washington-based group that promotes international coordination and counterterrorism capacity efforts. The study Building Stronger Partnerships to Prevent Terrorism: Recommendations for President Obama contained 12 recommendations.

The recommendations included strengthening the State Department’s counterterrorism efforts including funding for programs to build up the counter-terrorism civilian capabilities of other nations, such as the Antiterrorism Training Assistance Program.

One recommendation calls for the appointment of civilians as the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism in order to place, and be seen as placing, greater emphasis on nonmilitary counterterrorism tools. The current coordinator is retired Army General Dell Dailey, who was asked at the last week to stay on until a successor is nominated and confirmed by the Senate. The two previous coordinators were former high ranking CIA officials. There also had been two other retired military officers heading the office in the past.

(Meanwhile, Daniel Benjamin, a former NSC Counterterrorism official and now with the Brookings Institute, is expected to be named as the next State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator, the Washington Post "In the Loop" column reported Monday. Benjamin is the co-author, with Steve Simon of "the Next Attack" and other books on the terrorism threat.)

The majority of the Center’s recommendations addressed various ways of bolstering international cooperation –including countering terrorism funding -- through the United Nations and other multilateral organizations. The recommendations also call for streamlining and strengthening the United Nations counterterrorism programs.

Meanwhile, the Center for International Relations International Affairs Forum published a series of essays on “Challenges for the Next U.S. President.” The articles included one that I wrote last month (“International Terrorism: The Handoff from Bush to Obama, page 19) summarizing some of the major developments during the Bush administration and suggesting a number of key issues that need to be addressed.

In the article I noted, as I have in previous writings, the need to pay attention to the nuts and bolts programs, such as antiterrorism assistance courses for other countries. I also stressed the growing concerns about weapons of mass destruction, and the need to improve coordination, and public diplomacy efforts.

In short, I wrote, the Obama administration “not only faces many challenges in effectively fighting terrorism; it also has to proceed on a number of fronts and do so simultaneously.”