MCLAUGHLIN: New consensus on terrorism

By John McLaughlin | Sunday, October 12, 2008

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COMMENTARY:

One of the major tasks for our next president is repairing the frayed consensus on how to deal with terrorism.

In the years immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism was unchallenged as our premier national security issue, and there was minimal controversy about how to handle it. As the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, I heard broad agreement in the executive branch and on both sides of the aisle in Congress that could be summed up as: "Never again, whatever it takes."

Controversy about all aspects of terrorism has grown markedly in the last three years, however, and a new administration will have to wrestle with at least four sets of issues to maintain forward momentum.

First, all experts agree al Qaeda has established a sanctuary of sorts in Pakistan's tribal areas, but they differ sharply over what that means. Specialists such as Georgetown University's Bruce Hoffman and most government experts argue that al Qaeda's capacity for catastrophic attacks remains intact - a view this author shares.

Other well-credentialed experts, such as sociologist Marc Sageman, say their research shows al Qaeda has evolved into a leaderless group of radicals no longer capable of atrocities on the scale of Sept. 11. Still others such as Lawrence Wright, author of a landmark book on the Sept. 11 terrorists, point to growing criticism of Osama bin Laden by influential Muslim clerics and al Qaeda's declining opinion poll support in places such as Pakistan.

In short, there is now a genuine argument under way about just how great and immediate are the dangers terrorists pose. Adding to this blurred picture is the public's fading memory of Sept. 11; the latest CNN poll shows fewer Americans expecting another terrorist attack - about 35 percent - than at any time since Sept. 11, when the figure was around 60 percent.

Second, controversies over issues such as interrogation and electronic monitoring have eroded the consensus about the proper mix of tools to use in combating terrorism. Some of the bitterest disagreements about electronic monitoring are merely papered over in the bill that Congress passed under extraordinary political pressure this summer after more than two years of partisan wrangling.

Meanwhile, the so-called "torture debate" has yet to produce consensus on some of the more contentious underlying questions: What is the most effective way to gain detainee information in a timely, legal and morally acceptable way? Does failure to do so carry moral and political culpability if fellow citizens die as a result?

A third urgent and unresolved issue is how to attack terrorists who find safe haven inside a state with which we are not at war - roughly the question we faced before Sept. 11, now raised anew by al Qaeda's sanctuary in Pakistan's barely-governed borderlands.

The question had less relevance in the first few years after Sept. 11, because key al Qaeda figures scattered mostly to urban areas where U.S. intelligence had a presence or relatively unimpeded access. But with al Qaeda operatives now holed up in Pakistan's remotest provinces, the dilemma we face could be summed up this way: What we feel pressed to do tactically - go in unilaterally and root them out - runs counter to what we must do strategically. We need to build a consensus with Pakistan that this problem threatens us jointly and therefore requires vigorous coordinated action.

Failure to reach such a consensus could set the stage for a major calamity if some of the experts are right: a devastating attack on the United States that would force us into dramatic unilateral actions certain to send shockwaves across South Asia and the Middle East.

Fourth, the terrorist threat must now compete with a mosaic of international problems far more demanding than what the United States faced at the time of Sept. 11, 2001. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, it was relatively easy for the United States to establish national security priorities, but it will be wrenchingly harder in today's world. In 2001, we had not yet seen an Iraq war, a North Korean nuclear test, a resurrected Taliban, an Arab-Israeli meltdown, a rapidly maturing Iranian nuclear program, the cratering of the international economy, or a resurgent Russia.

The threat that terrorism poses to American lives will keep it high on the list, but it will now have to vie for time, attention, resources and policymaker energy with this growing array of challenges, some of which arguably could pose even greater long-term threats to U.S. interests.

The dangers and complexities surrounding the terrorism issue make it the ideal candidate for the bipartisan consensus approach that both presidential contenders espouse. Without such an approach, we risk a perilous drift that could end once again in tragedy.

John McLaughlin is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and served as deputy director and acting director of Central Intelligence from 2000-2004.

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