Terrorist Triage
The drive to obliterate the remaining hives of Al Qaeda training activity along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier and those that developed in some corners of Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003 needs to continue, says Sheehan. It's especially important to keep wanna-be jihadists in the West from joining with more experienced fighters who can give them hands-on weapons and explosives training. When left to their own devices, as it were, most homegrown terrorists can't cut it. For example, on July 7, 2005, four bombers blew themselves up on public transport in London, killing 56 people. Two of those bombers had trained in Pakistan. Another cell tried to do the same thing two weeks later, but its members had less foreign training, or none. All the bombs were duds.
Sheehan's perspective is clearly influenced by the three years he spent, from 2003 to 2006, as deputy commissioner for counterterrorism at the New York City Police Department. There, working with Commissioner Ray Kelly and David Cohen, the former CIA operations chief who heads the NYPD's intelligence division, Sheehan helped build what's regarded as one of the most effective terrorist-fighting organizations in the United States. Radicals and crazies of many different stripes have targeted the city repeatedly over the last century, from alleged Reds to Black Blocs, from Puerto Rican nationalists and a "mad bomber" to Al Qaeda's aspiring martyrs. But the police have limited resources, so they've learned the art of terrorist triage, focusing on what's real and wasting little time and money on what's merely imagined.
"Even in 2003, less than two years after 9/11, I told Kelly and Cohen that I thought Al Qaeda was simply not very good," Sheehan writes in his book. Bin Laden's acolytes "were a small and determined group of killers, but under the withering heat of the post-9/11 environment, they were simply not getting it done … I said what nobody else was saying: we underestimated Al Qaeda's capabilities before 9/11 and overestimated them after. This seemed to catch both Kelly and Cohen a bit by surprise, and I agreed not to discuss my feelings in public. The likelihood for misinterpretation was much too high."
It still is. At the Global Leadership Forum co-sponsored by NEWSWEEK at the Royal United Services Institute in London last week, the experts and dignitaries didn't want to risk dissing Al Qaeda, even when their learned presentations came to much the same conclusions as Sheehan.
The British Tories' shadow security minister, Pauline Neville-Jones, dismissed overblown American rhetoric: "We don't use the language of the Global War on Terror," said the baroness. "We actively eschew it." The American security expert Ashton Carter agreed. "It's not a war," said the former assistant secretary of defense, who is now an important Hillary Clinton supporter. "It's a matter of law enforcement and intelligence, of Homeland Security hardening the target." The military focus, he suggested, should be on special ops.
Sir David Omand, who used to head Britain's version of the National Security Agency and oversaw its entire intelligence establishment from the Cabinet Office earlier this decade, described terrorism as "one corner" of the global security threat posed by weapons proliferation and political instability. That in turn is only one of three major dangers facing the world over the next few years. The others are the deteriorating environment and a meltdown of the global economy. Putting terrorism in perspective, said Sir David, "leads naturally to a risk management approach, which is very different from what we've heard from Washington these last few years, which is to 'eliminate the threat'."
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Member Comments
Posted By: cadercader @ 05/15/2008 4:59:18 PM
Comment: 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 !
Posted By: Calamad @ 05/09/2008 8:34:50 AM
Comment: 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?
Posted By: Lee Holmes @ 05/08/2008 3:39:38 PM
Comment: 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.