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The Death of al Qaeda’s #2: Time to Wind Down the War on Terror

6-6-2012

By Daphne Eviatar
Law and Security

Crossposted from Huffington Post

The death of al Qaeda’s second-in-command is being hailed as a major victory for the U.S. war against terrorism. Indeed, it confirms that the al Qaeda that attacked the United States more than a decade ago has been largely destroyed. As Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst and author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, From 9/11 to Abbottabad, puts it: “The terrorist group that launched the 9/11 attacks is now more or less out of business.”

That makes this the time to start publicly acknowledging we’ve won the war the United States declared in 2001 against those who “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, and those who harbored them. It’s time to embark on a more rational counterterrorism policy.

As Michael Tomasky writes in the Daily Beast, at this point, “the ‘war on terror’ is just this — careful intelligence work and surgical strikes. It doesn’t need a war.”

Of course, no one would say terrorism is dead, or even that drones have taken out all insurgents who might want to attack the United States. But as General David Petraeus, then Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, observed in 2010, that will never happen. “We cannot kill or capture our way to victory,” he said. General Stanley McChrystal, the architect of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, called it “insurgent math” — for every terrorist killed in the war, we create ten new ones.

Now, a former CIA counterterrorism director is saying much the same thing. In May, former CIA station chief Robert Grenier told the Guardian that the drone program “needs to be targeted much more finely. We have been seduced by them and the unintended consequences of our actions are going to outweigh the intended consequences.”

He added: “We have gone a long way down the road of creating a situation where we are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield. We are already there with regards to Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

Grenier is particularly concerned about Yemen, where aggressive U.S. drone activity could be creating a terrorist safe haven. Striking such a broad swath of Yemeni militants, who reportedly include not just actual fighters but young, military-age men found in their vicinity, could easily backfire, he warned:

Young men, who are typically armed, are in the same area and may hold these militants in a certain form of high regard. If you strike them indiscriminately you are running the risk of creating a terrific amount of popular anger. They have tribes and clans and large families. Now all of a sudden you have a big problem … I am very concerned about the creation of a larger terrorist safe haven in Yemen.

In fact, it’s not even clear that the United States is legally engaged in an armed conflict in Yemen that would justify drone strikes there, given that strikes against U.S. interests by the Yemeni group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, have been so sporadic. As Bergen points out, AQAP has only three times attempted to strike the United States. Every time, those attempts have failed.

Three attempted strikes are sporadic acts of criminal terrorist activity; they do not constitute an armed conflict under the laws of war. U.S. drone attacks, on the other hand, could incite one.

The Obama administration continues to justify its use of drone strikes as a lawful part of a war with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces. But as former CIA chief Michael Hayden said in February, “Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel.”

That shaky legal rationale could be contagious, especially with drones in the hands of dictators who are not our friends — not to mention terrorists and other non-state armed groups.

In general, national security analysts are increasingly saying that the United States’ fear of terrorism is way overblown. As Bergen points out, lightning strikes are far more deadly to the average American — “about 30 times more deadly than jihadist terrorism.” You don’t hear anyone calling for a war on lightning.

 

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Posted in Blog | 4 Comments »

  • Charles Roster

    Ms. Eviatar seems to be living in the early Twentieth Century when wars had fronts, soldiers wore uniforms and unconditional surrender meant the end of war. Those times, of course, are gone. By its very nature, terrorism is unconventional bound by no space, people, nation or timetable. To say that Al Queda is gone is like saying that a virus has become extinct. Terrorism has a strange (or natural) way of mutating, shifting, adapting and returning. Al Queda may be less operative now than it was in 9-11 but, if it is, it is because US military force and intelligence has made it that way. The moment we turn our back, the knife comes out again. The surest way to avoid another 9-11, or something far worse, is to keep the terrorists of the world impuned. Be real.

  • Dr. Adriane Fischer

    Thomas Hayden may be right when he says that not a nation on the plant agrees with the US rationale for the war on terror, except perhaps Afghanistan and Israel. We might paraphrase thus: No nation on the planet has suffered as much at the hands of the taliban terrorists, except perhaps Afghanistan and the US. The US and Israel are the most attractive targets of jihadists. This naturally gives them more in common. The sly implication that Israel agrees with the US because we support a mutual agenda is insulting. I believe Miss Evitar writes with the worldview of an isolated third-world observer who has never been in the crosshairs of radical Muslim jihadist terrorists. I’m afraid the unfortunate truth is that terrorism is like weeds – always with us. If you want to be weed free, you’d best get accustomed to pulling weeds! When you stop, guess what happens? The weeds return.

  • Jackie McDougal-Paris

    The argument that we have “won” the war on terror and should, therefore, declare victory and stop attacking the terrorists is utter nonsense. The US just killed the number 2 terrorist in the world. What about numbers 3, 4, 5….? What’s the logic here? We are finally being successful against the militant jihidist terrorists who killed 2,300 Americans on 9-11 so it’s time to quit before we start enjoying too much success? Or, the last 15 attempts to attack the US were stopped before they could be carried out; therefore, the threat is gone? To what interest has it become repugnant to protect our people from terrorist attacks? I can see the idea of military action against terrorists being repugnant only to those who believe the United States is some evil imperialist monster waging war on poor helpless jihidists in violation of their human rights. But what “human right” is higher or purer than the right of a people to defend themselves against a murderous band of cuthroats who would fly airliners into civilian targets? Terrorists with “rights?” Really? Al Queda’s Number Two is no more, thank God. Let us turn all of our resources toward Number Three!

  • Hamiltan R. Dewey

    Human rights first? The right of national self-defense second? Or third? Or where?

    If a warped interpretation of “human rights” includes the right to plot and execute terrorist acts – then there is no place for any other rights – like defense, security or national integrity or survival.

    Whose “human rights” would you have first? Why can’t the “human rights” of Americans – including the right not to be killed by terrorists – be first?

    Whose rights do you want to be first?

    Which right would you have to take preeminence over life, freedom, self defense?

    By the very definition of “first,” nothing else can be of equal importance. Only one set of values can be “first.” Anything else is logically subordinated.