How is the Obama administration doing?  Well for having a president with no relevant political or foreign policy experience; a terrorism Czar who made his CIA career by endlessly saying "Yes, Mr. Tenet, you are a genuis"; a National Security Adviser who has forgotten that he was Marine and is happy to let a marooned U.S. Army twist slowly in the wind until it dies in Afghanistan; a vice president who thinks the Cold War is still at its height because he never stops talking long enough to learn the Wall fell 20 years ago; an Attorney General who calls Americans cowards and whose only discernible talent is an ability to sell presidential pardons for Clinton; a CIA director who does not want to kill senior al-Qaeda leaders; and a Homeland Security chief who thinks military veterans, retired police officers, and anti-abortion Americans are right-wing terrorists, one would have to say that they are at least as good as the Bush administration.  That is, they too are leading America toward military defeat, financial ruin, and a domestic cultural war.  But to be fair, we should withhold judgment until their bosses at home and abroad have written their performance appraisals.  Let's wait and see what AIPAC, the Saudi king, CAIR, the Israeli prime minister, the ACLU, and the money-lending Commies in Beijing have to say about how well the Obama administration has protected their interests.

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Shane has put us on the spot by posing an unanswerable question.  Unanswerable because the information is concealed as to what we have done and are doing with what effects.  The tangible evidence in view is too scant to allow for even the most tenative judgments. 

More disconcerting, I suspect that the White House itself doesn't know; by White House in mean President Obama and General Jones.  Most disconcerting, I do not believe that that any effort will be made by the White House to find out - for the compelling reason that it fears revelations of misdeeds that it may not be able to ignore.  Hence, the implicit preference for flying partially blind when it comes to assaying methods for contending with the terrorist threat - such as we vaguely define it and such as it may actually be.

Very briefly, one famous dictum the current Administration must take to heart certainly far more than did the Bush Administration is "First, do no harm."  Some lessons that can be applied have, of course, been learned as a result of the heavy-handed blundering of the last Administration, making the Obama White House considerably more cautious.  Nonetheless, the formulation and execution of more thoughtful counter-terrorism policy related to the Middle East and South Asia region is hindered by conflicted domestic politcal pressures and considerations, a host of deeply flawed regional allies, long-ingrained policies and supporting interest groups very difficult to alter or trump, ongoing military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

Therefore, perhaps the greatest challenge facing the crafting and implementation of genuinely smart counter-terrorism policy is the common inability to step back from the overall problem and reassess current activities that involve either further aggravation of the fundamental forces undergirding country-specific, anti-Western or more narrowly anti-American terrorism or the disproportionate wastage of US national assets--military and economic especially--in a rather fumbling pursuit of what have been regarded the premier sources of trans-national terrorism.  The latter has involved a previously inconceivable consuption of critical national resources in largely localized and ill-understood conflicts in remote theaters of war.  In that respect, the current agony over fashioning a reasonably sensible course in Afghanistan, while trying to pick through the bewildering damage already done, is classic. 

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The U.S. government's goal should be to help deflect the Islamists' war back onto their main enemies.  Toward that laudable end, we should: 

1.)  Honestly accept the obvious: The Islamists are motivated to wage war on the United States because of what Washington does in the Muslim world, and not because of who Americans are or how they think, behave, and live at home. 

2.)  Recognize that nearly 80-percent of the world's Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is intended to undermine or destroy Islam.

3.)  Armed with 1 and 2 above, we can begin to change the foreign policies that are no longer in U.S. national interests, starting with (a) an urgent energy-sector development effort that will allow us to have little or no need to buy from Gulf oil producers; this will allow us to dump our Islamofascist allies; (b) an end to identifying the Chinese war against Uighurs and the Russian war in the North Caucasus -- both amount to genocide --with our battle against the Islamists; and (3) a cutting of all ties with Israel, an end to interfering in her national security affairs -- such as settlements and relations with Palestinian and Iran -- and a willingness let her sink or swim on her own. Much more would need to be done in the foreign policy arena, but this would be a good start toward crafting a foreign policy that would better protect America and also severely damage the Islamists by dissolving some of the anti-USG glue that unites them.

4.)  Recognize that our domestic proponents of multiculturalism and diversity are today what they always have been -- political hucksters of the first order; there has never been a rational reason or reliable metric to prove that either policy makes us -- as the brain-dead mantra goes -- "stronger".  Would putting three Hindu commandos in a Pakistani infantry platoon make the unit stronger because it was more "diverse"?  Accepting this reality, Americans could then start to undo the damage these policies have done to their society.  In the national defense area, their first priorities should be to decide what to do about the Sunni Salalfis and Israel-Firsters in the United States. If both are coddled and left to their own devices, as they long have been, they will involve Americans in more overseas wars and will absolutely bring their eternal religious war -- a fight in which we do not have a dog -- to North America.

5.)  Use the U.S. clandestine service to kill Islamist leaders when the opportunities arise, and thereby avoid all the dead and wounded, the economic costs, and the defeats that have accrued to America because we didn't assassinate Saddam and Osama when we could have easily done so.  If we have cheerfully used federal law to help the AMA's doctors to kill 46 million innocent, unborn Americans for profit, we can surely protect our soldier-children by passing laws that authorize killing a few mass murders here and there when the need arises.

6.)  Realize that at base the U.S. is not the Islamists' main enemy; rather, it simply stands in the way of what they and untold millions of Sunni Muslims want to do; that is, destroy the Muslim tyrannies that rule them, the Israel that kills them and steals their land, and then get on with the business of settling scores with the Shia.  Our goal should be to create a foreign policy that will deflect away from the United States as much as possible of the violence that will be part of this coming intra-civilizational war.    

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Our experts have provided trenchant analysis of what our counterterrorism policy should look like. Now I’d like to ask the group to rate the administration’s effectiveness in implementing it. So far, everyone’s in basic agreement that the fight against terrorist organizations is multi-faceted, calling upon the skills of our military, intelligence community, and diplomatic corps, and that it must incorporate tactical elements as well as a broad, ambitious strategic framework. This is a tall, tall order. And yet it must be done. So, how is the administration doing? 

I agree with those who find "whack-a-mole" too simplistic and reflective of our lack of any real strategy for fighting terrorism. We cannot, and should not,  send our troops hither and yon to fight terrorists. Such an approach depletes our materiel, and, more importantly, our human resources, and accomplishes little. Terrorists are not a single unified group, and they can sprout anywhere. Of course they will prefer iungovernable terriitory, but they can operate in any place--ask the citizens of London, Madrid, or for that matter, New York.

We need to treat terrorists the way we once treated anarchists. Terrorists are not common criminals, but they can be dealt with through enhanced international police cooperation, as the world once did when it dealt with anarchists who blew up palaces, parliament buildings, and assassinated world leaders, including President McKinley. We need not and will not nab every terrorist, any more than we killed or captured every terrorist, But the civilized world destroyed anarchist networks, and it can defeat terrorist networks. 

In dealing with terrorists, we must not tie our own hands too tightly. Targeted assassinations make a difference--ask the Israelis--and are pefectly legitimate as a tactical element of a larger anti-terrorism strategy. Technology allows the efficient use of armed unmanned aerial vehicles that involves minimal loss of American lives. Other states also have unmanned vehicles and should be recruited in this effort.

I must stress that there is no law that bars assassinations of foreign leaders. It is an Executive Order (number 12333) that was signed by Gerald Ford in 1976. Times have changed, and the Executive Order should be modified and clarified. We cannot afford to be politically correct when it comes to dealing with terrorist leaders. While we should not give credence to their claim to be at war with us--they are not warriors of any kind--we certainly decapitate their organizations. We have done so in wartime and have even attempted to do in peacetime, for example, during the  1986 Gulf of Sidfra operation when we targeted Moamar Ghadaffi's house.    

Finally, we must press all the major financial powers to cooperate even more closely in choking off terrorist financing. The Central Banks of some states, for example, the Bank of England, cooperate far more closely with us than do other Central Banks. All major financial powers must be pressured into joining this effort. We have the means to exert pressure; we should use them.

A combination of enhanced international police and related intelligence cooperation, of increased financial pressures,and of aggressive decapitation tactics will go a long way toward ridding the world of terrorist  networks, and relegating them to the dustbin of history that already houses the anarchists of a century ago. 

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We should get beyond the simplistic analogies with a children's game called "Whack-a-Mole". First of all it is dehumanizing, aka equating human terror groups with plastic animals. This leads us into simplifying the persons and groups we are trying to counter, eradicate, minimize or co-opt, depending on the circumstances.

Furthermore, the children's game assumes that the targets are “unpredictable” to some degree and that they normally remain underground. There are certain degrees of unpredictability in the actions, movements and strategies of many terror groups.

But the analog that moves the toys in the children’s game is static, whereas the analog for the terror groups is often be dynamic and recursive. Terror groups also move in 4 dimensions: the usual 3 plus time, but not in set stovepipes, such as found in the game.

Terror groups also travel in a thinking space that is often different from the way our people think. We are not just following plastic toy moles, we are trying to track and “manage” more effectively persons and groups of persons who have complex motives and manifold methods.

We are also dealing with persons and groups that can learn from events and circumstances, and who can change their tactics. Plastic mole toys cannot.

Also, many of the terror groups are far from underground and unseen. Hezbollah in Lebanon is part of the parliament. The Taliban groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan rule over large swaths of territory and are mostly out in the open. Abu Saif in the Philippines is sometimes in the shadows, but sometimes seems very much at home out in the open in the local public houses.

These terror groups listed also are not moving that much to other parts of the world in order to escape US troops. Moving from Afghanistan to Pakistan for the Taliban is just crossing to another part of their territory. They have been in both places for a very long time.

Then there are groups like Gama'at Islamiyya in Egypt who are in the shadows, but are also rather well known and understood by the Egyptian government and it security services. Al Qaeda in the Maghrib live in the shadows, but also very much have a public life in the region.

Sometimes the best way to handle and damage such groups might be to not push them into the shadows and caves, but to try to draw them into the sun. That, in some circumstances, could require very clever strategies that go way beyond “whacking”. Some of these groups and some of the persons in these groups could also be drawn back into regular society as positive contributing members with the right incentives and follow ups.

When it comes to some groups moving to places where there is not a significant US or other military presence, well, there are many places they could go to. Our military is stretched very thin and the OPTEMPO is wearing it out on many levels. Our military is not large enough or well trained enough to handle many of the issues and problems some of our civilian leaders would want them to on some occasions. We need to get realistic about what we can accomplish on our own, with coalitions and teams, or ever at all.

Realism and basing decisions on facts and on-the-ground basics are important parts of any effective strategy.

Language and cultural training has been very good for only a very few in the military, such as the Special Forces, Navy Seals, specialized Marines and the like. In order to really track movements, plans, intent and more of these terror groups we need a lot more expertise and skills in the military focused on these groups and on subsidiary groups and issues.

Furthermore, learning Arabic, Urdu, Farsi and Dari are not things that can be done in short order. Learning enough about a culture to really effectively move within that culture to understand what is really going on could take years. Body language in one culture does not translate well into some other cultures. Nuances of wording and expressions could also be lost on the non-experts.

Misunderstandings based on improper training can lead to big messes, and unnecessary messes.

Increasing our use of predator drones is a technical quick fix to a much more profound problem. We need more expert and nuanced boots and suits on the ground. We need diplomats and others who have spent their entire careers in a specific regions or cultural milieus. We need much better human intelligence and a lot more positive outreach in many communities.

We need a lot more help from our allies who have some of these skills. Our best allies in this fluid and trying battle can be the people on the ground and our many Muslim allies.

Try counting up all of our allies and you will see that a significant proportion of them are Muslim states or states with large Muslim populations. Our longest lasting alliance is with Morocco, a Muslim state. This dates back to George Washington.

Muslims are not the enemy. The enemy we face is the same enemy these Muslim states and Muslim peoples face: violent extremists who have hijacked and distorted, for their own perverted benefit, the tenets of a profound and spiritually powerful religion, Islam.

We need to be very clear with ourselves, our allies, and our enemies who is who in this deadly and sometimes fragile challenge.

We also need far more of our people understanding what Islam is and what it is not.

The most important issues to focus on outside just simply getting some of the most dangerous people and groups, or at the least mitigating their actions and strategies, is to get to the root causes of some of the anger and hatred out there. This may be the best way to cut off the recruitment supply chain and the financial and other supply chains of the terror groups. If one does not get to the root causes then one is simply hitting at the symptoms.

Getting to the root causes also gets us into some causality complexities. The best way to understand the anger, and why some go over the edge, and to, frankly, ask the people in the region and to also find out via proxy or direct analysis what the terrorists and terror groups themselves are truly thinking about why they are doing what they are doing.

One cannot make up root causes from a cushy office in DC. One needs to seek out the real answers in the places where the problems exist. Poverty, unemployment, weak Islamic training, distorted Islamic training, corruption, lack of a sense of human security, lack of hope, long-held grievances, resentments, chronic unsolved problems, a pervasive sense of weakness (and sometimes the weak are the most dangerous) and much more contribute to why a young person and others may go over the edge.

However, sometimes there are personal reasons that are sui generis to each case, including, possibly, harsh events that either they and their friends or families experienced in the past.

Root causes are often looked at in a general sense. However, sometimes the root causes can be personal. This can be particularly dangerous if the personal reasons are being held by a charismatic and very violent person who can develop a following.

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http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4448

Pictures are worth millions of words. This is an excellent depiction of the utter pointlessness and futility of our ongoing presence in Afghanistan.

We suffer from the inadequacies of political science to provide a theory that encompasses the reality of religion zealotry merging with political radicalism. But we have been down this road before. Then it was termed Marxism-Leninism. The catechisms of this political “religion” were every bit as steeped in ideological obscurantism, self-righteousness and messianic visioning as the most extreme apocalyptic variant of any established religion. Devotees of this atheistic “religion” held to their views with all the tenacity we now see from members of al Qaeda, al Shabab or Jamai Islamia. If Western liberalism were a religion then Leninism (and the splinter doctrines that came after it) would be the equivalent of radical Islam.

Leninism, like the Salafist brand of Islam, took a theory or belief system that sought to guide the behavior of men on the path to ultimate righteousness and perverted it into a cult of violent revolution directed at achieving a utopian goal. Whether it was the Marxist vision of the one world proletariat state or that of the 21st century Sunni-based caliphate
it matters not.  It is not the attainment of that utopian end state that matters, although it serves as the ultimate justification for the choice of the most extreme means in the pursuit of revolution. For extremist devotees of both ideologies/religions, it was taken as a given that those they sought to represent and defend (the proletariat in the case of Leninist, the Sunni Islamic community for radical Islamists) were oppressed. Whatever the oppression, it must be opposed, violence met with violence. Moreover, violence was a means of mobilizing the masses and separating leaders from followers.

For both Leninism and radical Islam violence is an end in itself. It is justified, in Leninist theology, by reference to the demands in Marxist doctrine for a proletarian revolution and in Islam by the calls in the Quran for jihad in defense of the faith. In both instances, the extremists assert that oppression, real and imagined, are sufficient to justify limitless violence. In fact, where oppression is absent, it is the duty of the revolutionary to incite it, thereby creating the very oppression that is the excuse for violent revolution. Historically, Leninists and radical Islamists groups rapidly descended into the practice of wholesale, mindless violence. There is little difference between Stalin’s show trials and those conducted by Hamas or al Shabab of alleged traitors and spies. Nor is there much daylight between the well-photographed slaughters perpetrated by groups such as the Baader Meinhoff gang, Red Brigades or Sendero Luminoso and the taped beheading of Westerners by Islamist groups. The more violent the behavior, the more committed the revolutionary.

The equation for radical Islam goes from a sense of grievance = oppression  = justification for action = revolutionary violence = violence as an end in itself. This is what makes the narrative so powerful with groups and individuals around the world. Those Muslims who see themselves as oppressed in any way and who fail to pursue alternative approaches to addressing their grievances have a ready outlet for their anger in violence. They can rationalize their behavior by asserting that their actions will lead to a better, even utopian end. Or, more dangerous perhaps, violence may be viewed as a normal form of protest.

It is this last point that is particularly dangerous because it is a seductive rationale for those who surf radical Islamic websites. They are bombarded by arguments for and evidence of violence justified in the name of the faith. Individual acts of rage, such as that perpetrated by the Fort Hood murderer can be rationalized as part of the jihad, as a defense of Islam. For this reason, the event of last week may well be a terrorist act, albeit one without external direction. It is crazy and a perversion of religion but this dogma is become central to the global terrorist threat.

I bring all this up to address the part of the question about how should the Administration address the upstream factors that lead to terrorism. This type of question tends to produce the standard response which is to take away the source of their grievances. In reality, this is impossible. In essence, the causes or grievances are manufactured. In fact, the better the world becomes at addressing real grievances, the greater the radicals’ penchant for violence. Ultimately, this is all they will have left. Like the extreme offshoots of Leninism in Latin America, their strategy was to use violence to create the pre-conditions for revolution. All they managed to achieve was a protracted cycle of extreme violence.

The whack-a-mole strategy may feel unsatisfactory because it does not enable the vermin hunter to eradicate the species. However, it is half the answer. Terrorist leaders need to be hunted down. Much can be done remotely with drones, air strikes and the like. What we need more important than strike assets are improved ISR systems and intelligence capabilities. We need to improve the endurance of the UAVs and the fidelity of the ISR systems so that individual terrorist leaders can be tracked and struck more effectively and with less collateral damage. The High Altitude Airship now in development could contribute to this mission.

More important, our strategy should place more emphasis on preventing the consolidation of terrorist organizations in the ungoverned spaces such as Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, some Philippine islands, Somalia, Yemen, etc. One important aspect of such a strategy is to anticipate places where Islamic terrorist may try to set up shop and get there ahead of them. Special Operations Command is already doing a lot of this. But more can be done. The Pentagon’s programs to build partnership capacity and provide assistance to local security forces needs to be given all necessary attention and resources.

Finally, our strategy needs to focus more on countering the radical Islamic narrative. This is the lesson of the war against Leninism and the political struggles of the Cold War Some of this may be a matter of using cyber attacks to disrupt radical Islamic web sites. But this is primarily a political struggle which needs to aggressively support moderate Islamic thinkers, leaders and regimes. There needs to be a counter-revolution in the Islamic political discourse that we can and must support.

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Whack-a-Mole is the best definition possible of what our future counterterrorism (CT) policy should NOT be.  It would take too many whacks to take out the very many moles who dig all around our globe.  In the process of free-whacking, we would shred international law and create incentives for accidental guerrillas to become terrorists and enemies for the USA.  Our enemies long for our overreaction.  We should not help them.

We can do better than whack a mole or even more of the same.  It is time for a Nixon Doctrine-inspired strategy toward international terrorism.  We can't do it all by ourselves, but we can help states find local solutions to the problems that create openings for Al Qaeda or whatever comes after it.

While stopping AQAM and the Taliban in their drive for their preferred base in Afghanistan, we have to find ways to deal with new potential base areas in places such as Somalia, Yemen, and Algeria.  We need to do this --- first and foremost --- by working with regional allies and using force sparingly, and that includes Predator strikes.  We need to work on creating negotiated settlements where that is possible.  We also need, where possible, to use our soft power to win friends and influence the locals.  Our biggest gains in popularity abroad during the GWOT came during earthquake and tsunami relief in Pakistan and Indonesia, respectively.  Maybe our best Littoral Combat Ships are named Comfort and Mercy.

The model for our national security planners should not be Iraq or Afghanistan, but what we have done in the Philippines.  With little cost and fanfare, a relative handful of Army Special Forces and other troops helped to train allied forces that in turn have made great inroads against local insurgents.   Security assistance and military education and training programs have made a great contribution in Asia and Africa.     

One final recommendation here:  don't get stuck in an analytical rut.  Islamist extremism is a worldwide problem,but the pull of Al Qaeda may well be waning. We can't afford to be fixated on Al Qaeda as an organization even as it is losing its grip.  Audrey Cronin, the author of a new book on how terrorist movements end, recently said “I think Al Qaeda is in the process of imploding. That is not necessarily the end. But the trends are in a good direction.”   To protect our nation in the most effective and efficient manner, we need to stay abreast of the threat.  As Major Hasan proved at Fort Hood, it may well be the radicals within, rather than international terrorists organizations themselves, that need more of our attention. 

Finally, we need to work on removing the causes of insurgencies and terrorism.  This is, however, a very tall order.  The causes of terrorism involve errant theology, failed states, personal frustration, and the full range of psycho-social disturbances that attend globalizaiton and modernity.  Much of our problem today has to do with the failure of states in Arabia and South Asia to adapt to modernity, politically, economically, and socially.  Moreover, culture, religion, and fear have created obstacles to Muslims policing their own.  Given globalization, the phenomenon of the few bad actors living at peace among law abiding citizens is also a problem in the United States and Europe.  It is even a problem in the United States Army.

jjc 11-9-09

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The United States effort again terrorism is so far a traditional one.  And we are not going to make much headway with it. This is a true asymmetric war with no total victories and a likely long line of steps forwards and backwards.  I have some deep fears we are predisposed to not getting this one right.

One of my greatest concerns for the US Government in the 21st Century – notice I said the U.S. Government and not the American people – is they are stuck in the past.  Washington, D.C.’s bureaucracy was built after World War II in response to a giant, slow moving nation state, the Soviet Union.  Moscow’s ideology was strong, but Western based.  Its institutions were mirror reflections of their Western nation state counterparts.  And, ultimately, like a line of failed nation states before it, the Soviet Union collapsed because they were outwitted and outlasted by their adversaries and failed to take care of their obligations to their people at home.

When I watch the internal Washington bureaucratics we are now going through to decide a policy on terrorism, I cringe.  This is a conflict – not war – without borders.  It is a conflict of true ideology that is not nation based.  It is a fight within Islam over accepting or rejecting a modernity that is Western based.  And, as we are the dominant status quo power in the world, we are one of the main targets.

It is not as though there are total idiots in the US Government working this problem.  Quite the contrary.  But, they are caught in a mindset of the past that focuses on nation states, has enormous trouble dealing with religious ideology, and has yet to come to grips with the new world of flash information passed worldwide and the clever subtle use of this as another dimension of conflict.

So what to do. At the high levels of strategy, first recognize and embrace fully that dealing with “regressivism” in Islam is a battle that will take a generation or more to solve.  Second, continue the nascent efforts to form a message that moderate Islam is the way to the future – back moderates in the Middle East who speak out both publicly and privately.  Third, remind the other members of the West that treating their burgeoning Islamic populations to workless ghettos produces angry 20 year old males who want to die for a cause; no matter how wrong or addled.

Fourth, and this is crucial, recognize that the message we send will not be received or liked by everybody.  The US is the pinnacle of Western civilization like it or not – what we sell, ain’t everybody buying.  But a recognition of diversity will soften the blow that we aren’t going away either. And further recognize, as painful as it may be, we are going to have to deal with some real stinkers in the Islamic world to keep Al Queda and other from gaining any free territorial base.  The current Pakistan and Afghanistan governments are not pretty, but they are necessary for now.

And finally, set in the context of the above, think about asymmetric warfare against the hard-core enemy like Al Queda who simply want all against them subjugated or dead.  Then you can sensibly choose of strategy of selective counteractions.  Remember: the Islamic world is watching and we can ill afford to look like the characteur Al Queda is presenting.

Those counteractions cannot be limited to simply throwing about missiles from Predators.  You must let your enemy think they are being hunted.  Counter them on the net where they are waging war.  Destroy their sites and counter the blogs.

Assassinations should always be on the table in this game.  This part of the conflict is a knife fight at close range.  No quarter can be given or look like it is being given.  

This is the kind of precision warfare that older nation-states like the US are going to have the hardest time dealing with.  Dropping bombs is not enough.  We are playing multi-dimensional chess against a smart enemy.  All the old rules should be reexamined and if they do not work – throw em out.

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A calibrated campaign targeted on identifiable, tangible threats seems preferable to the kinds of massive, vaguely oriented – and counter productive – projects that we have pursued in Iraq. Afghanistan and Pakistan.  To do so would follow the counsel of several counter terrorism professionals of senior rank in London and Paris.  Treating the terrorism challenge as a police cum intelligence problem makes sense.  We should recognize, though, that such a strategy is not self defining or straightforward in execution.  Here’s why.

1. There are questions of legality. United States law prohibits assassination of foreign government leaders while leaving somewhat hazy whether it is permissible to assassinate political people who do not hold official office.  There was good reason why this prohibition was legislated in the 1970s.  Let’s recall that the assassination of John Kennedy was probably instigated by the Cubans in reaction to our repeated, failed attempts on the life of Fidel Castro.  More broadly, the political outcomes of assassinations are unpredictable in most instances.
 
The questions of legality in the ‘War on Terror’ remain to be answered. The answers have to be candid and public to be palatable to the country at large.  That admittedly can have some adverse effects abroad - if the answer is in the affirmative.

2. ‘We’ still do not know the extent, and targets, of the assassinations that the United States has perpetrated since 2001.  The activities of special Army units and the CIA, whose recitation by Leon Panetta stunned members of Congressional oversight panels, remain shrouded in protective wrappings.  It is senseless to even begin considering a formal strategy along these lines without knowing what has been done with what effectiveness and what effects (positive and negative).

3. The legal, and political, framework changes if we place these contemplated actions in the analytical framework of ‘warfare.’  We have implicitly done this in justifying targeted killings by drones and Special Operations in Iraq and in AFPAK.  Hitting commanders of the groups that the United States are fighting is logical and has raised relatively little controversy.

But big problems immediately arise when you broaden the definition of the enemy.  If we declare multi-functional organizations and movements in their entirety as constituting a terrorist threat to the United States, then boundary maintenance becomes nearly impossible.  One example is provided by the Israelis who simply declare as a terrorist threats a wide swath of the Palestinian population and act accordingly with little discrimination.  They devalue or simply ignore the collateral negative consequences in accordance with a very strict definition of national interest.  We cannot afford to do that.

4. The issue can be posed in terms of ‘defense,’ ‘pre-emption’ and ‘prevention.’  In the first category are those who are actively engaged in attacking American personnel/sites.  The second covers those in the tangible planning phases of an attack in the immediate future.  The last is a catch-all category.  It covers persons known – or even suspected – of bearing hostile intent toward the United States, potential accessories to hostile actions, or potentially aiding and abetting such actions.  Here is where discrimination is exceedingly difficult but absolutely necessary.
   
5. If you are incapable of using fine discrimination, then the strategy will go off the rails with costly consequences.  That is what happened with the collection mania in Afghanistan in 2001-02 that filled Guantanamo and Begram with hundreds if not thousands of innocent and innocuous people.  This is what happened in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 with even greater numbers unjustly imprisoned and abused.  This is what happened with renditions and kidnappings (the actual numbers unknown) of persons send to ‘black sites’ and/or outsourced to helpful ‘torture astute’ countries.  The United States has paid a heavy price for the poor judgment and incompetence that has marked this continuing program.  We do not know the ‘value’ of those whose names have not been revealed or their fate. 

- A broad, elastic definition of the ‘enemy’ creates conditions in which these types of abuses are unavoidable.

6.    We also have to be prepared for ‘blowback’ and compare it to what we might gain.  ‘Blowback’ can take a direct form, e.g. the Kennedy assassination, or an indirect form, e.g. the generation and motivation of persons seeking to harm the United States.  Let us bear in mind here that this may include types other than al-Qaeda like terrorists.  The angry, bitter product of a loosely defined and implemented war on terror may be a trained biologist or chemist rather than a psychiatrist – whether an American citizen or – more likely – not.

7.    Then there is the matter of competence.  You have to be damn good – and disciplined – to conduct these sorts of operations without suffering great negative consequences.  However well trained and able are Army Rangers, drone operators, pilots, and certain CIA operatives, there is manifest evidence that the methods and controls have allowed for gross errors.  They include: the misidentifications noted above; collateral civilian damage; and alienation of cooperating foreign governments. 

The rendition tragic farces have been a national disgrace that stem from organizational arrogance and loose operating procedures.  The Milan trial that has led to the conviction in abstenia of 23 Americans has revealed ineptitude and unprofessionalism on the part of the CIA.  That number of people to seize a lone, unarmed target (and with the help of Italian services) is ridiculous.  Their casual holiday in a five star hotel is unconscionable by any standard.  An organization that performs like that is not now fit to assume responsibility for the type of sophisticated, discriminating strategy that we are discussing.  Unless there is firm assurance that dramatic changes have been made, there is a case for dropping the whole idea on these grounds alone.

Let’s be brutally frank.  The chief organizer of the Milan operation was Stephen R. Kappes.  Then assistant director of the CIA’s clandestine branch, he is now the agency’s second ranking officer.  Knowing only what is in public sources, that fact would lead me to advise the President to do some serious housekeeping in Langley as a precondition for giving it new responsibilities of a delicate nature.

8. Last but hardly least is the very big question of who is the enemy.  Al-Qaeda and their direct affiliates are obvious.  But who else?  Certainly not any group that launches acts of terrorism against any government, e.g. the Tamil Tigers.  There is a huge middle ground.  Are all of Israel’s enemies ipso facto our enemies?   Everyone in Somalia who calls himself an Islamist or just those with certain affiliations (on which days of the week?).  What of the Taliban who have never attacked the United States outside of Afghanistan?  Which Taliban factions or individuals?  The Punjabi based and Pakistan oriented Lashkar-e Tayyiba?  The Thai Muslim insurgents?  The Philipino Muslim insurgents?  All donors to these often multi-functional organizations, e.g. Hezbullah?

Throwing them into one miscellaneous category of ‘bad guys’ – as we have been doing – is self-defeating since it implies objectives that never can be attained.  We cannot just “kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out.”

All of these questions must be given coherent, persuasive  answers  - by the designated operating agencies and by our senior foreign policy officials, above all those in the White House.

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