October 27, 2003, 8:26 a.m. Memo to Rumsfeld You are winning; now stay on the offensive. By Andrew Apostolou In his now very public private memorandum, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his closest associates: "Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?" Perhaps the best way to answer that question is from al Qaeda's perspective. On September 10, 2001, al Qaeda had operatives all over the world. Their largest ever attack was about to happen and had been planned in Afghanistan and Germany, in Malaysia and the U.S. Al Qaeda's network, fed with Gulf money, was run from a seemingly impregnable base in Afghanistan, a base which although theoretically isolated could be easily accessed from neighboring Pakistan. The regime in charge of Afghanistan, the Taliban, was in al Qaeda's pocket. The regime in charge in Pakistan was not unsympathetic. Today, some of al Qaeda's top operatives are in prison or dead, others are on the run and finding it hard to control, influence, or even contact their colleagues. Their Taliban allies are now an insurgent force, hiding with bin Laden in Pakistan or along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It would be better if Osama bin Laden were now dead or in U.S. custody. The fact that he is in Waziristan or Baluchistan is, however, preferable to him holding court in Kandahar. Some al Qaeda operatives have regrouped and they are daily planning more attacks, but their operations since September 11 have, of necessity, been on a smaller scale and against targets not on American soil. At the same time, they have to devote ever more of their time and resources to defending themselves and staying one step ahead of the police, whether in the U.S. or Belgium, Pakistan or Italy. Importantly, it appears that bin Laden remains a poor strategist. The al Qaeda attacks in Riyadh in May were a political blunder. They forced the Saudi government to start taking its head out of the sand and start tackling the terrorism that lurks within its own borders. These efforts are still not enough and for more than 3,000 Americans they are too late. Al Qaeda now has a new front: Iraq. That al Qaeda is willing to fight the U.S. in Iraq could prove to be another bin Laden mistake, on condition that the U.S. does not cut and run. The whole point of terrorism is to avoid engaging conventional forces, which for terrorists is too risky and often costly. With that in mind, bin Laden should be conserving his reduced resources for attacks on soft diplomatic and civilian targets in Europe and the U.S. Instead, he is wasting them in targeting U.S. troops. Allow me to address a few of Mr. Rumsfeld's other questions directly: Mr. Secretary, I'm sure you realize that flushing al Qaeda and the Taliban out of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area will take years. This needs to be explained to the public and to the media, which will attempt to encourage public impatience. Strategically, the problem is simpler: American forces must deny al Qaeda an inviolate rear area in which they can rest and recuperate. Britain did that successfully to insurgents in Malaya and Borneo, in the latter case by covertly infiltrating Indonesia. It took years, much patience, and the use of small covert units that make for bad television. Sooner or later either the U.S. or Pakistan needs to exert control over the Pakistani border provinces. You are right to be concerned and to push the Pentagon for maximum creativity and effort, but you are winning this war. To keep winning you need to stay on the offensive and keep the terrorists on the run. Of course you must tighten up security, but too much focus on American vulnerabilities can be counter productive. Every American is a target — that means 292 million targets. You don't want to end up building a new Maginot Line. You would do well to learn from the experience of how other democracies cope with terrorism, whether in Britain or in Israel. What is as important is a real understanding of your enemies, their mentality, how they recruit, plan and operate — above all, a grasp of their intentions and capabilities. At the moment you do not have that because, frankly, your intelligence is so poor. You need to keep sharing intelligence with others, but as you know, you must also start making changes in how your agencies function and make them work together. Human intelligence is what, in particular, has been missing for years. There are plenty of powerful constituencies for buying new satellites. There have been virtually no constituencies for paying off slimy characters who are willing to infiltrate and inform on terrorist cells. You need to become that constituency. We should understand that creating terrorists is not just about incitement. If it were, then all we would need is nice imams who discourage hatred. That has been tried and it has failed. Any country where there is a strictly controlled official Islam that does as the state wishes tends to spawn an underground, parallel Islam. The trick that al Qaeda and its allies use is to hijack that disenfranchised fringe and radicalize it. They have done the same in Kashmir and Chechnya, taking over movements struggling for political rights and turning them into theaters of terrorism. They would have done the same in Bosnia had the U.S. not intervened. Ansar al-Islam has been designed by al Qaeda to provide the same vehicle in Iraq. You need to think ahead and ask where al Qaeda can play this trick next. Finally, it is a victory that there has not been a single successful terrorists attack on American soil since 9/11. The terrorists have not paused as a gesture of good will. To be sure, it's frustrating to score victories in terms of what has not happened. But the truth is you are winning so long as you stay one step ahead of the terrorists, not one atrocity behind them.
When posting article from National review Online please cite to it. I know it is somewhat embarassing to only have one source for this stuff, but still. link
So you're not willing to consider the opposite side's view, glynch? It's amazing how close-minded many people are.
I will say this: I always sincerely want to agree with pieces like this. Man oh man, do I hope we are winning in a convincing fashion. I hope attacks like yesterday's are reaching their peak, soon to wane.
That's a pretty impressive resumé. I know one of the Economist's directors and judging from that one guy I know, they have extremely smart people working there. I highly recommend reading the Economist to anyone. Plus, the mere fact alone that he studied both in Oxford AND Cambridge speaks against the man being one-sided .
So you're not willing to consider the opposite side's view, glynch? It's amazing how close-minded many people are. It's amazing that you continue to illegally rip off NRO material. At some point, if you think of it so highly, you might want to consider properly crediting the source. This is one bizarre piece, by the way. On one hand, it tells Rumsfeld we're winning, then talks about the exact things Rumsfeld was questioning: <I>What is as important is a real understanding of your enemies, their mentality, how they recruit, plan and operate — above all, a grasp of their intentions and capabilities. At the moment you do not have that because, frankly, your intelligence is so poor. You need to keep sharing intelligence with others, but as you know, you must also start making changes in how your agencies function and make them work together.</I> I also love this: <I>Finally, it is a victory that there has not been a single successful terrorists attack on American soil since 9/11.</I> 9/11 took several years of planning. If they are planning something again on that scale, and - as he claims above, we don't have good intelligence on them - what does that really tell us? We do know that bombings and Al Queda actions worldwide have increased. Does the fact that an attack on US soil hasn't happened since mean anything? After all, there hadn't been an AQ attack on US soil for 9 years before 9/11 either. Yeah, we're winning in terms of the fact that they've lost Afghanistan as a base - I don't think Rumsfeld was questioning that. The question is in the present-tense. Are we better off against AQ today than a month ago? Two months ago? Are we still making progress, and is it as much as we had hoped? That's still an open debate, and this article doesn't go into any of that. Due to the classified nature of that info, we don't have nearly enough data to make any kind of argument about it. Only Rumsfeld does...
is the U.S., and the world, a safer, better place w/out saddam? This isn't the issue Rumseld was dealing with. It's like writing an article that says "The sky is blue". What's the point of an article that responds to the Rumsfeld memo but ignores all the issues raised in it, and instead talks about successes from over a year ago? BTW, the article doesn't even really discuss the issue of Saddam, so I'm not sure why you brought that up. If anything, all it talks about that is AQ may have a new playground there - that's all.
Hell, we BETTER be "winning." We've lost hundreds of American soldiers, spent hundreds of billions of dollars, killed thousands of innocent Iraqis, and destablized the world to the point where pre-emptive war is a valid excuse to attack anyone you want. But at least we're safer now. Right?
seriously??? regardless of whether you think the war was fought for the right reasons, or indeed whether it should have been fought at all, i can't believe you seriously are suggesting that the world was a better place with saddam in charge of iraq.
seriously??? regardless of whether you think the war was fought for the right reasons, or indeed whether it should have been fought at all, i can't believe you seriously are suggesting that the world was a better place with saddam in charge of iraq. Well, if you believe that we're not going to be able to install democracy there, and instead Iraq is going to become a mess (ie, terrorist playground), I could see where you'd think the world is not better off. If you think there were WMDs there and believe the line that they were smuggled out of the country to Syria and Iran before the war, I would think you'd agree that the world was not safer now. You could make the case that with Saddam, you knew what you were going to get. Now, you have no idea. If there are WMDs hidden all over Iraq, as some claim, and there are now terrorists running free all over Iraq - as we know there are - what if they find the weapons before we do?
I shudder to think I quote GWB in rebuttal but, to the people who were in Saddam's torture cells and rape rooms (sic), their world is a whole lot better off now. You all would have had the Continental Army, suffering at Concord and dying at Bunker Hill, say well life under King George was better than this, maybe we should just give up and go home. Liberal or Conservative? I don't know , wasn't it Martin Luther King who said as long as one man is not free, no man is free? Did he mean as long as he lives within the boundaries of the United States?
As has been pointed out, the devil you know is often better than the one you don't. And having gone about it the way we did has certainly destabilized the international community, lowered US prestige around the globe, decimated our intelligence functions, and cost us billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. (Remember, your original question was US and world.) I'm under no illusions that Saddam was a plus for the world, the US, or Iraq. But neither am I under the illusion that becasue Saddam was bad everything that leads to his deposing is good. It seems to me people who ask this question want to argue the answer like it's January, 2003 instead of factoring in what has happened through today.
major/vegan, i'm stupefied, i would've thought that it was possible to argue that bush was/is a liar, the war was fought on false pretenses, etc., etc., but that noone but the most diehard saddam apologists could actually say that the US/World/Iraq is worse off now than last spring. simply astounding...
I don't know , wasn't it Martin Luther King who said as long as one man is not free, no man is free? Did he mean as long as he lives within the boundaries of the United States? By this standard, though, we've failed, because there are plenty of people around the world who are not free. Why do people keep bringing up freedom for Iraqi's when discussing the war on terrorism and how successful or not successful it is? Yes, it's great that Iraqi's are free. I don't think anyone would argue that point, but it's totally irrelevent to the discussion at hand.
I agree with all you say Gene, but the original question was not about Iraq, it was the US and the world. A good case can be made that things are worse, given the way we went about getting rid of Saddam. There was always a moral case to be made, but there are also a bunch of other countries where that case is as or more compelling. Taking a hard look at this, I don't believe it was in this nation's best interests to go into Iraq.
