The use of terrorist tactics against the United States is not a new occurrence. From 1919 to 1920 Gallean anarchists conducted a series of attacks, including the bombing of Wall Street. Our reaction was the Red Scare. Today we are fighting the “War of Terror,” a reactive struggle against a form of unconventional warfare. As F. Gregory Gause addresses in his article, “What Freedom Brings,” strategic goals of spreading democracy can have the opposite effect of what we intend. The most important element of a counter-terrorism policy at the strategic foreign policy level would be to encourage the secular, non-Islamist organizations in the Middle East, while developing a robust intelligence service capable of preventing or reacting to any future attacks. We must be careful of using domestically pleasing rhetoric like “spreading democracy” that does not actually serve the foreign policy goals of our country.
As Mr. Gause espouses in his article, encouraging democracy is not a bad idea in itself, but we should be observant of the result of such elections, such as in Gaza and Turkey. The elections systematically have great turnouts (above 50%), significantly better than the U.S., but more often than not religiously charged Islamists have been gaining power. Anti-American sentiment is growing through the democratization process. It’s not just the encouragement of democracy that will make us more safe, but also the encouragement of more secular, pro-Western organizations and parties in these countries. This is not an easy path at all. The rationale stated in the Zogby polling done in Mr. Gause’s article states that U.S. Policy and not U.S. values is what creates the animosity in the much of the Arab and Muslim world. From my experience in Afghanistan I would say that much of the information propagated about U.S. policy is misinformation, but little is done by the U.S. State Department or other government or non-government organizations to counter this fundamental problem.
At the operational level an active and robust intelligence collection and sharing effort under the Department of Homeland Security is the only way to counter threats that are homegrown or already operating within the borders. There are many problems that are currently being modified within this structure, and it will always be a problematic organization. The continuing adaptations to counter the changing threat are good in that we won’t find ourselves asleep at the wheel. Understanding this is a reactive system acknowledges the fact that it a policing nature inside the country. Outside the country is open to more debate. As we see the nature of the threat today and our actions, especially the drone issue on the Afghan-Pakistan border, we see an example of winning the battle to lose the war. With the growing reactions to our military and paramilitary actions to combat terrorism we must realize that our policy is what creates the division that creates terrorism.
Al-Qaeda’s greatest argument (and one it seems to be winning) is that by miring the U.S. in sustained unconventional conflicts on multiple continents with very little effort compared to ours, we become weak. After a decade we have had very little payoff as compared to the effort. President Bush may have wanted to spread democracy, but we see that without influencing the population’s view of U.S. policy we have little effect on the fuel of the terrorist activity. Our reactive efforts at home prevent the attacks, but are flawed and make errors occasionally. Our proactive military efforts can create more animosity or animosity where none existed. We must balance our efforts at all levels while correctly identifying the source of the rage at the West, and either changing our policy or producing a system to counter this rage will give us the most efficient results.
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