Testimony Before Congress The Counterterrorism blog links to the testimony of intelligence , finance , defense and military officials befor...
Testimony Before Congress
The Counterterrorism
blog links to the testimony of intelligence,
finance,
defense
and military
officials before Congress on the status of the War on Terror.
The intelligence testimony unanimously identifies the key threat to America
as Al Qaeda and the 'Sunni Jihadist movement', referring to both in the same
phrase as essentially comprising the same set; their choice of weapons a
Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear (CBRN) attack on America.
Operationally, they are adapting to the heightened Homeland Security
defenses using covert methods or under the guise of charities, religious
organizations, academe and the like. The intelligence community unanimously
believed that 'Al Qaeda' -- shorthand for the Sunni jihadist movement -- was
successfully using US operations in Iraq to create a favorable political
environment for their cause not only in the Middle East, but in Muslim
communities and in the Left of center political spectrum. Great power rivals,
although not directly in league with terrorists, could potentially use the
threat of tactical collaboration with terrorist organizations to checkmate the
United States as part of their national policy by providing the enemy with
enabling technologies and weapons..
All in all, the intelligence briefings painted a picture of an enemy that had
not yet realized its power potential. It had been stayed, but not fatally
wounded. On the contrary, if it could overcome its disorganization and mend
fences with enablers it could become even more dangerous. To illustrate the
resilience of the enemy, Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby described
enemy forces in Iraq with these words:
"The insurgency in Iraq has grown in size and complexity over the past
year. Attacks numbered approximately 25 per day one year ago. Today, they
average in the 60s. Insurgents have demonstrated their ability to increase
attacks around key events such as the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG) transfer
of power, Ramadan and the recent election. Attacks on Iraq's election day
reached approximately 300, double the previous one day high of approximately
150 reached during last year's Ramadan."
Yet it was not an invincible force, spreading like wildfire. It remained a
curiously local devil, deriving its particular strength from the social soil of
the area.
"The pattern of attacks remains the same as last year. Approximately
80% of all attacks occur in Sunni-dominated central Iraq. The Kurdish north
and Shia south remain relatively calm. ... We believe Sunni Arabs, dominated
by Ba'athist and Former Regime Elements (FRE) comprise the core of the
insurgency ... collaborating, providing funds and guidance across family,
tribal, religious and peer group lines.'
It was interesting that Porter
Goss chose to characterize Iran as a WMD proliferation threat rather than as
the direct source of a terrorist threat, reflecting perhaps not so much a
different intent, as a different strategy of hostility towards the United
States. Even more curious was Admiral
Jacoby's intriguing reference to the Syrian WMD capability.
"Longstanding Syrian policies of supporting terrorism, relying on WMD for
strategic deterrence, and occupying Lebanon remain largely unchanged." Both
Syria and Iran are depicted as having specific regional goals. Iran's objective
according to Jacoby, is regional power. "Iran's long-term goal is to see
the US leave Iraq and the region. Another Iranian goal is a weakened,
decentralized and Shia-dominated Iraq that is incapable of posing a threat to
Iran." A fairly sharp distinction is drawn between 'Al Qaeda or Sunni
Jihadism', with its apocalyptic vision of an incinerated America, and the
ambitions of Syria and Iran, which seek merely specific gain. Yet the threats of
course, run together, with the suppliers of weapons and their users
indistinguishable at the last.
Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury Zarate's testimony takes us down from the heights
of religious and geopolitical motivation to the way the enemy works. It is a
world of crooked charities, suborned 'non-traditional' funds transfer systems,
blackmarket currency exchanges, couriers and the trade in precious commodities.
Author Douglas
Farah described the workings of the Al Qaeda in the African gold, gems and
precious minerals market. These descriptions, far more than Koranic
quotations and nationalistic rhetoric, describe the day-to-day working of the
terror networks.
The transition from Farah's testimony to that of Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld is somewhat startling for two reasons. First, the DOD .pdf
files are the only ones formatted for copy-and-past operations, but more
secondly, the testimony and its prequels raise the implicit question of how much
of the War on Terror should actually be of a military nature. Rumsfeld addresses
the issue up front.
After more than three years of conflict, two central realities of this war
are clear. The first is that this struggle cannot be won by military means
alone. The Defense Department must continue to work with other government
agencies to successfully employ all instruments of national power. ... A
second central reality of this new era is that the United States cannot win a
global struggle alone. It will take cooperation among a great many nations to
stop weapons proliferation. It will take a great many nations working together
to locate and dismantle global extremist cells. It takes a great many nations
to gather and share the intelligence crucial to stopping future attacks. Our
friends and allies are increasingly aware that the danger confronting America
is at their doorstep as well, as underscored by attacks in Madrid, Bali,
Beslan, Casablanca, Riyadh, Istanbul, and elsewhere.
My own personal impression of the testimonies is that Rumsfeld alone, of all
the witnesses, articulated a complete grand strategic view. In particular, he
understood that the threat, so well described in component by the
representatives of intelligence and finance, menaced the world as a whole
and not simply the United States and that it had been emerging over a long
period of time.
Ours was a dangerous world in the years leading up to September 11, even
though it might have seemed otherwise. Consider the world as it was on
September 10, 2001. Terrorists trained and plotted in Afghanistan while
America’s sworn enemy in Iraq sought ways to expand his power and regularly
fired at U.S. aircraft patrolling in the Northern and Southern No Fly Zones.
And the next day, on that bright September morning, 19 men killed over 3,000
people in the Pentagon, Lower Manhattan and Pennsylvania. The extremists
continue to plot to attack again. They are, at this moment, recalibrating and
reorganizing. And so are we. This thinking enemy continues to adapt to new
circumstances. And so must we refocus our efforts to defeat a network
dispersed across the world and which lacks a fixed territory to defend.
Against this menace, the United States had set the following counterstrategy
in train.
The President’s strategy has been to create and lead an international
effort to deny terrorists the resources and support they need to operate and
survive. And since, ultimately, what they need to survive is the support of
those who they can indoctrinate, this is an ideological battle as well. The
strategy has three main components that require the support and coordination
of all agencies of government and all aspects of national power:
- First, defending the homeland: which has led to the creation of the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security, the National Counter-Terrorism Center,
the military’s Northern Command, and this Department’s homeland
defense division.
- Second, attacking and disrupting terrorist networks: With the help of
allies and partners the U.S. has had considerable success in Afghanistan,
Iraq, the Horn of Africa, Northwest Pakistan, and elsewhere. Some
three-quarters of known al-Qaeda leaders have been captured or killed;
- Third, countering ideological support for terrorism: This war has
required not only the vigorous pursuit of known terrorists, but finding
ways to stop extremists from gaining recruits and adherents. It is this
ideological component, I suggest, that is the essential ingredient for
victory.
Rumsfeld went on to describing the marvelous increase in American fighting
capacity. The threefold increase in firepower; the 30% increase in available
manuever brigades by restructuring the ground forces. He alluded indirectly to
the increased offensive role of the Special Forces Command, “a sports car
nobody wanted to drive for fear of denting the fender" now being utilized
to its fullest extent -- a fact reflected in the statistic that its operating
budget has doubled although it remains at virtually the same manpower strength.
Nothing captured the global reality of the struggle more than the incessant
movement of personnel. Sixty three thousand military personnel were in
movement at any given instant to and from their duty stations somewhere on the
planet.
Yet despite the successes of the military, Rumsfeld remained acutely aware
that the decisive area of operations -- the political and cultural fields --
remained largely outside his remit. He ended his testimony with these words:
Terrorists have brains and use them. They adapt and improvise quickly.
Despite the size of our bureaucracies, we must learn to be equally agile. Our
enemies are nimble and media savvy, and through networks like Al Jazeera
deliver their message undiluted to their target audiences. Victory in this
global struggle will require a military configured and funded to defend
against the security threats of this century, not the conventional battles or
the conventional wisdom of the last.
It was a remarkably inarticulate peroration for a man who is anything but,
and may have reflected the frustration of someone who knew that the decisive
blows against the enemy were reserved for someone else; and those persons yet
asleep and wholly unaware.
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