Establishment strikes back

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The terrorist attacks of September 11 -- self-evidently -- signaled the worst intelligence failure in American history. Less well understood: They also signaled the worst policy failure.

For more than two decades, extremist ideologies within the troubled Islamic world gathered strength. On campuses and in Washington think tanks, most "experts" either misunderstood radical Islamism or underestimated the terrorist threat it posed. "Experts" in the Foreign Service prescribed only weak broths as remedies.

Such failures should be prompting re-examinations within the foreign-policy community. Evidence that is not happening is the formation of a group calling itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change.

The name is misleading: First, only a few of the 26 signatories have military backgrounds and most of those long ago joined the civilian foreign-policy establishment. (For instance, Stansfield Turner, though a retired admiral, is best remembered as President Carter's CIA director.)

Second, these folks are not exactly in favor of policy change. They were among the architects of the policies that led to September 11. They seem furious that President Bush decided, following September 11, to change U.S. policy. They are outraged that Mr. Bush's new policies have "strained" relations with such "traditional allies" as France and Belgium.

Let me be clear: Members of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change are patriots who worked hard, assumed risks and meant well. But until and unless they acknowledge their past errors of judgment -- errors that enabled terrorism to grow and prosper -- one has to conclude that they are in denial.

For example, there are currently 18,000 trained al Qaeda terrorists around the world, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Most of them learned their craft in Afghanistan in the 1990s. (Others probably trained in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.) President Clinton's policy advisers developed no strategy to infiltrate or shut these training camps; no plan to track the terrorists after they graduated. On the contrary, during the 1990s, intelligence budgets were repeatedly cut, and special forces -- Delta, Rangers, SEALs, Marine Recon, CIA paramilitaries -- were not expanded.

What were the "experts" thinking? Did they reason that the newly trained terrorists might attack Russians in Chechnya, Hindus in Kashmir or Jews in Israel -- but surely not Americans at home and abroad? Or think back to 1979, when U.S. diplomats in Tehran were seized by militant Islamists and held for 444 days. Mr. Carter launched an abortive rescue mission. Such failures might have prompted Mr. Carter to dramatically strengthen U.S. military and covert capabilities.

But Mr. Carter -- advised by Stansfield Turner as his intelligence chief -- had significantly weakened those disciplines. He had fired 25 percent of U.S. intelligence operatives, including skilled covert operators. "I believe that emboldened terrorist groups," said one of those whom Mr. Carter dismissed. "You may remember that the government outlawed assassinations. So, the government did not need a group of espionage agents that were trained to operate in the field, in 'denied' areas, in official and non-official cover positions, to engage in active espionage warfare with communists, terrorists and left-wing governments."

Democrats were not alone in misjudging the dangers of radical Islam. In 1982, Hezbollah suicide-terrorists killed more than 250 Americans in Beirut. President Reagan's response was to pull out of Lebanon.