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Three Years and Counting

onthebottom

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Excellant article by this title:

Three Years and Counting

The U.S. has not suffered a major attack since September 2001. Why?

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

The September 11 attacks still reverberate profoundly. Of that, there is no better indication than George W. Bush's decisive reelection. For all the trendy talk about "values voters," the campaign was run principally on national-security issues, and the president won a surprisingly large majority. The nation was convinced that he had a superior handle on how to keep us safe.

And there's a reason for that conviction: In the three years since 9/11 and the still-unsolved anthrax scare that followed hard on it, the U.S. has not suffered a domestic terrorist attack. One might ask: Is that truly attributable to President Bush's stewardship? After all, we are continually told that Islamist militants are gifted with preternatural reservoirs of patience; could it not be that we are simply in another cyclical downturn, a calm before the next inevitable storm?

Not a chance. The failure of al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and assorted Wahhabi wannabes to strike us when we have every indication they are desperately trying to is a direct result of the Bush doctrine, announced and implemented in the aftermath of 9/11. The president, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department are to be commended for persevering in it despite a relentless barrage of criticism from the media, civil-liberties extremists, and, regrettably, too many Democrats. Especially salient on this score have been two aspects of the doctrine: a comprehensive strategy that brings to bear all of government's arsenal, and the admonition to state sponsors that they will be considered just as culpable, and will be treated with the same lethality, as the terrorists they abet. Most of all, however, success has been the result of getting serious.

The holistic approach to terrorism has a number of advantages so palpable that the more interesting question is why it took a cataclysm of 9/11 dimensions to get it implemented. Most obviously, our military has killed or captured thousands of militants overseas. Incapacitated terrorists don't commit attacks. This is not a trite observation.

First, unlike sovereigns, sub-state terror groups have extremely limited resources. To be sure, lost terrorists can be replaced in numerical terms — and are being replaced owing to prodigious funding streams globally backing madrassas that churn out an alarming number of terrorists-in-waiting. But instantly replacing the deadly competence of experienced hands is impossible.

Second, the pantheon of jihadists who have become household names over the last few years — bin Laden, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheik), Ramzi Yousef, and others — do not strike once and retire. Motivated by hatred and depravity masquerading as spirituality, they are even more likely to be recidivists than ordinary criminals. Neutralizing them does not prevent just one atrocity — it nullifies many.

cont.....

OTB
 

onthebottom

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cont.....

On par with targeting the sheer number of terrorists has been addressing their motivation. Prosecution in the criminal-justice system was virtually the exclusive American response to terrorism from the time of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" debacle in Somalia in early 1993 — after which the U.S. became resolutely casualty-averse — through October 2001, when President Bush dispatched the military to crush al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The result? Although the nation was attacked repeatedly in that eight-year interim, fewer than three dozen terrorists were convicted in federal court — and those at a cost of unknown millions. Eliminating such a piddling fraction of a committed enemy at a time when its ranks were swelling into the tens of thousands was a sure prescription to be hit repeatedly. Nothing galvanizes an opposition, nothing spurs its recruiting, like the killer combination of successful attacks and a conceit that the adversary is pusillanimous. For zealots willing to immolate themselves in suicide-bombing and hijacking operations, mere prosecution is a provocatively weak response.

Similarly, appeasement is an invitation to more barbarity. Yet, as Norman Podhoretz detailed in an important essay ("World War IV") in the September issue of Commentary, it was a consistent element of U.S. counterterrorism policy in the quarter-century before 9/11. Indeed, the Reagan administration's disastrous pullout from Lebanon in 1983 after a barracks bombing by Hezbollah killed nearly 250 Marines is still a standard talking point for bin Laden and other jihadists — who bray to recruits that Americans give in when the body count gets high enough.

President Bush has now bulldozed that image. By making clear that his intention is not merely to contain but to eradicate international terror networks that threaten the U.S.; by indicating that terrorism is essentially a military challenge, as to which law enforcement plays an important but decidedly subordinate role; and by following through with formidable force in Afghanistan and Iraq, he has not merely decimated the enemy's numbers and its capacity to project power. He has also dramatically altered the enemy's perception of America as a nation to be trifled, rather than reckoned, with. Even those who despise us were guaranteed to become more tepid once it was certain that a swift and devastating response would be the price of a strike.

This assurance has had an underappreciated effect on state sponsors. Yes, al-Qaeda is a serious enemy . . . for a terrorist organization. But it is not a nation. It has no navy, it has no air force, and it has (at least we currently believe) neither ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. nor the types of payloads that can make such weapons an existential threat. To be a credible enemy, even the most professional terrorist network needs help from sovereign powers. Without such help, mounting an attack — while far from impossible — becomes much more difficult. The U.S., once again, becomes a tough target because of the natural advantages of geography and resources that made us a world power in the 19th century, before the age of air forces, submarines, and ICBMs seemed to make those advantages passe.

cont....

OTB
 

onthebottom

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cont...

STRIKING THE ROGUE STATES
It has been popular in the past ten years or so for theorists to wax eloquent about a post-sovereign world in which the major threats come from sub-national entities. But this view dramatically underestimates the key role still played, and advantages still enjoyed, by modern states. Only countries have borders that are protected from attack by international law; have personnel that operate in other countries — even unfriendly countries — under the cover of diplomatic immunity; have the capacity to collect and disseminate sensitive intelligence (among other things) with impunity via diplomatic pouch; have the authority to issue travel documents that facilitate international movement; have the ability to tax people to support their agendas; and have military entities privileged to conduct training and weapons production (and, as we've seen in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere, able as a practical matter to develop weapons of mass destruction).

At its most potent, al-Qaeda basked in state support. Sudan, Afghanistan, and, later, Iran gave it safe haven for command and control, training, and recruitment; and, as Clinton counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke asserted in the late 1990s, Iraq also offered bin Laden a soft place to land. The war we are currently fighting should have begun after our East African embassies were attacked in August 1998, and certainly no later than the USS Cole bombing in October 2000. But President Clinton declined to apply his considerable skills to unwinding al-Qaeda's sovereign safety net, which included not only its Taliban hosts but their allies in Pakistan (which freely allowed its borders to be crossed for terrorist recruitment and training purposes, and whose intelligence service was compromised in bin Laden's cause). Al-Qaeda enjoyed a steady influx of precious funding that would have been impossible without countenance, if not outright complicity, on the part of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other bastions of Sunni dominance. Bin Laden, moreover, received weapons-development assistance from Iraq, as well as from Iran and Syria through Hezbollah.
None of this was a mystery to U.S. intelligence. Indeed, some of it was publicly charged in indictments filed against various terrorists. The Clinton administration, however, subordinated these concerns to other priorities — the desire to be seen as an honest broker rather than an Israeli ally in the so-called "peace process," the elevation of challenging Pakistan on nuclear proliferation over cultivating it on counterterrorism, the fear of creating instability and resentment in the Muslim world, etc. The Bush doctrine has changed all that. This doesn't mean the problems the Clinton administration grappled with were not real ones; they clearly were. Now, though, other nations are on notice that the U.S. regards ending state support of terror networks that threaten America as its most urgent policy imperative, and that we are willing to risk setbacks in other areas to promote national security.

The effect has been startling. Nations that once coddled al-Qaeda are now American allies, or at least feel the need to demonstrate concretely that they have ceased to support bin Laden. Without such support, al-Qaeda is a shell of its former self, and the remnants of its upper echelon have to spend their waking hours on how to survive until tomorrow, rather than on scripting tomorrow's attack. The nature of bin Laden's organization has thus undergone a radical change. It is still a threat, but an atomized one. There are cells throughout the world, but the command structure is decimated, and the cells — staffed with less experienced recruits — are not as capable as the halcyon al-Qaeda of the late 1990s.

cont....
 

onthebottom

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cont...

This development plays strongly to our advantage: Cells operate best when they can blend into the community at large, and it is therefore not surprising that bin Laden's greatest achievements prior to 9/11 occurred in places like Mogadishu, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Aden — Islamic cities with pockets of ardent militant sympathizers. Such places do not exist on the same scale inside the U.S. While 9/11 was a spectacular terrorist success, it has not altered the reality that it is not an easy proposition for a guerrilla faction without a navy or air force to attack American territory. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing took over a year to plan, and the laborious bomb-building (involving numerous meetings, other communications, renting safehouses, purchasing and transporting chemicals, etc.) took months. With law enforcement and public awareness now at unprecedented heights, it is an extreme challenge for militants in a vastly non-Muslim country to go undetected through the exertions required for a major attack.

That could all change if we lost our resolve. We are unlikely to, however, because of three developments. First, under the direction of attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller, the Justice Department and FBI have undergone a seismic culture shift. Their philosophy is now prevention first and prosecution second; they are more focused on stopping the next attack than on securing indictments after innocents have been slaughtered.
The other two changes have to do with the good and the bad of the Clinton years. As for the good, President Clinton and his Justice Department deserve enormous credit for revamping anti-terror law in 1996. Prior to that time, the bias in the federal penal code was toward prosecuting completed acts of mass murder. The 1996 legislation significantly modified the law, placing desperately needed emphasis on the preparatory phases — by, among other things, criminalizing the provision of material support to terrorism; geometrically increasing the penalties for conspiracies, attempts, and threats to commit terrorist acts; and making it far easier for the Treasury Department to choke funding channels. To the limited extent the post-9/11 Patriot Act affected these areas, it was merely to refine what was already in place.

Unfortunately, much of the good done on the prosecution side was undermined by the Clinton Justice Department on the investigative side, including, most perilously, the needless heightening of the so-called wall that prevented intelligence agents and criminal investigators from pooling information to — as the numbingly repeated phrase goes — "connect the dots." While it is very unlikely investigators could have prevented 9/11, with such an impediment in place they never really had a chance.

The Patriot Act's dismantling of the wall is a signal achievement, and the Justice Department rightly credits it with several convictions rung up on conspiracy and material-support charges in the last three years. These prosecutions, necessarily involving nascent plots and ambiguous threats, have occasionally been belittled as overkill in the mainstream press, which bizarrely compares them unfavorably with the sensational terror prosecutions of the 1990s. But, of course, those cases seemed weightier because they usually followed murderous terror attacks. If we are to continue to avoid attack, less flashy enforcement — focusing on preparatory crimes, money laundering, immigration violations, and the like — must be the wave of the future. The prevention-first philosophy also means maintaining other Patriot Act improvements that sensibly gave agents conducting intelligence investigations the same evidence-gathering tools long available to criminal investigators. These tools, many of which — like repeal of the wall — will sunset at the end of 2005 if not extended by Congress, have made it feasible to strangle domestic terror threats in the cradle.

Three-plus years without an attack is not itself insurance against future threats, but neither is it an accident. It is the direct result of a national-security strategy that takes the battle forcibly to the enemy overseas, strenuously discourages other countries from providing terror networks with urgently needed support, and, domestically, makes prevention and diligence paramount over post-attack prosecution. It is a stunning achievement.

Mr. McCarthy, who led the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and a contributor to National Review Online.

OTB

Damn that was long, sorry about that but read it last night and thought it might be food for thought.
 

Ranger68

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The reason there haven't been any serious attacks on US soil is that they're damn difficult to pull off.
 

Ranger68

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Yeah, it's an incredibly biased leap of logic.
I have no doubt, personally, that security has been heavily improved. That having been said, terrorist attacks of this nature have ALWAYS been deadly difficult to finance, organize, train for, and execute.
International terror is a scheme that has NEVER worked. It has been a signal failure for two thousand years. There's no need for any kind of new "war on terror" - except as fodder for the administration's military policies. That's all.
 

Goober Mcfly

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Oct 26, 2001
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Homer - There’s not a single bear in sight—the ‘Bear Patrol’ is working like a charm.
Lisa - That’s specious reasoning.
Homer - Thanks, honey.
Lisa - According to your logic *picks up a stone from the lawn* this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer - Hmmm. How does it work?
Lisa - It doesn’t.
Homer - How so?
Lisa - It’s just a rock, but I don’t see a tiger, anywhere.
Homer - Lisa, I want to buy your rock.
 

Ranger68

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Yes, in the same episode, after a single bear wanders harmlessly into town, the town is gripped with mob mentality and their taxes end up funding bear patrol vans, bear patrol helicopters, bear patrol stealth fighters ........ seems kind of familiar ........
 

islandboy

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Who ways terror does not work.
1) In the US revolution, while they were not terroists going after civilians, all the know rules of war were broken.
2) What about the IRA before the formation of Ireland?
3) What about hile?
I do not want to go to far with this but, at the very least, to the losing side war if often terrorist and at times, it is actually terrorist by nature.

Ranger is correct as he implies that we can not be too secure. bin lauden is noted for patience.

OTM's article, on the other hand, is correct to the extent that it notes that the change in the US response is huge and can have, at least in the short run, salutory effects.

But responsing does not mean terror will always go away. Look at the terror activities in Israel right now. It is a valid question if the terroists will be replaced to the same extent as they are in Israel where the motive is defend or retake one's house and land for one's family, but rather bin lauden's motive to defend a religous ideal. But to the extend that the Irish experince is founded in religion and therefore parrallel, the IRA experiece indicates that if there is continued repression there may be replacement when the issue is religious. At the very least the Irish experience teaches that at some time the other side has to figure a way to ease off the pressure, make or assist in bettering living conditions, and generally recast the mind set on its side as well.
 

Ranger68

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1. They were not terrorists, as you admit. All "European" "rules" of war were broken - and not even really to the extent that's it's been mythologized.
2. The IRA had a singular lack of success UNTIL they developed a strong political arm - Sinn Fein.
3. I don't understand.

Anyway, the point was that *international* terror never works - that is, terror practised against foreigners on their own soil. Never. Terrorism never works, as separate from *guerilla warfare* - that is, warfare against foreigners on your own soil - and typically only as it's practised against an "occupying" army, which is not really terrorism.
 

red

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I would like to believe that OTB's post was correct but I don't - not the spin part about bush- but I don't think the measures taken really amount to a greater increase in security.- its still a porous border in any direction. its not that hard to get into the US and there are plenty who have been there for years who may or may not be sympathizers. Before 9/11 the previous attack was the world trade centre bombing. time between attacks- 8 years.
 

islandboy

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Ranger, I was referring to Chile regarding terror.
I understand you points and they have merit. Since we are in Iraq, best to get out soon - as soon as it is somewhat STABLE - as we are losing in thier press and are being made out to the the army of occupation/terrorists.
 

onthebottom

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red said:
I would like to believe that OTB's post was correct but I don't - not the spin part about bush- but I don't think the measures taken really amount to a greater increase in security.- its still a porous border in any direction. its not that hard to get into the US and there are plenty who have been there for years who may or may not be sympathizers. Before 9/11 the previous attack was the world trade centre bombing. time between attacks- 8 years.


Borders are a real problem, the issue is (DQ will like this) that both political parties are in such a hurry to get the Hispanic vote that they are not willing to close a border where a million people walk thru every year. If it were up to me I'd close our Southern boarder and set up a worker program, and I'd close it down hard.

If you can believe this, it is seen as conservative not to give a drivers license to an illegal immigrant - geez.

OTB
 

onthebottom

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A similar view from another favorite source:

A turning-point for terrorism

Michael Clarke

From The World in 2005 print edition
The weaknesses of the al-Qaeda franchise will become more apparent
International terrorism will generate scary headlines as long as the “war on terrorism� remains near the top of the agendas in Washington and Moscow. And the sheer number of groups now operating, however inefficiently, will produce frequent minor incidents and occasional major ones that will reinforce the siege mentality among the western public.

Al-Qaeda will remain on the run in 2005, its leadership depleted and dispersed, its communications compromised, its most spectacular operations more difficult to mount than ever. But al-Qaeda has evolved since 2001 and has achieved the holy grail of all such franchised operations—notoriety and a powerful brand to inspire legions of amateurs to act in its name. The current al-Qaeda “network of networks� encompasses around 40 different Islamic terrorist groups around the world.

The franchising of the al-Qaeda brand will tend to create common cause between the new global jihadists and erstwhile nationalist and separatist groups. This potent mixture will draw on anti-western sentiment wherever it can find it: in Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines and many other countries.

With 9/11-style strikes harder to organise, the style of attempted attacks will move in the direction of co-ordinated smaller incidents for maximum impact, always with an accent on novelty of technique. We can expect more experimentation with chemical, biological and even radiological devices. There are great technical difficulties for a terrorist in using such deadly elements in a spectacularly lethal way, but they promise a powerful psychological effect.

The world has to live with the fact that the new international terrorism—particularly the jihadist sort—does not see it as self-defeating to be wilfully indiscriminate. More than half of all the current targets of international terrorism, and 90% of its casualties, are “random civilian�, as opposed to military/governmental, or business. Such terrorism will appear to thrive in 2005, since the ideological base for jihadism is broadening.
Even so, western society need not despair. For 2005 could mark a turning-point, as terrorism’s emerging weaknesses become apparent.
First, although international terrorism may now seem more frightening and indiscriminate, it was almost twice as bad in the 1980s, when in most years there were over 600 significant incidents that annually killed up to 1,000 or more people worldwide. In the current era of terrorism there are normally fewer than 300 such incidents, causing 600-700 deaths in most years.

This may be cold comfort to those living with high levels of domestic terrorism—for example, in Israel or Iraq—but international terrorism will not destabilise the world, unless the world somehow frightens itself into a crisis.
Second, al-Qaeda’s unity of purpose and the principle of discipline among its top leadership will be sorely tested by enthusiasms further down its franchise chain. Jihadist groups will compete with each other for power and ideological purity. Al-Qaeda’s inspiration will be weakened and feuding groups will be more easily penetrated. The fierce, inept amateurs at the base of the pyramid may start to alienate potential supporters of anti-western terrorism. Certainly, they raise alarms in governments from Morocco to Indonesia and encourage more efficient international co-operation against terrorism, as well as domestic clampdowns.

Not least, more traditional terrorist groups are already on the defensive. The Madrid bombing of March 2004 was a jihadistattack that bore some fingerprints of the Basque separatist group ETA; the Beslan school atrocity in September 2004 was a Chechen nationalist attack that bore jihadist fingerprints. Both ETA and the Chechen separatists lose hugely by these associations.

The al-Qaeda jihadist wave is neither as powerful nor as monolithic as it appears. Whether it begins to break and lose momentum in 2005 will depend more than anything else on the way America and its allies handle their self-proclaimed war. Can they make it easier for Islamic governments and mainstream Islamic institutions to speak out clearly against jihadist terror, can they prevent Iraq and Guantánamo Bay being such distractions? If so, they could begin to isolate the jihadists from much of the anti-western discontent they have so successfully mobilised in just three hectic years.

Michael Clarke: director, International Policy Institute at King’s College London

OTB
 

onthebottom

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DonQuixote said:
OTB - I'm neither a Dem or a Liberal.
My biggest gripe against Bush is that he was sitting on
a bar stool in some fancy watering hole while I was getting
shot at in 'Nam. He's an elitist coward as far as I'm concerned.
As was Clinton but that's another thread.

DonQuixote said:

As to your post above:
1. If you want to stop illegal border crossings go after the employers
I would, and many of those are "retail" home owners getting day gardners by drive by..... I don't think you can just stomp demand and kill supply, I think you have to attack both sides.

DonQuixote said:

2. The American economy cannot function without cheap labor
whether it be illegal or legal
While over stated I don't disagree, I agree with the POTUS that we should have a guest worker program.

DonQuixote said:

3. The terrorist attacks didn't come from Latinos, it came from
Saudis and Egyptians
Don't fight the last war, fight the next one. What is the easist way to get in the US to do michief.... if an uneducated day laborer can get in....

DonQuixote said:

4. The Arab Islamic Terrorists were religiously motivated.
Yeah, I may have missed your point here.

DonQuixote said:

How would we be safer under your plan?
We would have better control of a potential source of terrorists entering the country.

OTB
 

onthebottom

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DonQuixote said:
Terrorism is a tactic. It's not an ideology.
Timothy McVea used terrorist tactics.
Anti-abortion assassins used terrorist tactics.
Ted Kluzinski used terrorist tactics.
Whoever sent anthrax through the mail used terrorist tactics.

What is the potential source of terrorists?

Was Lee Harvey Oswald a terrorist?

I don't understand what you're chasing down.
Were you a dog I would argue you're chasing your tail.
It's not that hard to understand, I'll type it slower and perhaps it will be easier to understand.

A prior poster noted the loophole in US Homeland Security that our borders represent. When you consider that based on nationality and purpose we fingerprint and photograph people entering this country but a multitude just wade across the Rio Grande every day you can imagine that this is an avenue for people who want to do this country harm an entry point.

Your point is that some terrorists are domestic, yes, so....

OTB
 

onthebottom

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DonQuixote said:
They're everywhere, they're every.
We're doomed. It's the end of the world as we know it.

Bull s88t. It's called gum-shoe intelligence.
You have to penetrate the cells before it becomes operational.
All of these defenses are virtually worthless.
You have to penetrate the cells before it becomes operational.
It's a chess game and not a war game.

That's my conclusion after spending three years in the Defense
Intelligence Agency working at the counter-intelligence, terrorism,
middle-east terrorist groups desk

But what do I know. Since I think Bush is a coward I must be a fool.
It's my personal experience, my personal opinion.
I don't think this is inconsistent with the article that started this thread. Do you see the dismantling of the "Wall" as a plus?

OTB
 

onthebottom

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DonQuixote said:
Does it deal with interdicting terrorist cells?
If not, it's irrelevant.
The "Wall" is / was the rule that the FBI and CIA couldn't share data on terrorist suspects - a silly rule.

OTB
 
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