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29-03-2005 The Scotsman Inside the War on Terror:The US wakes up to winning a war for hearts and minds By Gethin Chamberlain IF there is a soundtrack to the war on terror, it is the echo of stable doors slamming shut. It is hard for a non-American to understand fully just how badly the nation was scarred by the events of 11 September 2001. Even now, three and half years on, the full horror of those attacks is etched in the minds of the citizens of a country which did not think it could be attacked; more importantly, it could not comprehend why it had been attacked. The knee-jerk reaction is the one that the rest of the world has observed, at first indulgently, and latterly with an increasing sense of unease. Borders were sealed, security checks ramped up, sweeping new laws introduced. Work began on the construction of a vast new security edifice designed to ensure that never again would the US suffer such ignominy. The Scotsman has been granted unique access to the US State Department's counter- terrorism experts and many of the leading law enforcement agencies over a three-week period in February and earlier this month to look at how this new security apparatus is being deployed in the war on terror. Two things are abundantly clear. The US has no intention of letting up on its new war; if anything, it is gathering momentum, fuelled by genuine concerns over new and dangerous threats. But it is also clear that many of those involved in that war are coming to realise that the country cannot simply build a wall around itself and retreat into Fortress America. "The mentality of the US citizen is that we didn't think it would happen here," said one special agent in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. "The first world trade centre bomb [in 1993] didn't open people's eyes. We've led a very comfortable existence - there is a lot of shutting the stable doors after the horse has bolted." So while those who favour the Fortress America option continue to pour billions of dollars into new hardware and technology, those in the second camp are asking questions. They are looking at Iraq and concluding that there are lessons to be learned there, hard lessons, and the most important is that persuasion is every bit as important as coercion. They may not have all the answers yet, but they are at least beginning to frame some important questions. When a senior official in the State Department's bureau of economic and business affairs observes that "we haven't responded to Bin Laden... I've read him and agree with him on some things... he has a grievance", it is time to start paying attention. Some still insist that the answer lies with greater powers to investigate terror suspects, more phone-tapping, less concern about individual liberties. The same official who spoke about Bin Laden talked of the need for new approaches to the terrorist threat. "We need to get smart so we can start networking with each other fast. We just have to do a better job. Our systems are being abused," the official said. But others are wondering whether it might not be better to look at why it is that America has become a target. At the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, set up after the 1995 bombing in which 168 people died, a senior official said they had to realise how others looked at them. "Americans are arrogant. We are the world superpower and we want to spread our Britney Spears culture across the world and we see no problem with that. But there are other cultures that have a problem with that," he said. "People join terrorist groups in the same way that kids join street gangs, for a sense of belonging and a reaction to alienation." At the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, an influential think tank, senior adviser Arnaud de Borchgrave said he believed that the common thread was the radicalisation of Muslim youth. "A cultural rejection of what America stands for is largely behind the radicalisation," he said. "The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq has been seen as the US moving in to take oil. Hollywood also portrays the US as the bad guy. 9/11 gave a thrill to those who hate us." The US was dealing with a global political and religious movement which drew its members from where the Soviet Union used to fish during the Cold War, he said. At the New America Foundation, another think-tank, terrorism analyst Peter Bergen warned that the US had to realise it was fighting a war against ideas. "How do you attack their ideas? The US has done a horrible job of doing that. To win the war you don't need to find people you agree with, you just need people who are opposed to violence," he said. The problem was not confined to the US. "The future of al Qaeda is what is happening in Europe rather than the US," he said. "I don't believe al-Qaeda has any sleeper cells in the US. The threat to the US comes from outside the US. The European problem is from within. The alienation of minorities in Europe is fuelling radicalism. Iraq was a gift for al-Qaeda and Europe is more vulnerable to what is going on in Iraq than the US." He was not optimistic about finding a solution either: "The best we can hope for is that we manage terrorism back into a box. That's as good as it gets." Many of the officials who agreed to speak did so only on condition of anonymity. At the Department of Homeland Security's immigration and customs section, one high-ranking official outlined the complexity of the problem. "This is not like the Cold War. We used to be able to say that all communists and Soviets are bad. But we can't say that all Muslims are bad. We are enormously vulnerable to the radicalisation of Islamic youth and it has to be addressed." Many in the security apparatus refuse to accept that the prosecution of the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has fuelled that radicalisation. But even inside the Pentagon, where such attitudes are at their most prevalent, there are some who will acknowledge, albeit grudgingly, that there is a bigger picture. "No single unit has the capability to deal with terrorism," said one official in the special operations and low intensity conflict section. "The US can't do the global war on terror on its own: it needs its allies. "We need to diminish the underlying causes that help terrorism flourish. We need to counter the ideological support for terrorism." Another senior official from the same department suggested that the answer lay in convincing people that the US was committed to world peace. "We don't want, as a government, to be the world's policeman," he said. "We're convinced that the threat is real and that we need to fight this war differently." In Iraq, he said, the lessons were being learned. "We've stood up to our criticism and tried to change our tactics. "We went into Iraq with the best intentions and we are committed to rebuilding the country. There are no panacea solutions - but we're much more committed to how we train and advise the Iraqi military and police. We believe that we are winning goodwill through the provision of medical services." But it takes time to change the way people think: the same official had another solution to the problems in Iraq. "Eventually they are going to run out of suicide bombers," he said. It is wrong to think that just because 9/11 left a scar across the American psyche, everyone is pulling in the same direction in the war on terror. Journalists report that it has been more difficult to question decisions. There is a lack of public appetite for criticism of the war on terror. One Florida journalist suggested that the lack of the draft had insulated parts of US society, particularly the middle class, against the reality of the war in Iraq. But there is a feeling that there is a limit to what people will accept in terms of diminution in personal freedoms. At the Washington Post, editors suggested that people were becoming more cynical about the terror threat. And at the cutting edge, there is an acceptance that there is a limit to what can be done. A senior officer at the Washington's Joint Force headquarters National Capital Region said there was simply no way that America could protect itself against every threat. "There has to be a level of risk acceptance. At this point there is a tolerance of that level of risk," he said. If there another major attack, the gloves might come off but no-one knows: "If we had tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, people would be as concerned as anyone else. After 9/11, people were more prepared to accept a uniformed military presence, but it changes from situation to situation," he said. "I don't think the US public is ready to accept the level of security that is required to eliminate that risk [of random attack]. "The US public expects the president to be out and visible. We are not going to totally change our lives in response to this threat. It is very easy to, through fear, not be able to do the business of the nation." At the Rand Corporation, which advises the US administration on security, one analyst talked of the need for a "new normalcy" - essentially an acceptance of a level of risk. "Let's get on with our lives because terrorism, as bad as it is, has to have some place in the order of things along with traffic accidents and cancer," he said. The alternative was to construct Fortress America to defend against everything and spend the country into oblivion. No-one, though, appears to have any confidence in the United Nations' ability to get the US out of a corner. At the US mission to the UN, the talk was of the problems created by the UN's refusal to come up with a definition of terrorism. Travel bans and sanctions had some success, it was said, but many states that failed to implement sanctions were going unpunished. "The longer sanctions go unimplemented the more ready states will be to defy sanctions, which risks undermining the entire security council," a senior official explained. Arnaud de Borchgrave, at the Centre for Strategic and International Affairs, says: "I think there probably will be a point where the US public will get tired with the war on terror." Alan Capps, an analyst at the Homeland Security Institute - which does work for the Department of Homeland Security - thought the environment had changed. "The US has got to look at why terrorism is how it is, though this administration is not keen to do so," he said. "The US doesn't grasp the long-term effect of what it is doing. Britain has had the experience of Northern Ireland. The trick is to pass on that experience to the Americans. "I like to think of this in terms of the country after World War Two being like a small child given the keys to a vast toy warehouse. Since then it has been a huge learning curve." Some Americans, he said, did get it, understanding that what they were doing affected how people reacted to them. Others were still finding their way. "The rest of the world needs to be patient with the US," he said. "It is growing pains and they have made some mistakes but they are also doing some things right. We have been seen, rightly in some cases, as a bit of a bully." The country, he said, was like a pendulum, but it never swung slowly - it shot out to the extremes and then swung back slowly. "It's a case of getting people to understand that they are part of a global community," he said.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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