Counter-Terrorism. Where Next?

For John, BLUF:  Where are we going in the "war on terrorism"?

Over at The Washington Post we have an OpEd by Mr Juan C. Zarate,♠ "When to Call It 'Terrorism'".  The author notes that President Obama was slow to call the bombing at the Boston Marathon an act of terrorism.  And, the author notes, the President was wise to do so.  There are legal implications to using the word Terrorism, and also political implications.  The Federal Government is still treating the Fort Hood shooting (suspect is Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan) as workplace violence, as opposed to Terrorism.

While we have done a good job fighting al Qaeda, the effort is not over, as Mr Zarate says:

The core of al-Qaeda has been decimated, but its leadership, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, is the ideological center of a violent Sunni extremist movement that aspires to energize and unify the group’s various branches and resurrect its relevance after the Arab Spring.  Al-Qaeda’s strategy now revolves around bleeding the United States with a thousand cuts — inspiring followers to “attack in place.”  This effort comes alive in regional Sunni terrorist organizations and individuals radicalized online.  “Lone wolves” infected with this ideology have been caught in FBI sting operations over the years and remain a major concern for counterterrorism officials.

The threat has changed, and it is not just a narrow, extremist sect of Sunni Islam.  There is still Hezbullah, which may some day be a peaceful political party, but today engages in terrorism.  It is a new day and it is a new threat.  So, one of the questions we face is the question of the status of the AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) with regard to Terrorism.

There is a debate unfolding about whether Congress should issue a new authorization for the use of military force to update the one it provided Bush on Sept. 18, 2001, reflecting that today’s threats are not necessarily tied to the Sept. 11 attacks.  Who can or should we target with lethal force?  Which terrorism suspects may be held indefinitely?  Do we see a terrorist insurgency in Yemen or Nigeria, or a drug cartel using terrorist tactics, as a threat to the United States, or are our enemies simply those planning imminent attacks against U.S. interests at home or abroad?  Does the ideology of al-Qaeda, as it evolves in places such as Syria and North Africa, define the outer limits of threats against America?

The way we talk about terrorism shapes the response to these questions.  We have yet to grapple with the hardest of them.

This is an important discussion and should not be happening just in DC.  We all need to be involved.  One place to start is an OpEd by Ms Maureen Dowd, in the International Herald Tribune, "The C.I.A.’s Angry Birds"—Dowd Down on CIA Predators.

President Obama, who continued nearly every covert program handed down by W., clearly feels tough when he talks about targeted killings, and considers drones an attractive option.  As Mazzetti♥ says, “fundamental questions about who can be killed, where they can be killed, and when they can be killed” still have not been answered or publicly discussed.

We haven't really vetted these issues enough.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Mr Zarate served on the National Security Council of President George W Bush, from 2005 to 2009, as Deputy National Security Adviser for Combating Terrorism.  He is currently a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). His forthcoming book is Treasury’s War:  The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare (Not yet available for pre-ordering on Amazon).
♥  Mr Mark Mazzetti, of The New York Times and author of the new book, The Way of the Knife.