T5 B17 Misc Articles On Terrorism Fdr- Entire Contents- 1st Pgs For Reference 295

AFTERWORD

THE WAR THUS FAR: A STATUS REPORT

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N THE S P R I N G OF 2003, the Bush administration began voicing strong confidence that the war on terror was being won. In May, Presi-

dent Bush, while announcing the end of hostilities in Iraq aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, declared, "The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost."1 Gofer Black, the former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, now the State Department's senior counterterrorism official, was quoted soon thereafter in The Washington Post as saying that al-Qaeda's leadership losses were "catastrophic" and that the broader network "has been unable to withstand the global onslaught" of intelligence operations.2 Senior government officials frequently referred to three thousand al-Qaeda operatives who had been detained or killed in counterterrorism operations around the world. Signs of the new confidence were not just rhetorical. Vice President Dick Cheney, who in the fall of 2002 still shuttled to an "undisclosed location" where he could preside over an emergency government in the The report of the joint inquiry by the congressional intelligence committees into the September 11 attacks was released on July 24,2003, too late for its findings to be reviewed here. Although the report details lapses by the CIA and FBI that we did not know about, its broad findings parallel our own conclusions about the failures and mishaps within the government that allowed these events to occur.

7. Winning the battle against terror, losing the war of ideas FERRY BIEDERMANN Salon.com The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq has revived debates not heard since the end of the Cold War. America's leaders, and those Americans who support them, see the war on terror in general and the invasion of Iraq in particular as a necessary battle against evil, like the fight against Communism. Much of the rest of the world, and the American left, see Bush's crusade as simple-minded to the point of hysteria - the same critique they leveled against Reagan-era antiCommunism. In fact, neither side is right. These Cold War-era categories and battles are no longer relevant in addressing the issues posed by Islam, terrorism and the politics of the Middle East, and they obscure the real issues at stake. A further distraction are the passions, positive and negative, inspired by George W. Bush: Those who despise him are unable to accept that anything he does could be defensible, while his acolytes are equally myopic about the dangers and errors of his policies. By insisting that the war on terror is a moral stand against evil, hawks elevate terrorism to a unique category that it doesn't deserve. They scare citizens into giving up freedoms undercutting America's credibility as the defender of freedom. They blur distinctions between different types of threats and risk demonizing Islam itself - a dangerous development that is already sharply felt by people in the Middle East. But leftists who rightly reject the vision of Islam as the enemy tend to dismiss its links to terrorism, underdevelopment and repression in the Middle East and outside it. And they are unable to understand how the invasion of Iraq - despite the fact that it was sold under a false guise ~ could and can move the region forward. The Iraq invasion has a far more complex relation to the war on terror, and the battle to improve Arab and Muslim societies, than most partisans of either side are willing to admit. The invasion was justifiable, although extremely risky, because Iraq was a festering sore that was destabilizing the region afid posed a definite threat to the West, though not an imminent one. The risk, of course, was that invading might result in unplanned consequences - from mass antiAmericanism to Sunni rage, from the rise of Shiite fundamentalism to internecine strife, civil war and partition. Many of those possible consequences are now threatening to become realities, thanks to the Bush administration's gross planning failures and bungling of the postwar period. The peculiarity of this historical moment is that the stakes are so high that if everything does in fact goes wrong, the invasion could turn out to have been a mistake. But it's too soon to tell. Iraq under Saddam represented a major threat, but it is important to be clear about just what kind of threat. Saddam was a nasty dictator and a regional expansionist who might have launched more military campaigns against his neighbors if he had been allowed to. But it is becoming increasingly clear that he did not have any weapons of mass destruction, nor any ties to al-Qaida. He was a tin-pot dictator who did not pose a military threat to the West (in fact, the U.S. used him when it found it convenient to do so.) The real Iraq time bomb was not just Saddam's regime but the entire situation there, in particular the sanctions - which were destructive and impoverishing, whtehtjenerated Arab rage against the U.S. arid could never have Ueeri ericfecf without Saddam's departure. It is commonly overlooked that during the entire decade of the Oslo peace process, the unresolved crisis in Iraq competed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the worst cause of tension between the Arab world and the West. On top of that, whereas the Palestinian leadership clearly made a choice to cooperate with the U.S., Saddam Hussein was a rallying point for

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An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World By Charles Krauthammer Posted: Thursday, February 12, 2004 SPEECHES 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture AEI Annual Dinner (Washington) Publication Date: February 10, 2004 I A Unipolar World Americans have an healthy aversion to foreign policy. It stems from a sense of thrift: Who needs it? We're protected by _two great oceans, we have this continent practically to ourselves and we share it ^with just two neighbors, both friendly, one so friendly that its people seem intent upon moving in with us. It took three giants of the twentieth century to drag us into its great battles: Wilson into World War I, Roosevelt into World War II, Truman into the Cold War. And then it ended with one of the great anti-climaxes in history. Without a shot fired, without a revolution, without so much as a press release, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared. It was the end of everything—the end of communism, of socialism, of the Cold War, of the European wars. But the end of everything was also a beginning. On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union died and something new was born, something utterly new—a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe.

In the Spotlight

"Russian policy circles persist in treating the country's horrendous mortality rate with an insouciance verging on indifference. Authorities have adopted a virtual laissez-faire posture toward the conditions that lead to 'excess mortality' of something like 400,000 of their citizens each year." —AEI fellow Nicholas Eberstadt Article in the Washington Post News and Commentary from_AEI i A guide to the news and commentary AEI offers is available. Or jump directly to: • Articles • Book Reviews • Government Testimony

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her attorney. "Svetlana obviously doesn't have personal knowledge of who these individuals were, b u t . . . it was obvious to her that [the Chechens inside the theater] were taking instructions by cell phone from someone outside the building." Some U.S.-Russian collaboration has yielded mixed results. FSB agents flew to Detroit last year to help American authorities prosecute a Chechen they accused of being linked to terrorism, but the suspect, Omar Shishani, was found not to be the man the Russians said he was. Shishani, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was sentenced in November to 57 months in prison for smuggling $12 million in counterfeit checks. U.S. authorities, relying on witnesses provided by the Russians, initially identified Shishani as an Islamic radical named Fathi who introduced the strict Wahhabi strain of Islam to Chechnya in the 1990s. But Shishani's attorney demonstrated that he was not Fathi. "It's frightening," said the attorney, Corbett O'Meara. "He's a United States citizen, and they go hunting for proof that he's bad, and they just unconditionally accept the KGB's nonsense." Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric M. Strauss in Detroit said he had no second thoughts about working with Russian authorities in the case, noting that American agents participated in all witness interviews. "There was some confusion" about Shishani's identity, Strauss acknowledged. But "the cooperation between our governments has been very productive."

15. What Terrorism Has Taught Us CLIFFORD MAY Washington Times Commentary Militant Islamists first used terrorism against Americans more than 20 years ago when a Hezbollah suicide bomber slaughtered 241 Marines in Beirut. But the United States learned little from that defeat, just as we learned little from the terrorist attacks we suffered later in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s as well. Only since the devastating atrocity of September 11, 2001, have Americans begun seriously to consider how to defend themselves. What lessons should we take into 2004? Here are several: • It's a world war, stupid: Jihadi terrorists tell us virtually every day whom they are fighting: Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and moderate Muslims (whom they disdain as apostates). They tell us what they want: The defeat of the "infidels," the "Crusader-Zionist" alliance (their name for the Free World). They are willing to massacre innocent people anywhere: not just in New York, Washington, Jerusalem, India and Bali, but also in Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. We know how far they are willing to go: They have no restraints, no limitations, no humanitarian sentiments whatsoever. They are a uniquely dangerous enemy. • It's not your father's war: The United States today is more adept at fighting major battles than any military power in history. But we're still puzzling out how to defeat an enemy whose mission is not to take territory but simply to destroy and demoralize. Explosives are often the means, but societal implosion is the goal. Americans are now involved in the kind of nasty conflict the Israelis have long been waging. Israelis and Americans could defeat their enemies quickly -- if we were willing to use force as our enemies would, were the situations reversed. But we are not willing to do that. Instead, we strive to maintain fundamental rules of civilized behavior. Col. Allen West was recently forced out of the U.S. military because he fired a handgun in the presence of an Iraqi suspect to induce him to talk, which he did, saving American lives. Can you imagine Saddam Hussein having such scruples? Al Qaeda? Hezbollah? Hamas? Fatah?

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The network, blamed for the Sept 11, 2001, attacks that killed 3,000 people, seeks targets that would strike a blow to the US economy, Mulchings said in a Jan. 14 speech to the International Security Management Association in Arizona, the text of which was posted on Feb. 4 on the NIC's website. "Soft targets, including the US stock market, banks, major companies, and tall buildings are a primary focus of active al Qaeda planning," he said. Those targets are seen as easier to hit than US government buildings and major infrastructure, which have higher security, Hutchings said. Al Qaeda has looked at derailing trains, perhaps carrying hazardous materials, to attack US interests, he said. Nuclear power plants, water treatment facilities, and other public utilities are high on al Qaeda's target list, he said. The US government is concerned that al Qaeda will try to take its ability to build truck bombs as demonstrated by past attacks in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and marry it with toxic or radioactive material to increase the damage and psychological impact of an attack, Hutchings said. "My biggest worry, however, is how far al Qaeda might have progressed in being able to deploy a chemical, nuclear, or biological weapon against the United States or its allies," he said. US authorities have found several examples of al Qaeda adjusting its tactics to circumvent increased airline security, Hutchings said, without providing details. "Although we have disrupted several airline plots, we have not eliminated the threat to airplanes," he said. "There are still al Qaeda operatives who we believe have been deployed to hijack planes and fly them into key targets." The United States has beefed up security at airports and on airlines. There were a spate of flight cancellations since late December because of potential threats. US authorities have succeeded in disrupting the network, Hutchings said. "We have disrupted scores of plots at home and abroad - plots that were audacious in terms of the numbers of attacks under consideration and their global scope," he said.

11. Terrorism and Economic Security ROBERT L. HUTCHINGS

Chairman, National Intelligence Council Speech presented at International Security Management Association Conference We live in turbulent and complex times. We possess unrivaled power, yet we remain vulnerable— as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 demonstrated so tragically. The breakdown of the Cold War order thawed out historical problems that had been frozen over for decades. Globalization has brought with it enormous benefits, but it has also led to sharpened polarization between the haves and have-nots. Also, the very success of Western values has threatened in an existential way those who seek to preserve traditional ways of life in the face of modernity—ushering in a new era of asymmetrical warfare in which adversaries compensate for

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released some evidence io only a few members. One suggestion is a meeting with just Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton. The panel, known officially as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, should not agree to such a limit for President Bush or any other witnesses. As Mr. Bush has said, the war on terror isn't over. Cooperating with the full commission is part of winning it.

5. A Democratic World GEORGE PACKER The New Yorker In December, 2001, after the fall of the Taliban, President Bush asked Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat who was then the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, to draft a legislative proposal for winning the minds of young people around the Muslim world. The following month, Biden went to Kabul, where he toured a new school—one that was bitterly cold, with plastic sheeting over the windows and a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. When the visit was over and Biden started to leave, a young girl stood ramrod straight at her desk and said, "You cannot leave. You cannot leave." "I promise I'll come back," Biden told her. "You cannot leave," the girl insisted. "They will not deny me learning to read. I will read, and I will be a doctor like my mother. I will. America must stay." As Biden put it in a recent interview, the Afghan girl was telling him, "Don't fuck with me, Jack. You got me in here. You said you were going to help me. You better not leave me now." Biden described the encounter as "a catalytic event for me." Its lesson was one that he had already begun to absorb in the Balkans, where he had travelled extensively during the nineteennineties. There is a worldwide struggle, he explained, between the values of liberal democracy and the destructive ideologies that fester with dictatorship, misery, and humiliation; in this struggle, America needs to expand the conditions for democracy in the most concrete ways, with serious commitments of energy and resources, or risk greater instability. After September 11th, this insight became a matter of urgent national security. When Biden returned from Kabul, he followed up on the President's request and wrote a proposal to build, staff, and supply a thousand schools in Afghanistan, at a cost of twenty thousand dollars each. By thinking small, Biden believed, he had a better chance of success: "You could shove twenty million dollars anywhere in a two-trillion budget, and this was something specific." The schools would employ teachers, many of them women, who had been jobless and desperate under the Taliban, and they would teach a modern curriculum to children who, if they had any schooling at all, knew only the Islamist education of the madrassa. "It was something concrete we could show the Afghanis we're doing," Biden said. "It was something other than the butt of a gun." The idea went nowhere. Biden's Democratic colleagues didn't get behind it, and very soon the Administration moved on. The most important front in the worldwide struggle largely dropped from Washington's view, and the Senator stopped receiving invitations to the White House. By the fall of 2002, the Bush Administration had begun mobilizing for the invasion of Iraq. Biden's view was that Saddam Hussein, who had violated every international agreement he had signed but was not an immediate threat, would have to be confronted sooner or later. But he also worried that a unilateral war with Iraq would distract America from the tasks it had only just begun— stabilizing Afghanistan and defeating Al Qaeda—and seriously damage the alliances necessary to eliminate terrorism and other problems that freely cross borders: weapons proliferation, disease, environmental damage, ethnic conflict, impoverishment. "The burden was on Saddam,"

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