Arms and influence

And they get all Qaeda with us! I'm sure!

Once again, the confusion of Al Qaeda with Al Qaeda in Iraq goes unchallenged. Should we be keeping score somewhere?

Terrorists may not want killer viruses, either

I fully agree with the Armchair Generalist: it's an unjustified leap of faith to assume that terrorist organizations will inevitably try to acquire biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons:

We know that people can buy lab equipment and set up small scale production capable of producing BW agents. And yet... no earth-shattering kaboom.

To avoid repeating myself, here's what I've already written on this subject. I'll add a small coda: in some cases, terrorist groups may want to create the impression that they're about to get some kind of unconventional weapon, even if they're really not doing that. The bluff is cheaper than the actual program, and in some contexts, just as effective.

On the other hand, the bluff can also backfire. Since terrorists have brains, they do think through the pros and cons of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, for real, or as a bluff. Terrorist groups have internal arguments about this topic, and official policy can swing one way or the other.

It's a mistake to assume that, just because a scary weapon exists, terrorists will pursue it with an ant-like intensity and mindlessness. The possibility exists, but the probability is lower than most people think.

What we fear, what we value

Today, my wife passed her second and final exam to qualify as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.

Today, an as-yet unidentified gunman killed 32 people (the current count) at Virginia Tech.

It's impossible not to juxtapose those two pieces of news. As a country, we've never fully recovered from the 1999 Columbine massacre. While we may not still grieve, schools still enforce all kinds of anti-violence measures with the same earnestness and occasional brainlessness of the post-9/11 Transportation Security Administration (TSA). School authorities tolerate no violent talk, just as TSA employees give you no choice about taking off your shoes. It's highly dubious whether either measure makes anyone measurably safer, but these are the sort of easy, obvious responses that any administrator would embrace.

Effective solutions to the risk of mass murder require more work, expertise, and time. Here's a graph of the money that the US federal government has budgeted for mental health care, distributed as block grants or in other forms. What you see isn't exactly a direct response to the Columbine massacre. Instead, it's a measure of how much your elected representatives put a value on mental health care in general. These figures come from the Department of Health and Human Services' yearly request for funding.

However, funding at the federal level is a poor measure of how money really gets spent, or how effectively we are taking care of the mentally ill (and potentially dangerous). What happens at the state and county levels is far more important. Those are the strata of our federal system where we run our prisons, employ our juvenile case workers, and fund our mental hospitals.

The story in California, where I live, looks a lot like the rest of the nation. Here's a study from 2005 that tells the by-now familiar story. Caseloads are rising. The per capita amount of time allotted to those in need, such as the "troubled teens" that have scared generations of Americans, has dropped. Fewer preventive services are available. Therefore, many of the mentally ill end up in prison, instead of treatment. Insurance that provides mental health coverage is shrinking, shifting the burden further to county and state governments.

In spite of the immediate risk that a mentally ill person may hurt himself or someone else, most Americans don't feel threatened. Even when something truly terrible happens, such as the Colombine massacre, we don't feel moved to act on the scale that the US government has since 9/11. Meanwhile, we encounter the mentally ill all the time, on the streets, in our schools and workplaces, and sometimes within our own families.

Mental health services, from therapy to medication, are imperfect mechanisms. Not every medication works with every patient, and not every patient reliably takes their medication. Therapy doesn't always work, and to work, it takes time.

At the same time, Americans ask far less of the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies involved in counterterrorism. (If you look at the rate of terrorist convictions, the government's scorecard for counterterrorism looks a lot worse than mental health services.) We feel more threatened by foreign terrorists, even though we're more likely to fall victim to crime at the hands of a mentally ill person. The Department of Homeland Security is a bloated embarrassment, gorged on the public trough, too lazy to be bothered to explain why it needs so much and does so little. American voters shrug, and continue to hand over their shoes and toothpaste in the security line.

As of this writing, I don't know who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech, or why. Maybe the person was a paranoid schizophrenic, a psychopath with a gun, or just an evil person. I do know that America's collective perception of danger doesn't always fit reality. Government, as conservative critics have often been right to point out, isn't always the solution. On the other hand, budgets are where we show what we really value, because we're willing to spend money on it.

Crime and terrorism

A while back, I likened counterterrorism to campaigns against organized crime. The terrorist and the mafioso have a lot in common, including increasing business between them. This recent research paper, co-authored by one of the guys at Counterterrorism Blog, goes into further detail about these connections between terrorist cells and criminal organizations.

The billion-dollar gravestone

IN THE NEWS
Tom Engelhardt's article about the proposed 9/11 memorial--"the largest, most expensive gravestone on earth"--captures many of my own feelings. There are no good choices about how to memorialize the World Trade Center victims; recent history has made these difficult decisions even more painful.

First, it's clear that the World Trade Center memorial is not going to be like the war memorial that marks American triumphs of right over wrong. You can feel sorrow when you visit the Gettysburg battlefield, or the Allied graveyard overlooking Omaha Beach, but the cold, stone markers stand for justifiable sacrifice as much as grievous loss. We beat the slave-holding Confederacy. We beat the genocidal Nazis. The historical and emotional scales dipped in the right direction.

However, there's no triumph to commemorate at Ground Zero in Manhattan. Nineteen terrorists, through a combination of guile and luck, slaughtered thousands of innocent office-workers and airline passengers. It's important not to leave a scar in the earth where the towers used to be; otherwise, you give the 9/11 hijackers and the people who helped them a kind of reverse triumphalist memorial, rubble instead of chiseled stone. Like the dead bodies and smashed buildings that the Nazis left in their wake, the wreckage of the 9/11 attacks need to be cleaned up.

But, short of paving over the original site of the World Trade Center, what should be done? The proposed underground museum, which will recount the 9/11 attacks, is fine, but at this point, hardly necessary. No one in the world, and certainly not in the United States, needs to be reminded of 9/11. Our memories of that day are not faulty; our grief hits us with no less force. Most battle sites lacked official markers or museums for years, sometimes decades, after the actual events. Why, then, the need to rush into construction a museum for the mass grave at the southern tip of Manhattan?

Engelhardt's article makes an important point about our memories and feelings about 9/11: since the Bush Administration worked very hard to connect the 9/11 attacks to the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo Bay, warrantless wiretaps, and other policies, it's nearly impossible to separate our feelings about 9/11 from our reactions to these subsequent events. Perhaps nothing should be done until Bush leaves office, since his legacy of hubris and calamity falls over the World Trade Center site as darkly as the shadow of two airliners slamming into the towers.

Certainly, the 1,776 "Freedom Tower" should not be built (if for no other reason than it gives future terrorists a brand new target). The allusion to the Declaration of Independence is too kitschy and inappropriate for chief target of the 9/11 terrorists. The name itself invites too much angst. Exactly what sort of "freedom" are we talking about? The freedoms that Americans enjoy, but Saudis and Egyptians do not? The freedom to continue living, in a way that the 9/11 victims cannot? The freedoms that Americans enjoyed before 9/11, but have been curtailed since then? Most of all, the name "Freedom Tower" borders on the sort of triumphalism which is exactly the opposite of what most Americans feel about 9/11. More than "Freedom Tower," two verbal points to describe a more complex emotional picture, this excerpt from Bruce Springsteen's "My City of Ruins" might be the constellation of words that better approximates the shape of our feelings:

There is a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door's thrown open
I can hear the organ's song
But the congregation's gone
My city of ruins
My city of ruins

Springsteen's song (written before 9/11, but which fit into his post-9/11 album The Rising with eerie appropriateness), continues with the sentiment that I think is more fitting to a World Trade Center memorial:

Come on, rise up!  Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up!  Come on, rise up!
Come on, rise up!  Come on, rise up!

Americans can't celebrate the 9/11 attacks, squeezing some non-existent victory out of that terrible day. We can rise up, in defiance of the sort of monstrous evil that killed the World Trade Center victims. We can abandon momentary despair for confidence, but not arrogance. They can renew their faith in our own country, without letting nineteen hijackers drive us to abandon our own cherished principles and institutions. We can take comfort in the fact that we are not alone (approximately one-fourth of the World Trade Center casualties were not US citizens; the world offered its help immediately after the attacks), instead of charging forth in unilateral rage. We can keep the 9/11 attacks in proper perspective (over 125,000 Americans died liberating Normandy in 1944, of which 1,465 died on D-Day alone), instead of embracing the role of World's Greatest Victim.

As a symbol of defiance against evil, and remembrance of those who died, one or two spotlights shining from Ground Zero might be a good idea. However, mounting a light on top of a 1,776-foot "Freedom Tower" is wrong for far too many reasons.

Al Qaeda in the family

IN THE NEWS
What can we make of the US military's decision to release Abdallah Tabarak, the former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, from Guantanamo Bay. Tabarak is an interesting figure, in no small part because of his relative's affiliations with Al Qaeda. Why this particular prisoner, when there are others without a distinct role in Al Qaeda, still in indefinite imprisonment? I can think of at least a few reasons:

• Officials in the Moroccan government genuinely convinced their American counterparts that they would have more success with Tabarak.
• The Moroccans have their own reasons to interrogate Tabarak. In 2003, Al Qaeda bombed, within a few minutes of each other, several targets in Casablanca. The terrorists behind the Madrid bombings also used Morocco as a base and transit point.
• Tabarak is being used as bait. Since he has relative freedom now, intelligence agencies may be closely monitoring him to see if he contacts any of his former compatriots. (Of course, Tabarak must know that he is under surveillance.)
• Tabarak was never as important as the phrase Osama bin Laden's bodyguard implies. Every terrorist organization employs people--some may know the group's real activities, others may not--in a variety of minor support roles. Not every one is worthy of elevation to Bond villain status.
• Tabarak struck a deal, exchanging something of value for his freedom.
• The interrogators at Guantanamo Bay ran out of reasons to hold Tabarak.

Of course, none of these motives are mutually exclusive, so there's undoubtedly some mix of them at play. The Moroccan government has its reasons for asking for Tabarak; the US government has its reasons for letting him go.

Crossing Jordan

IN THE NEWS
The bombings in Jordan represent one of the scariest escalations in the two violent years since the invasion of Iraq. The invasion opened the door to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once confined to operating as a leader in Ansar al-Islam in the northern corner of Iraq, to operate on a much larger stage, against a ready-made supporting cast of American adversaries. Without asking permission from the Al Qaeda leadership, he christened his new organization Al Qaeda in Iraq, instantly gaining the cachet of the world's most notorious network.

As of last week, he has taken his  production of terrorist theater to a new audience: the rest of the Middle East. Jordan is an ideal next stop, since it handily combines all the anxieties of the Middle East in one neat package:

• Jordan is one step away from Israel, already beseiged by the second, more bloody intifada.
• The majority of the Jordanian population is Palestinian, which instantly suggests the question, Were any Palestinians involved in these attacks?
• The attacks are designed to send the message that peaceful, stable, and moderate regimes cannot provide safety to its citizens.
• The attacks may also be an attempt to lure the United States into becoming more entangled in the politics of neighboring countries, to the detriment of the overall American war effort. In this respect, Al Qaeda in Iraq may be trying to construct as messy a regional war as the US faced simultaneously in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

The attacks may backfire. In fact, they may already have. Jordanians have already turned out en masse to denounce the attacks. The one operative captured, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, may have information that can be used against Al Qaeda in Iraq. However, there may still be a great deal of justifiable anxiety in Amman, Tel Aviv, and Washington--not to mention Cairo, Riyadh, Ankara, and other capitols.

Why I didn't write a 9/11 remembrance

IN THE NEWS
Herr Professor Taylor pointed me in the direction of this article, in which another blogger explains why he didn't post a 9/11 remembrance. It's worth reading.

I didn't post anything myself, and I changed my mind about explaining my rationale after reading Wordhoard's piece. I didn't post anything on Sunday, and I'm unlikely to ever again in the history of this blog, because, after four years, I think we can honor the dead without turning that day of horror into a perverse fetish. In fact, I think it's time that it's incumbent upon us, as US citizens, to do exactly that.

No one's feelings are in jeopardy if we don't memorialize 9/11 every year. On occasion, I still weep over the dead. I knew one of the most famous victims, Todd Beamer, through work. For others, I still feel the bonds of grief and outrage over the lives snuffed out because a handful of fanatics decided it was time to teach the United States a lesson. Unfortunately, the people who were the subject of this "lesson" were innocents--most Americans, but many not--who were just trying to get their work day started.

I also want to keep 9/11 in perspective. It wasn't the "day that changed everything." It was the day that a small group of clever terrorists got lucky. I don't want to hand them the power to transform my civilization, my nation, and myself. Taking political advantage of a mass murder is just wrong--whether you're last name is Atta or Rove.

For a while, Remember 9/11 was a way many people got through a national tragedy through collective determination. It was a poorly-phrased slogan, however. Like Support Our Troops, Remember 9/11 is stated as an imperative, not as a declarative sentence. I already support our troops, and I definitely remember 9/11. I don't need to be reminded--and, I assume, neither do you. As a nation, it's more important what we do in 2005 and beyond, not what we say.

Re-discovering the web

IN THE NEWS
Several times in the last few months, I've heard slightly different versions of the following thesis:

Because of the success of US counterterrorism efforts, Al Qaeda has increasingly depended on the Internet as a tool for recruiting members, discussing possible operations, and sharpening its terrorist doctrine.

Like most statements in the general press about terrorism, this one is partially true, and partially dead wrong. Yes, as this Washington Post article documents, Al Qaeda and its allies are using the Internet--often very cleverly. However, this "trend" isn't new, and it is not a response to US counterterrorism measures. Far from being hushed underground communiques, these channels of communication--web sites, message boards, instant messaging, SMS, and probably somwhere even podcasting--flourish out in the open. As the Post article astutely notes, the Internet is not only inherently useful to Al Qaeda, but it also fits its transnational view of Islamic revolution:

The Web's shapeless disregard for national boundaries and ethnic markers fits exactly with bin Laden's original vision for al Qaeda, which he founded to stimulate revolt among the worldwide Muslim ummah , or community of believers. Bin Laden's appeal among some Muslims has long flowed in part from his rare willingness among Arab leaders to surround himself with racially and ethnically diverse followers, to ignore ancient prejudices and national borders. In this sense of utopian ambition, the Web has become a gathering place for a rainbow coalition of jihadists.

Of course, not all the Islamist revolutionaries swapping notes on the Internet seek the same revolution.  In fact, they often use the opportunity to denounce each other's Koranic interpretations, critique \how a particular rival is being too nationalistic or internationalist, and sneer at the outcome of a rival group's operations. However, they also do genuinely collaborate in what one observer has called "the open source model" of revolution.

Given how easy it is to disguise your location or identity on the Internet, going on the "cyberwar" offensive by blocking Islamist web sites would be pointless. What would be a worthwhile endeavor, however, would be to hire as many Arabic speakers as possible to monitor these sites. Better to take advantage of terrorist discussions that are out in the open than driving them undergroud.

And let's not kid ourselves that foreign Islamists are the only terrorists with an Internet footprint to follow. Domestic terrorist groups--white supermacists, militant Christian millennarians, and the like--also use the World Wide Web for external and internal communications. Revolutionaries since the Protestant Reformation have been eager "early adopters" of mass communications--including the Internet, long before the first airliner hit the World Trade Center.

More on links

IN THE NEWS
All Things Considered has a brief interview with Marc Sageman, author of Understanding Terror Networks, about the links between Al Qaeda and the groups behind the recent bombings in Egypt and Great Britain. I think the headline on NPR's web site, "Are Freelancers Co-Opting Al Qaeda's Name?" is a bit off the mark. Still, the important point is understanding the loose but effective relationships between Al Qaeda and its "clients."

Another thought about the second London attack: It definitely seems like that group was far less competent than the group responsible for the first, highly lethal bombings. Sometimes Al Qaeda's investment in a group pays off; sometimes, it doesn't.

The link (sort of)

IN THE NEWS
Yesterday, I wrote that I was concerned if the two London attacks were coordinated as part of a single operation. Today, British authorities are claiming to have made a link between the two bombings.

It's not quite the link I had in mind--which is good news. I was worried that Al Qaeda was learning how to expand the terror quotient by timing operations close together, much like Palestinian suicide bombers do. According to the British government, the same Al Qaeda "patron" may have met with both groups, in an effort to pool their efforts. That's a picture consistent with how Al Qaeda operates, and it also makes it less likely that Al Qaeda and its local allies can execute the sort of  tightly-coordinated, close-in-time attacks that Palestinian groups have perfected during "Intifada II." There's also evidence that the groups behind the two bombings may have used a white water rafting trip as cover for a meeting.

The British finding is still tentative, so we're a substantial distance away from finding out exactly what happened.

What worries me

IN THE NEWS
What's the most important counterterrorism campaign today? I'd nominate the ongoing investigations of the second London bombings and the horrific attack in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. These investigations are vital because they'll indicate whether or not (1) Al Qaeda has the global reach we often attribute to them, (2) Al Qaeda's ability to refine and coordinate attacks, and (3) what phase of their own campaign the Al Qaeda leaders believe them to be.

Right now, we don't have enough information to do much more than speculate--which, again, is what makes the investigations vital. We have a good idea, however, what conclusions we'd rather not reach.

If the second, unsuccessful London attacks were part of the original plan, Al Qaeda tactics have achieved a disturbing but not wholly unsuspected refinement. Thus far, recent Al Qaeda operations--the 9/11 hijackings, the Bali bombings, the Khobar attacks--have been single strikes with no follow-up. The carnage has been terrible, but the terror has been limited by the feeling that, once each attack was over, it was over. Of course, people looked over their shoulders a bit, but the fear of follow-on attacks is nothing like what Israelis face in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

Palestinian suicide bombers learned that immediate follow-on attacks are a huge "force multiplier" for terror. An attack occurs in a crowded restaurant, market or other public place; people are wounded and killed; emergency response workers and concerned bystanders rush to the scene. That's when another car bomb or other device explodes, killing even more people. The terror factor--compounded by the anguish felt when trying to do the right thing--is much greater with these immediate follow-on attacks.

It would be surprising if Al Qaeda hadn't studied the methods of Hamas and the Al Aksa Martyr's Brigade. Although the second attacks occurred days, not minutes, after the 7/7 London bombings, they would have much the same effect, if they were part of the plan. They may not be--which is one of several important questions that the British investigation will address.

The Sharm el-Sheik attack has different portents. First, it may be a sign that Al Qaeda is trying to coordinate nearly-simultaneous operations across national boundaries. To date, it hasn't done so--in large part because of its dependence on local groups in which it invests. Coordinating groups in separate countries, who share little beyond the backing of the core portions of the Al Qaeda network, may be more trouble than it's worth. My own speculation (and that's all it's worth) is that the timing of the London and Sharm el-Sheik attacks isn't significant. Of course, bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders may want to make a point about the reports of their demise having been greatly exaggerated. But the operations themselves make that point already.

However, the choice of target--a prominent resort on the Sinai Peninsula--does have one clear implication: Al Qaeda feels comfortable continuing attacks against the "near enemy," the regimes of Middle Eastern countries like Egypt. Although Al Qaeda attacks on Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries haven't received much press in the United States, it's worth remembering how more difficult these operations can be. The local security forces (and their paid informants) are more likely, on average, to identify the people involved in an attack than, say, the Boston or Detroit police departments. (No slight intended to the men and women in blue in these cities, by the way. It's just a fact of life that they have limited contacts among local Islamist groups, plus a significant language barrier.) The security forces may have significant background information on the terrorist operatives--who may have been born and raised in the country in question. Terrorist messages like, "The Saudi royal family is corrupt," have greater resonance in these countries--which means the regime's reponse is that much more ferocious. Continued attacks on the near enemy show confidence and determination. Escalated attacks against the near enemy show that Al Qaeda is moving into the next phase of its strategy.

I wish I could say more, but I can't. We'll just have to wait to learn more about these attacks before drawing any further conclusions.

You just noticed?

IN THE NEWS
The lead story in this morning's electronic edition of The Washington Post informs us that suicide attacks are now the norm for terrorist incidents.

No kidding. That trend has been obvious for a while. Maybe it's a good idea that the Post is trying to broadly educate its readership on these issues, but where has this story been since 9/11? When airliners hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania, terrorism experts both inside and outside government had already noted terrorists' increasing reliance on suicide attacks--not just among the groups you've heard of, like the Al Aksa Martyr's Brigade, but those you might not have read about before, like the Tamil Tigers.

What gets under my skin about an article on this topic, this many years after 9/11, is the public reaction that could have been avoided had the Post and other news outlets decided to pay more attention to the threats that really existed in the pre-9/11 world already. For anyone who had been watching Al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks were surprising in only one respect: that the team attempting as highly ambitious an operation as the simultaneous hikacking of four airliners got as lucky as they did. Otherwise, the attacks were perfectly consistent with Al Qaeda's methods and goals--which had recently shifted greater attention to "the far enemy," the United States and Europe.

Of course, writing that story immediately after 9/11 would have been an admission of journalistic failure. Reporters, like governments, choose to pay attention to particular topics of interest. In 2000 and 2001, Al Qaeda wasn't among the news items that caught the interest of various editorial boards, just as it was far less of a concern to the new occupants of the White House than "rogue states" and possible nuclear threats they posed.

Therefore, the major newspapers in the United States expressed astonishment at the attacks, and talked about how "the world has changed." To be fair, the sidebars about Al Qaeda that appeared in every newspaper and news magazine contained a list of previous attacks against American targets in the Middle East and Africa. What they presented, however, were puzzle pieces that fit together into an obvious picture.

John Gibson, you're fired

IN THE NEWS
We've all known someone--a co-worker, a relative, a college friend--who thought he was funnier than he really was. Sometimes, they really don't know when to shut off the bad joke machine, even when their endless prattle is making an already painful moment that much worse.

Where do those people go? Sometimes, they grow up and get a job at Fox News.

John Gibson is obviously one of those people who have enjoyed making fun of the French. The 9/11 attacks didn't give an excuse for the typical round of French jokes (they don't like Americans, they pretend they don't understand English, they surrender at the first opportunity, blahblahblah), particularly since Americans received an outpouring of genuine sympathy from the French. The Iraq invasion did, because of the friction between the French and American governments. Now, the Jhn Gibson's don't know when to shut up.

Long before we suddenly became the world's experts on terrorism, the French had lots of experience. Depending on how loose a definition you want to make, terror has been part of French history since--well, The Terror. France gave up its Algerian colony because of attacks by FLN insurgents. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamic terrorists attacked targets in France itself, setting off bombs in public places like markets and Metro stations. (In one of the more gruesome twists, some attacks were deliberately timed for afternoons when French children were let out of school early.) In December 1994, French commandos stopped a terrorist from crashing an airliner into the Eiffel Tower. Over the last few decades, French soldiers, aid workers, doctors, diplomats, journalists, and engineers, working in some of the most impoverished and violent parts of the world, have been threatened, kidnapped, or killed.

If you were a real journalist, and not just a snotty know-nothing, you might know this bit of history. You don't have to admire every French foreign policy decision (I don't) to understand that France has suffered its share of casualties from terrorist attacks. However, this all is lost on John Gibson, who uses last week's tragedy as an excuse for unfunny, heartless wisecracks like this one:

First, the French think they are so good at dealing with the Arab world that they would have gone out and paid every terrorist off. And things would have been calm.  

Or another way to look at it is the French are already up to their eyeballs in terrorists. The French hide them in miserable slums, out of sight of the rich people in Paris.

So it would have been a treat, actually, to watch the French dealing with the problem of their own homegrown Islamist terrorists living in France already.

And later:

It would have been a delight to have Parisians worried about security instead of New Yorkers. It would have been exquisite to watch.      

But, alas, they picked London. I like the Brits. I like London. I hate to see them going through all this garbage when it would have been just fine in Paris.

Of course, no one deserves the suffering the British just faced. But Gibson's comments aren't merely cruel--they're astoundingly uninformed.

The French government is already quite aware of the Islamic extremists living in the Paris suburbs--just as the British, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and German authorities are monitoring similar groups within their borders. In spite of the tiny fraction of terrorists in their midst, European governments have kept their borders open to all the other Muslim immigrants who just want a better life. Obviously, if you follow European news at all, you know that immigration has been a very hot political topic. That's something with which we can sympathize, as we ask the same questions the Europeans have been posing: How many immigrants we should accept? What are the conditions we should set for residency or citizenship? Does the risk that a tiny number of immigrants may pose justify closing the borders to everyone else?

In spite of public insults like the idiotic "freedom fries" incident, French and American counterterrorism specialists continue to collaborate. They share an interest in fighting the terrorists cells throughout Europe, not just France. They're smart enough to know the difference between a lunkhead Congressman grabbing for the headlines and the dedicated professional sitting across the table, reviewing intelligence reports with you.

In my fantasy world, news organizations fire people for comments like Gibson's. However, during the first Gulf War, I quickly realized, during my brief career as a talking head, that I was free to say almost anything I wanted. No one in the studio could fact-check me on the spot, and there weren't any real penalties for being wrong. (Go back to the transcripts and op-ed pieces during Operation DESERT SHIELD and count the number of military experts who expected tens of thousands of US casualties during the liberation of Kuwait. Nearly all of them were invited back to comment during Operation DESERT STORM, long after it was clear no such bloodbath was occurring.)

Even though I could have, I didn't shoot my mouth off. In fact, I stopped myself from making a comment about Patriot missiles that I wasn't 100% sure was accurate. (As it turned out, I was right anyway.) I assumed that, as long as I occupied the public podium, I was responsible for making my time there worthwhile for those listening.

John Gibson's heartless, stupid comments are cause for termination. I don't expect it to happen, but I can fantasize.

Terrorism database

IN THE NEWS
Thanks to Draft Zinni! for this pointer to the Terrorism Knowledge Base.

Songs for St. Patrick's Day

I'm married to a woman of Irish descent, so I've learned to dread St. Patrick's Day. Americans treat nearly every holiday as an excuse for beer and/or barbecue, but the message for St. Patrick's Day is, Remember the Irish—get stinking drunk! Most Irish people I know, my wife included, would rather honor the Irish a bit differently.

I'm passing the day listening to music by contemporary Irish bands. No, not groups with names like The Dashing Dubliners, crooning yet again about Danny Boy—I'm talking about bands like The Pogues and Black 47. U2 may have earned a lot of good press with their song about the violence in Northern Ireland, "Bloody Sunday," but there are better songs about that and other aspects of the Irish experience. On just one album, If I Fall From Grace With God, The Pogues gave us painful songs about the British occupation of Northern Ireland ("Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six"), the exploitation of the Irish as cannon fodder in Britain's wars ("Recruiting Sergeant"), and the great waves of emigration to the United States ("Thousands Are Sailing"). Like most Irish bands, The Pogues balanced their grim tunes with some extremely funny songs. If I Fall From Grace With God featured the unforgettable "Fairytale of New York," which I defy anyone to hear for the first time without laughing out loud.

For St. Patrick's Day, there are also the lesser-known bands worth seeking out, like one of my favorites, Black 47. Their songs range from the political ("Bobby Sands MP") to the hilarious ("Czechoslovakia" and "Maria's Wedding"). As a New York-based band, Black 47 also bridges two worlds of terrorist calamities, in Northern Ireland and Manhattan. Their latest album includes one of the best songs I've heard about 9/11, "New York Town," which includes the following lyrics:

Too man friends, too many heroes
Dust in the wind - Ground Zero
Too many cowboys, too many martyrs
Too many questions, not enough answers
Was no one lookin' out for us, is that so simplistic
Brothers and sisters all becomin' statistics

All the balladeers of Northern Ireland's sad history—Shane McGowen of The Pogues, Larry Kirwin of Black 47—plus the novelists, artists, and filmmakers who have depicted the same topic, show us Americans how 9/11 really wasn't the day that changed the world. The British and Irish can tell us all about what it's like to live in fear of being killed while you're waiting for the subway train, or how violence sharpens the differences between factions to a jagged, uncompromising edge. They can tell you about how a government can flail when fighting terrorists, while insisting all the while that naked brutality, vengeance, and error were all vaguely necessary. They can also tell how terrorist groups like the Provisional IRA can be even more stupid, savage, and heartless than the government. What can you say about anyone so blinded by ideology and rage that they believe blowing to bloody bits schoolchildren and pensioners will create a socialist utopia? The British and Irish can also give a few pointers about fighting terrorists without sacrificing open government and the rule of law. (And they can tell you the price paid when judges and politicians violated these tenets in the name of security.)

The song that really has its hooks in me today, though, is "The Gulf of Araby" by Katell Keineg, performed with power and passion by Natalie Merchant on her live album. Before you grab another pint, take a moment to reflect on the people in Ireland (and other countries) living in the world this song describes:

The Gulf of Araby      
If you could fill a veil with shells from Klinney's shore
And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more
And If wishful thoughts could bridge
The Gulf of Araby
Between what is
What is
What is
And what can never be

If you could hold the frozen flow of New Hope Creek
And hide out from the one they said you might meet
And If you could unlearn all the words
That you never wanted heard
If you could stall the southern wind
That's whistling in your ears
You could take what is
What is
What is
To what can never be

One man of seventy whispers free at last
Two neighbors who are proud of their massacres
Three tyrant's torn away in a  winter's month
Four prisoners framed by a dirty judge
Five burned with tires
Six men still inside
And Seven more days to shake
At the great divide
The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby
The gulf, the Gulf of Araby

Well, we would plow and part the earth to bring you home
And harvest every miracle ever known
And if they laid out all the things
that these ten years were to bring
we would gladly give them up
to bring you back to us
There is nothing we would not give
to kiss you and to believe we could take what is
What is
What is
from what can never be.

One man of seventy whispers not free yet
Two neighbors who wake up knee-deep in their dead
Three tyrant's grab the reigns in the summer's heat
And four prisoner's lost in the fallacy
Five on my life
Six I'm dead inside
And seven more days to shake
At the great divide
The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby
The Gulf, the Gulf of Araby

[All copyrights acknowledge to Black 47 and Katell Keining.]

Why do terrorists want nukes?

IN THE NEWS
Some of the recent postings on national security-related blogs--Armchair Generalist, Global Guerrillas, and Liberals Against Terror--touch on the same question: will the current American grand strategy for counterterrorism effectively stop terrorist cells from acquiring nuclear weapons and using them against the United States? Since the Pentagon seems poised to draft a new National Military Strategy (NMS) for counterterrorism, it's a timely topic to discuss.

Although we've had years since 9/11 to "get inside the head" of terrorist groups like al Qaeda, few public discussions of counterterrorism actually try to do that. It's essentialy, since counterterrorism, like any type of warfare, is an exercise, in large part, in understanding your enemy's goals and means, finding out what you can about the enemy's strategy,  and anticipating what the enemy might do in response to whatever actions you take. As Edward Luttwak said in his book on strategy, warfare is not engineering. You're dealing with a live opponent, not inert matter. You can't succeed unless you can understand and outwit the enemy.

In contemporary terms, that means stopping the assumption train about terrorists and nukes, instead of letting it hurdle on forwards. The standard American thinking about the terrorist threat follows this track:

1. Terrorists are determined to defeat the United States.
2. In their minds, the more often they can attack within the United States, and the larger the carnage, the more successful they will be.
3. Therefore, nuclear weapons are extremely attractive, so al Qaeda and like-minded groups will do everything they can to acquire and use them against us.

For people horrified by the 9/11 attacks, that seems to make perfect sense. Why question the train of logic, if al Qaeda hijacked four air liners and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

What's missing, of course, is al Qaeda's own grand strategy. The preceding argument skips ahead a few steps, straight to what we presume al Qaeda is doing at a theater or operational level. However, it may be completely wrong, including about how much al Qaeda cells want nuclear weapons, and why.

For al Qaeda and similar Islamist terrorist groups, the final battlefield isn't New York City. Instead, it's Jerusalem, Baghdad, Cairo, and other places where they want their militant, intolerant version of Islam to succeed. They want the entire umma, the body of the Islamic faithful, to live under their interpretation of Islamic law. The United States and the rest of the Western world are powerful figures in this drama, but they're not major players in its final act. (In fact, al Qaeda hopes we won't appear at all.) Of course, al Qaeda wants what they see to be the corrupting influences of the West--secularism, imperialism, etc.--removed from Dar al-Islam, the abode of the faithful--in other words, Islamic countries. They also want to stoke the revolutionary fires in the Dar al-Islam by making big, successful, inspiring attacks against powerful countries like the United States. Ultimate victory, however, is not defined by detonating a backpack nuclear weapon in Times Square.

Does that mean we don't have to be worried about al Qaeda or other groups acquiring nuclear technology? Absolutely not. However, looking inside al Qaeda's grand strategy does change our own strategy significantly.

Yes, there are a few rabid haters of the United States within al Qaeda, eager to make major bonus points by attacking us somehow, somewhere. However, there are also a lot more of what you might call "pragmatists," leaders who are ready to shift strategy to make it easier to reach their ultimate goal, revolution in the Dar al-Islam, faster and more successfully. Nuclear weapons may be attractive, but they may also be a liability, if they create alliances among al Qaeda's enemies that would otherwise not exist. "Terrorist nukes" that unite the overt and covert efforts of the American, European, Egyptian,  Israeli, Syrian, Saudi, and Indian governments are far less attractive than military and political measures that keep these regimes divided. As events in post-invasion Iraq show, the more chaotic and contentious the situation in any part of Dar al-Islam, the more ground al Qaeda can make.

Therefore, American strategy can (and should) have two prongs. The first is what you hear most frequently: Defeat terrorist cells and deny them access to nuclear technology. The second is what you almost never hear: Keep nuclear weapons from being attractive to al Qaeda. The second prong can succeed without achieving total victory along the first.

That should be good news, since we can "secure the homeland" with far less effort than the traditional strategy requires. You are not necessarily fighting an enemy dedicated heart and soul to the nuclear option, so complete physical, mental, and moral isolation (to use the Boyd language) is not required.

If Abu Musad al-Zarqawi had to choose between (1) nuking Washington, DC, and (2) Islamist revolution in Iraq and elsewhere, which do you think he would choose? Keeping the first choice separate from the second is what our counterterrorism strategy, in whatever form (like the NMS), should do.

Slouching further toward Beslan

IN THE NEWS
To follow up on my earlier post about the Beslan massacre, I recommend reading this article in today's Washington Post. Be warned: it will break your heart. However, it is one of the best articles I've seen in the mainstream press for depicting (1) the ethnic animosities that have been boiling over in the Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and (2) the reasons why local residents are furious with the Russian government. Topping the list of outrages: the official number killed in the massacre at Middle School Number One doesn't match the actual number missing (and presumed dead).

Slouching toward Beslan

IN THE NEWS

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

--Robert Burns, To a Louse

As I've mentioned before I'm a great believer in the outsider's perspective. We all give a nod to the idea that unstated assumptions skew our vision of the world and ourselves, but most of the time, we act as though our vision is self-evidently clear and accurate. However, the foreign observer often notices things that we miss, or express discomfort with things the we accept without question. Think of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, one of the most perceptive books about American politics. Or, to take another Frenchman, think of Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation. V.S. Naipul's observations about the West in general are equally noteworthy.

Americans, too, can look at another society's strengths and foibles in ways the citizens born and raised in that cultural thicket cannot. It's a rare and valuable moment when Americans can learn lessons about that other society that apply to ourselves.

I haven't written about the Beslan massacre yet because it was an event that needed time to digest. The aftermath, too, was as important as what happened on that horrible day.

The Chechen rebels are, of course, dangerous fanatics. Chechnya may indeed deserve its full independence from Russia. Like many portions of the former Soviet Union, Chechnya is the inheritor of Stalin's ugly legacy of demographic confusion. To keep the non-Russians in line, Stalin moved some groups, like the Tatars, and deliberately intermingled others, often through internal migration and colonization. If you think the political boundaries in the Caucasus don't make sense, you're right: Stalin wanted them to make no demographic sense. As long as intertwined ethnic groups continued to choke each other, they didn't threaten Moscow's power.

This leads us to the first observation we can make about Beslan: The situation is more complex than the leadership portrays. Putin's fulminations about the Beslan massacre—including a four-hour session in which he buttonholed the international press—talk about a simplistic universe of Russians and terrorists. In fact, Beslan and the region around it are home to Chechens, Ossetians, Russians, and the Ingush. The Ossetians are divided, thanks to Stalin, between the North Ossetians in Russia, and the South Ossetians in Georgia. Among the ethnically Persian Ossetians, the majority are Christian, but a minority are Muslims. The majority of Chechens are Sunnis, and they share historical roots with the Ingush. Few of these groups believe the Russians belong in the Caucasus; few could agree on what should replace Russian rule. It appears that the terrorists who seized Middle School Number One were a mix of Chechens and Ingush.

The larger populations of Chechans, Ossetians, and Ingush don't support the terrorists, however. The larger population doesn't think that terrorism will win independence; it will ensure brutal Russian reprisals. In fact, during the Beslan hostage crisis, Russian troops took Chechen families hostage, which gives new meaning to the phrase counter-terrorism. This leads to the second observation about Beslan: The majority of the local population may not be on the side of the government, but they're also not on the side of the terrorists.

The "counter-hostages" incident shows that the Russian strategy for Chechnya hasn't gone after the most violent groups with surgical precision. Brutal operations like the siege of Grozny may frighten the "gentleman insurgent," but they don't deter the most ruthless, violent groups, like the militia headed by Amir Abu al-Walid. Events like Grozny and the political blacklisting of Aslan Maskhadov outrage and radicalize enough people to keep a sufficient level of recruits joining the terrorist groups. Here, then, is the third observation: Ham-handed counterterrorist tactics distill the enemy into smaller, more dedicated, and more violent groups.

Whatever happened at Beslan, these groups are far from defeated. They'll continue to bomb subway stations in Moscow, take hostages in the Caucasus, and assassinate Russian military officers. Since the Russian government has yet to account for exactly what led to the deaths of over 300 people. Clearly, the Russian security services have done a poor job infiltrating and monitoring the Chechen militants, for a terrorist operation on this scale to have caught the Russian government flat-footed. (Putin has admitted as much, stating that corruption and inefficiency hampered intelligence efforts.) No one excuses the terrorists, but nearly everyone n Russia believes that the government bears some responsibility for the disaster.

One of Putin's first responses, however, had nothing to do with counterterrorism. Ending the direct election of regional governors won't help catch Chechen and Ingush terrorists; its only purpose is Putin's continued consolidation of power and destruction of his political opposition. The seizure of all media outlets, the legal and economic attacks on political opponents like Yukos president Mikhail Khodorkhovsky, and now the elimination of gubernatorial elections are all steps toward building a post-Soviet autocracy, not preventing another Beslan. In fact, as long as the "gentleman insurgent" or non-violent separatist believes that it's ridiculous to believe in anything the Russian government says about self-government, the militants will keep the political high ground in Chechnya. (Especially since the Putin administration's first instinct is to lie during a crisis.) This points to our last observation: Restricting freedoms is an irrelevant and ineffective strategy for counterterrorism.

Now, let’s look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and the PATRIOT Act for a moment. Would the following statements also apply to the recent actions of the United States?

• The situation is more complex than the leadership portrays.


• The majority of the local population may not be on the side of the government, but they're also not on the side of the terrorists.


• Ham-handed counterterrorist tactics distill the enemy into smaller, more dedicated, and more violent groups.


• Restricting freedoms is an irrelevant and ineffective strategy for counterterrorism.

If you were a Russian, Canadian, Zimbabwean, South Korean, or Brazilian, you'd probably answer yes more readily than the average American. But again, they have the benefit of the outsider's perspective. Perhaps they don't have our cultural blinders, or our discomfort to admit our own mistakes, but that's a real benefit, unlike the whining complaint that the rest of the world just doesn't understand us.

George W. Bush once said that he looked into Vladimir Putin's soul. If so, did he see anything recognizable?

Carnage kitsch

IN THE NEWS
I somehow missed the passage of Public Law 107–89 on December 18, 2001, when the US Congress officially designated every September 11 on future calendars as "Patriot Day." As I wrote earlier, I try to pass that anniversary quietly, or even act as though it's a normal day. I was shocked, therefore, to find out that Patriot Day is more than a token statement by American politicians, lost somewhere in the Congressional Record. No, unfortunately, Patriot Day is more than a bizarrely-named remembrance of mass murder: it's a merchandiser's dream.
I first caught wind of the merchandising bonanza while watching The Daily Show (fake news that's better than the "real" broadcast news). Lewis Black was fuming about the 9/11 merchandising, including Hallmark cards, a Beanie Baby, and worst of all, a commemorative coin minted from, we're told, silver recovered from Ground Zero.

I wasn't in New York City when the 9/11 attack occurred, but did visit Ground Zero some time afterwards. I've never encountered anything like it. Ground Zero felt like the place where an demonic god struck the earth with a hammer forged from despair, leaving behind a never-fading echo of the moment when that hammer struck. It was the perfection of evil, the absence of life, a breach into the realm of death that will never close. I can't imagine wanting a doll, coin, T-shirt, collector's plate, or anything else "commemorating" this mass grave. But that's just me.

One of the unfortunate costs of a market economy is that you can't stop people from turning tragedy into profit. But how indecent or inappropriate can it get? Out of curiosity, I did a search on eBay and found a cornucopia of 9/11 merchandising, such as jewelry (including a Disney pin, complete with a quotation from the dear, departed Walt himself), sewing patterns, figurines, plates, patches, T-shirts, caps, and of course, the coins.

I've seen some of these items before, but they seemed to be part of the immediate reaction to 9/11, a statement of collective sympathy, grief, and outrage. The items that gave particular attention to firefighters, police, EMTs, and other emergency workers honored the risks they took, the lives they saved, and the many of these public servants who died. Three years later…

I can't say when the "right" time it is for people to stop needing the talismanic power of a T-shirt, and the comfort it elicits when someone gives a sympathetic nod. Undoubtedly, some people still need it, and perhaps some of us are clinging to that grief and outrage a bit too long. There was never a time—not 9/11, the day after, a year after, or now—when I could imagine someone describe these commemorative items as being "collectible."

During the Middle Ages, there was a brisk business in holy icons. Rulers searched and bartered objects that purported to be the lance that pierced Jesus' side, the Holy Grail, and other. Louis IX of France built the chapel of St. Chapelle in Paris as a reliquary for what he believed to be the genuine Crown of Thorns. Eventually, however, people realized the stunning volume of fakes that received such honored placement in cathedrals, shrines, churches, monasteries, and castles. (If someone were to collect all the alleged pieces of the True Cross, one medieval wag observed, you could build a ship bigger than Noah's Ark.) The Catholic passion for iconography led to a Protestant reaction against it. The Church, according to the Protestants (and, to be fair, other schismatics before them) rested on a solid foundation of faith, compassion, charity, and other virtues, not bones and splinters of dubious origin.

There is, as I said, something otherworldly and terrible about Ground Zero. Its presence in our national life touches an emotional or spiritual reality that flows like a dark current through many of us. As with any great passion, it can inspire us to nobility, or deceive us into great mistakes. It should never, however, be collectible.

Cities that start with B

IN THE NEWS
Everyone has their fingers crossed that Baghdad and Beirut have nothing more in common than the fact that their names both start with the letter B. However, the recent spate of kidnappings has a lot of people spooked. Will Iraq collapse into the kind of grinding, bloody, daily bombings, firefights, and kidnappings that Beirut suffered in the 1980s? Since kidnappings are all that's left to complete the picture, perhaps there's reason to be concerned.

Iraqis have their reasons for violence, but their not exactly the same as those of the Lebanese militias. The Lebanese civil war had its roots in the country's constitution, which had fixed representation in the legislature for every ethnic group. Over time, the Muslim birthrate outstripped that of the Christians, increasing pressure for a constitutional revision that never occurred. Add to this already explosive mix aggrieved minority groups like the Druze, outside meddling from Iran and Syria, and the exiled PLO leadership, you're left with a situation so bad that it would have been amazing had Lebanon not had some kind of civil war. What made the situation worse, of course, was the Israeli invasion, followed by the abortive US peacekeeping mission. The tragedy of Lebanon, once a model of Middle Eastern prosperity and civility, was overwhelming.

Kidnapping in Lebanon quickly became an effective political tool. All a group needed was a bit of ruthlessness and cunning, some identifiable Westerners (who were all over Beirut), and some safe houses, and you had the basic tools for gaining leverage far beyond the size of your organization. Some of the hostage-takers in Beirut were significant players, like the Hezbollah; others were minor leaguers, who saw how effective hostage-taking could be as a political weapon.

Baghdad in 2004 isn't quite Beirut in 1984. The clan and sectarian divisions In Iraq are not as deep or bitter as they were in Lebanon. The engine for much of the violence in Iraq is the US/Coalition occupation--but, of course, we have to be careful to note that some of the people fighting the US today will not automatically lay down arms once the Americans leave. Now that the Baathist regime is gone, there is no political poke in the eye like the Lebanese constitution. (But it's worth noting Lebanon's cautionary tale about setting electoral quotas for particular groups.)

Iraq, unfortunately, has reached a point that Lebanon once did: factions are seeing the undeniable effectiveness of kidnapping. The Philippine government wasn't keen on keeping troops in Iraq for too much longer, but the kidnapping of a Filipino national certainly hastened their departure. Since there is no effective police force, and a lot of foreigners, the opportunity is clearly there for many groups to grab quick notoriety and leverage.

Once again, we have to fall back on the Iraqis to deal with the political violence in that country. And again, it all comes down to basics: people willing to give us information; people familiar enough with the language and the culture to know what to do with this information; the ability to provide safe passage to people going about their daily lives; decisions about what necessary to spread that security through ever-larger portions of Iraq. Once the kidnappings gain momentum, they're hard to stop. The White House has made Iraq more important than Lebanon ever was. That fact doesn't negate the political reality, however, that an increasing number of Western (or Egyptian, or Filipino) hostages creates.

9/11 panel makes news by stating the obvious

IN THE NEWS
We live in perverse times. Otherwise, how could you explain that the lead story in The Washington Post is the 9/11 Commission's conclusion that there was no connection between the Iraqi Baathist regime and al Qaeda?

Even the most strained logic couldn't connect between Osama bin Laden and "the butcher of Baghdad," except that they're both butchers. In fact, al Qaeda and its local ally, Ansar al-Islam, regularly denounced the secular Baathists. Frequently, in the Byzantine world of Middle Eastern politics, bitter enemies become temporary allies, but there was no evidence whatsoever of such an alliance between Hussein and bin Laden. Meanwhile, with the Bush Administration's encouragement, the US public has labored under the false impression that Hussein was somehow responsible for the 9/11 attacks. This distortion goes so far that many Americans still believe that some of the hijackers were Iraqis.

Sadly, then, it's major news that the 9/11 panel--composed of prominent Democrats and Republicans with significant national security experience--has stated flatly, "No, there was no connection."

Let's assume for the moment that the Bush Administration had been focusing its attention, prior to 9/11, on Iraq. Intelligence-gathering mechanisms, both human and mechanical, were trained on the Iraqis, looking for signs that Hussein had revived his WMD program. These intelligence assets are finite, so if you put a lot of them over here, they're not going to be looking over there. (To be honest, they're also not 100% fungible. FBI agents tracking terrorists in the US, for example, can't contribute anything to intelligence efforts in Iraq. However, Arabic language translators can be moved around, as can other assets.)

In light of today's other announcement from the 9/11 panel, that al Qaeda had originally planned 10 simultaneous hijackings, a focus on Iraq like the one I just described would have been, needless to say, a major disaster. We would have bet the farm on Iraq being the major threat, and lost. As heartbreaking as the US government's failure to stop the 9/11 attacks were, at least there was some FBI, CIA, and NSA monitoring of al Qaeda, including some of the 20 hijackers.

Apparently, the same statement can't be made loudly, clearly, or often enough: 9/11 was an attack by terrorists. If we're now fighting a war on terror, we've picked the wrong war.