[For the first part of this discussion, click here.]
IN THE NEWS
Now that the midterm elections have placed US foreign policy in flux for the first time since the 9/11 attacks, it's time for a long-overdue reconsideration of priorities. Mental inertia has propelled American actions abroad for several years, to the point where the basic questions--what is important, and why?--almost never get asked.
Before getting anywhere near the Iraq mess, let's start with the fundamentals. Is counterterrorism the number one US national security priority? One could argue that, with the fragmentation of Al Qaeda, the main terrorist threat is effectively contained. Not only have there not been any follow-up attacks since 2001, but there is no evidence of serious plots against targets within the United States.
Unfortunately, the terrorist threat always had more than one dimension. Americans traveling abroad, US allies who might be intimidated by terrorists, terrorists working in league with criminal syndicates--even before 9/11, there were always more things to worry about than a direct attack on American soil. Terrorists also had many faces, from the Egyptian Salafist to the paranoid from Idaho. However, as soon as you subtracted attacks on the scale of 9/11 or Oklahoma City, you were left with a disparate set of minor threats, nothing worth promoting to the top of the list of US national security concerns.
With no evidence of militant Islamist groups organizing within the United States, the risk of another 9/11 seems low. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, but it seems distant. Al Qaeda no longer organizes and executes operations directly; instead, it provides support to local terrorist organizations within countries of interest. The American equivalent of the Islamist cells in Europe, Asia, and Africa do not seem to exist, and Al Qaeda is far less equipped to support them if a serious home-grown threat did emerge. Therefore, it's important to be vigilant, but not hysterical, about foreign-backed terrorist attacks within the United States.
Unfortunately, the other dimensions of the foreign terrorist threat have increased. An increasing number of places are dangerous for American citizens to visit. Native terrorist cells--from the second generation Middle Eastern immigrants in Europe, to the alienated Islamic populations in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Philippines--are quite real, and as recent history shows, eager to carry out attacks whenever possible. The breeding grounds of terrorism in the Middle East and Central Asia, such as Iraq and Pakistan, have complicated American relations with governments in these regions. This important facet of counterterrorism has grown more challenging, in part because it is more indirect.
Once again, there is an urgent need to speak clearly, honestly, and compellingly to the American public about the terrorist threat. Pretending that it does not exist would be just as counterproductive as the vague, unsubstantiated warnings from the Department of Homeland Security that have symbolized the last five years of US foreign policy. The Bush Administration and the Congressional Republicans worked hard to create an atmosphere of free-floating anxiety that, in November 2006, clearly backfired on them. However, battle fatigue might easily carry the American public too far in the opposite direction, ignoring the terrorist threats that still merit attention.
The best approach might be to abandon our sense of American exceptionalism--and certainly our sense that the 9/11 attacks created a unique national agony that the rest of the world can never understand. European countries, such as Italy, the United Kingdom, France, and Spain, have had their own raft of direct terrorist attacks on their citizens, and indirect terrorist threats to their interests. Counterterrorism is, for Europeans, very serious business--but not something wholly out of proportion to other national priorities.
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