President Bush not only created a fake "War on Terror" to scare voters into supporting his policies -- he is failing to address the real threat facing America
The problem is, almost everything that President Bush understands about his own war on terrorism is wrong.
According to nearly a dozen former high-ranking officials who have been on the front lines of the administration's counterterrorism effort, the president is not only fighting the wrong war -- he is fighting it in a way that has actually made the threat worse. The war on terrorism, they say, has been mismanaged and misdirected almost from the start, in no small part because the president simply does not understand the nature of the enemy he is fighting.
"I hate the term 'global war on terrorism,' " says John O. Brennan, a CIA veteran who served as the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the primary organization set up by Bush to analyze all intelligence about terrorism and coordinate strategic operational planning. "I hate the tough talk, you know, the 'we're gonna kill these guys' stuff."
Brennan is not alone. In a survey conducted this summer, more than 100 top foreign-policy experts -- including former secretaries of state, CIA directors and high-ranking Pentagon officials -- were asked if the president is "winning the War on Terror." Eighty-four percent said no.
Five years after the attacks of September 11th, the administration has failed to grasp the shifting realities of terrorism. If the United States is to have any chance at preventing another terrorist attack -- as the British government apparently did in London last month -- there are five essential lessons the president needs to learn:
1. AL QAEDA HAS BEEN VIRTUALLY ELIMINATED AS A THREAT
In Afghanistan, the CIA reaped an intelligence bonanza, seizing Al Qaeda's computers, files and organizational records. "Once we got Al Qaeda's hard drives, our knowledge expanded exponentially," says a retired CIA station chief. That intelligence has enabled counterterrorism officers to target Al Qaeda operatives around the world, all but eviscerating the group's foreign presence. "We've killed or captured at least one or two terrorists a day for five years, all over the world," says an experienced CIA hand. "More than 4,000 in all." A relentless crackdown in 2003 by authorities in Saudi Arabia virtually eliminated Al Qaeda there, and a terrorist group in Algeria allegedly tied to bin Laden was smashed.
2. WHAT WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT AL QAEDA CAN STILL HURT US
If the president had kept his focus on capturing bin Laden, top officials say, he might have been able to declare a swift victory. Instead, Bush shifted from going after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- a decision with fateful consequences for U.S. security. "Iraq broke our back in the War on Terror," says Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Al Qaeda unit until 2004.
"They're inspired by the great fucking leader," says a former CIA station chief with wide experience in the Middle East. "And we need the great fucking leader's head on a pike."
I can think of another great fucking leader's head that needs to be on a pike next to bin Laden's...
3. THE THREAT HAS GONE VIRAL
By failing to "smoke out" bin Laden as promised, the president has given hope to a new generation of freelance terrorist cells, Islamist copycats and Al Qaeda wanna-be's. "We let them get away," says a retired CIA station chief. "We took a relatively centralized organization and turned it into a generalized virus. Before Afghanistan, we were facing somewhat of a unified threat. We now have the equivalent of a phantom that we're fighting."
4. FIGHTING TERRORISM IS FOR COPS AND SPIES, NOT SOLDIERS
or President Bush, the way to stop terrorism is to wage a war. But isolated terrorists who conspire in the suburbs of London and coordinate their attacks on jihadist Web sites can't be defeated by armies -- they can only be stopped by a combination of patient, old-fashioned police work and good intelligence. Indeed, the success of the British police and Scotland Yard in halting the recent threat in London represents a textbook example of how terrorists can be thwarted.
Over the past two years, as the CIA has been forced to do the bidding of the Pentagon, scores of top agency officials have been fired or have quit in disgust. In addition, Rolling Stone has learned, the Defense Department has even blocked efforts by the agency to produce a National Intelligence Estimate -- a formal, top-secret analysis of the threat posed by Al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups. Five years after the attacks of September 11th, the administration still lacks a unified, up-to-date analysis of who the enemy is and how best to fight him.
5. TERRORISM CAN'T BE DEFEATED -- EVER
Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. As such, it can never be defeated -- only contained and reduced. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow, because new grievances and new cries for revenge will continue to create new terrorists. In addition, there will always be violence-prone, armed insurgent groups that use terrorist methods in conflicts around the world, from Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon to rebel and dissident groups in Kashmir, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Spain, Colombia, the Philippines and the Congo.
In the longer term, with each passing day, the heavy-handed U.S. involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israel-Palestine conflict is producing new terrorists. By his very policies, President Bush is spreading the virus, not quarantining it. The war in Iraq has radicalized Muslims all over the world, and it has allowed them to portray the invasion of Iraq as an attack on Islam. "The president says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, but Iraq has turned out to be the central front because we've made it so," says Wilkerson. "Osama bin Laden is probably chuckling in his cave. We gave it to him on a platter, with a knife and fork." (my em)
That, in the end, is the most important lesson of all to be learned from the campaign against terrorism. The hatred inflamed by the Bush administration cannot be fixed by cops, spies or soldiers. It can be fixed only by a more unified and coordinated stance toward the rest of the world -- one that creates allies rather than inspiring hatred.
"We need a healthier foreign policy," says Brennan, the former counterterrorism head. "It will take a diplomatic track to address this problem -- in ways other than killing people."
Not only have Bush and his fellow criminals done all the wrong things, they've done all the things wrong. Evil and Incompetent: a recipe for disaster, and that is exactly what's happening.
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