Reducing Terror to the level of a Nuisance, rather than a War...

Quote of the Day: General Brent Scowcroft, Bush 41 National Security Advisor and Bush 43 appointee to the Forum for International Security--

"Can we win the war on terrorism? Yes, I think we can, in the sense that we can win the war on organized crime. There is going to be no peace treaty on the battleship Missouri in the war on terrorism, but we can break its back so that it is only a horrible nuisance and not a paralyzing influence on our societies.
--"9/11 a Year On" conference, Sept. 2002"
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...indications of cooperation came from around the world. This spirit helped us to get through phase one of the war on terrorism, which I think was a great military success. It is probably the only military phase in this war on terrorism—which is part of the problem that we face. Because we've also been engaging in military transformation, and the Afghan war showed the awesomeness of that transformation. But it is unlikely to be applicable to subsequent phases because they are unlikely to be military in the sense Afghanistan was. There are not going to be many more volunteers to be the next Taliban. The war is going to be primarily a war of intelligence and we're not nearly as high tech in the area of human intelligence as we are in our military.

This is a war, now in the intelligence phase, which we cannot win by ourselves. We cannot do it. We have to have the cooperation of friends and allies, in capital flows, in terrorist flows. We need the help of every service because our enemy is shadowy, elusive, not playing by any of the rules that we know how to utilize so well.

The nature of our intelligence task in this part of the war is conceptually simple but high tech in a new way. Whenever terrorists talk, whenever they move, whenever they spend money, whenever they get money they leave traces, and theoretically we ought to be able to pick up those traces.

There are several problems. How do you pick them up? Then how do you separate those from the millions of other traces from people going about their daily lives? And how do you do all of that while respecting the privacy of the other millions? That is a problem, partly of technology, and we need to focus on it very deeply.

I'm not going to talk about homeland security, but it is interesting that for the first time in 200 years we now are setting up a Department of Homeland Security. We've never had one before. Why? Because early on we were protected by two great oceans, and lately by our power projection capabilities and we have assumed we could keep conflict away from the United States.

Several problems are beginning to arise in the war on terrorism. Cooperation is waning. The Europeans charge that in essence we stiffed them in Afghanistan, did not accept or utilize the forces they offered until much of the conflict had been completed. We said thanks, we could do it by ourselves. Likewise with other issues, whether it's the conflict in the Middle East, a second Intafada; whether it is Iraq. These frictions are interfering with the concentration on the war on al Qaeda.

Phase one is virtually over, although mopping up in Afghanistan will take a long time and nationbuilding, an essential part of it, will take even longer. The Administration has not explained the strategy for phase two the way it did for the Afghan phase. Last week there was a cartoon in the Financial Times which showed a billboard saying "America's Most Wanted". On the billboard was Osama bin Laden, which a workman was pasting over with a picture of Saddam Hussein.

The Administration is no longer talking about terrorism with a global reach. That's important in several respects. There are all kinds of terrorists. They're all repugnant and we need to deal with them all. But we cannot deal with them all at once. By dropping the phrase that the President began with, terrorism with a global reach, we make all terrorism equal, and dissipate our ability to concentrate. It makes the problem, if we take it seriously, almost unmanageable.

Finally, except on the East Coast, 9/11 is fading as a galvanizing concept.

Can we win the war on terrorism? Yes, I think we can, in the sense that we can win the war on organized crime. There is going to be no peace treaty on the battleship Missouri in the war on terrorism, but we can break its back so that it is only a horrible nuisance and not a paralyzing influence on our societies.

But to win it, will require close cooperation in a worldwide campaign and it will require perseverance, patience, and focus. In the mean time, of course, the world goes on. All of the other problems which preceded 9/11 have not gone away, threatening to divert our attention to what is clearly the predominant problem we face. We must learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.
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Note: Too bad Bush 43 didn't pay attention to his, and his Dad's advisers!