SHADOWLAND

Christopher Dickey

Terrorist Triage

Why are the presidential candidates—and so many counterterrorism experts—afraid to say that the Al Qaeda threat is overrated?

May 6, 2008 | Updated: 9:32 a.m. ET May 6, 2008

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

Michael Sheehan is on a one-man mission to put terrorist threats into perspective, which is a place they've rarely or ever been before. Already you can see it's going to be a hard slog. Fighting the inflated menace of Osama bin Laden has become big business, generating hundreds of billions of dollars for government agencies and contractors in what one friend of mine in the Washington policy-making stratosphere calls "the counterterrorist-industrial complex."

But Sheehan's got the kind of credentials that ought to make us stop and listen. He was a U.S. Army Green Beret fighting guerrillas in Central America in the 1980s, he served on the National Security Council staff under both President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton, and he held the post of ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism from 1998 to 2000.

In those days Sheehan was among that persistent, relentless and finally shrill chorus of voices trying to warn the Clinton administration that Osama bin Laden and his boys represented a horrific danger to the United States and its interests. Days after the October 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, experienced analysts like Sheehan at the State Department and Richard A. Clarke at the White House were certain Al Qaeda was behind it, but there was no support for retaliation among the Clintonistas or, even less, the Pentagon.

Clarke later wrote vividly about Sheehan's reaction after the military brass begged off. "Who the s--- do they think attacked the Cole, f---in' Martians?" Sheehan asked Clarke. "Does Al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?"

We all know the answer to that question, of course. But what's interesting is not that Sheehan was so right, for all the good it did, or that President Bill Clinton and then President George W. Bush were so wrong not to pay attention. What's interesting is Sheehan's argument now that Al Qaeda just isn't the existential-twilight-struggle threat it's often cracked up to be. Hence the subtitle of his new book, "Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves" (Crown, 2008).

The ideas Sheehan puts forth in a text as easy to read as a Power Point should be central to every security debate in the current presidential campaign. But given the personality politics that have dominated the race so far, that seems unlikely. Once again it's up to the public to figure these things out for itself.

Member Comments

- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: cadercader @ 05/15/2008 4:59:18 PM

Comment: The sixty-years' -celebration.

What is there to celebrate ??
the 6 wars ??
the 4 million refugees ??
the 3 million occupied ??
the 1,5 million abducted-hostages ??
the 254 km of an Apartheid- Wall ??
the 562 humiliation- check-points ??
the 20.000 Political-prisoners ??
468.831 new settlers on an occupied land ??

the disappearance of Palestine ??

the denial of any human-rights ,
any national-rights
any historical-rights ,
any political-rights to the Palestinians ??

the import of 4 million impostors
into a stolen land, that was never theirs ??

60 years of misery ,
of deprivation and or ethnic-cleansing ??

what are they celebrating ??
the event of a one United Nation Resolution
which was not anyhow binding , which allowed them to stay
or
the refusal of about 40 other resolutions
which were indeed binding ,
but asking them to leave ??

what are they celebrating ??
the massacres of
Deir Yasssin ,
Sabra and Chatilla ,
Jennin and Gaza ??

Who else but criminals celebrate a crime ??

60 Years of a constantly revolving crime ,
is no reason to a celebration
but rather a reason to be ashamed
and to repent .

60 Years ago ,
we were farmers , teachers, workers ,
shop-keepers, carpenters , drivers and poets....... ..
now they made 'Terrorists ' out of us.
But at least , we the 'terrorist' are fighting against a crime
while those blue-eyed-Zionists are ,themselves , the crime ,
that 60 years old Crime !
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: Calamad @ 05/09/2008 8:34:50 AM

Al- Qaeda is indeeed a booming business here in Turkey,although its activities run counter to the state,s policies and interests.But then there has been thr British connection which is both extensive and verifiable:but who is there to listen and after that have the imagination to see and believe?
- Reply
- Report Abuse
Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 05/08/2008 3:39:38 PM

But they are nations. And both were infinately more destructive to the world than is Iraq. Indeed,WWII remains the worlds most devasating conflict,of which the American military was given an amazingly,and successful,free rein by their governments to engage in nation-building. Thus there is precedent for this condition for the use of solider-diplomats/politcians. You forget that terrorism relies upon an umbrella of apparatuses that add to their successes,that must be confronted by agencies much more cohesive than police forces alone. Thus it is not simply a matter of neatly excising a singular terrorist leader[as MOSSAD can instantly tell you],but a warren of terrorist training facilities,camps,cell and network safehouses,international funding sources,and the effects of what occurs,as in Lebanon right now,when terrorist organizations move to absorb entire nations.

Even the casual reader of my above list can instantly pick out areas most in tune with ''police/intelligence'' work,even at a gumshoe level,and where armies must decide contests.[Then too,it does not help in the efforts of such intel and ''good police work'',when such efforts are splashed all over the front pages of the New York Times,as they were in 2006 in totally blowing the SWIFT banking program which was critical in tracing where terrorist funding originated,and where it ended up.Terrorists read the Times too].Make no mistake. Armies will not crack cell locations in individual European and American cities,and cops,will be helpless in dealing with terrorist organizations large enough to organize themselves,like HEZBOLLAH and ISLAMIC JIHAD,and TALIBAN ,into army level brigades and battalions complete with anti-air,armour and heavy weapons assets. If Basra was so ''pathetic'',then why is it is Iraqi hands?[including the entirety of its critical ports and oil loading systems]. How could the Iraqi Army do in two weeks what the British Army could not do in four years? [and where did this poor showing fit in the the smashing defeat of the Labour liberals by the conservatives last week in Britain]? Why has JAM jammed itself into its last redoubt in all of Iraq,that of Sadr City, where it is being destroyed as we speak? What good would your ''cops''be stacked up against the likes of these?
You would have had a point thirty years ago,when we were only talking Euro BAADER-MEINHOFS,RED BRIGADES,and American SLAers. No longer. The petro-dollar rich Middle East has the power to craft terrorist organizations into standing armies that would rival those of several democracies. In such an environment tandem,effective strategies involving both uses of power ,law enforcement and military,must be crafted to confront these. If ''only military solutions''will not work,you can depend upon it that ''only law enforcement''[as Clinton found to his dismay],or only ''political''solutions [as Carter is finding to his],will not work either.