terrorism

How to Define Success in the War on Terror

“What is success?”

So asked a senior federal law-enforcement official at a recent meeting I attended in Washington, D.C. The context was the war on terrorism.

This was not a rhetorical question. The official was mulling over how to measure success in the counter-terror war. He seemed uncertain and appeared to be seeking an answer for himself.

What he did know, however, was that whatever success may be in such a war, domestic law enforcement — by itself, in any case — was not enough.

One significant difficulty is that the culture of law enforcement does not lend itself neatly to dealing with strategic-intelligence issues. Long having been rewarded for “cracking” individual cases and presenting glossy press conferences, law enforcement has been confounded by a murky environment in which to “catch them in the act” is not only extraordinarily difficult, but can also represent a fatally late failure.

To deter terrorists from launching attacks is better than catching them in the act, but as the official asked, “How do we know whether what we do has a deterrence effect?” In other words, how do we know if our homeland-security measures actually deterred attacks — for there have been none since 9/11 — or have the terrorists merely been waiting and preparing for the “right moment” to strike again?

In the absence of hard, measurable data, the official considered the effects of our protective efforts to be marginal at best — psychologically reassuring to the public at large, perhaps, but not particularly central to the core issue of combating terrorists.

So preemption has been offered as the more-effective solution. Since passive, defensive measures alone cannot possibly protect against every single terrorist attack, taking the fight to the terrorists before they can carry out their plans has become more attractive and acceptable.

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We Can Fight Terrorism by Fostering Free Debate

Israelis understand terrorism well. Long before 9/11 and Beslan, Israelis experienced unrelenting terrorist attacks for decades, including hijackings, suicide bombings and attacks on children. Nothing that we experience today is new to them. They live in a world of guards outside every restaurant, market and bus stop, guards who check bags for explosives. During my trip to Israel to attend Read More ›

Dot Disconnect

In this issue of Bandwidth, Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter examines the proposals from the 9/11 Commission’s report, and provides strong arguments against typical privacy and civil liberties advocates’ concerns.

Troop Realignment Vital to U.S. Security

Original Article This week President Bush announced a global realignment of U.S. military forces to take place over the next several years. The proposed realignment will decrease U.S. presence in Germany and South Korea, bring some units home and shift others to bases in newly allied countries such as Poland, Romania and Uzbekistan. This global realignment is not only overdue, Read More ›

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Portraits / images / the eyes of famous leader on banknotes, currencies of the most dominant countries in the world i.e. Japanese yen, US dollar, Chinese yuan, Australian dollar. Financial concept.

Follow the Money

If you want to catch a criminal or terrorist, does it make sense to “follow the money”? A “yes” answer makes sense if you can identify at least one of the individuals or institutions connected with the suspected wrongdoer. However, if you are trying to follow money flows in general or all money flows, it is not likely your work Read More ›

How safe do you want to be?

As a culture, we increasingly believe government should protect us from dying from anything, yet we are all going to die. At the moment, despite our apparent successful efforts against the Taliban, many Americans fear being killed by a terrorist far more than they fear many things that are much more likely to kill them. Fortunately, during the past 50 Read More ›

Rules of TV Punditry

“We’d like you for an on-air terrorism and defense commentator.” “No.” “We’ll pay you.” “Yes.” And so, last September, I morphed from think tank policy pogue (a venerable military term denoting anyone who’s farther from the fighting than you are) into regional TV bobble head. KING5 in Seattle and their co-located sister station, NorthWest Cable News. Good folks. Good product. Read More ›