Against All Enemies (44 page)

I
RAN, THE FOURTH OF THE PRIORITY COUNTRIES,
is as important as the others in the war on terrorism. When the Bush administration talked about Iraq as a nation that supported terrorism, including al Qaeda, and was developing weapons of mass destruction, those comments perfectly suited Iran, not Iraq. It was Tehran that had funded and directed Hezbollah since its inception. It was Hezbollah that had killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon (the Marine barracks) and Saudi Arabia (Khobar Towers). Hezbollah, with Iranian support, has also killed hundreds of Israelis. While the “ties” and “links” between Saddam and al Qaeda were minimal, al Qaeda regularly used Iranian territory for transit and sanctuary prior to September 11. Al Qaeda's Egyptian branch, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, operated openly in Tehran. It is no coincidence that many of the al Qaeda management team, or Shura Council, moved across the border into Iran after U.S. forces finally invaded Afghanistan.

While Iraq's weapons of mass destruction proved elusive to U.N. inspectors (and later to U.S. troops), the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency found evidence that Iran was secretly engaged in a nuclear weapons program. Iran was much more actively engaged with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction than Iraq. Any objective observer looking at the evidence in 2002 and 2003 would have said that the U.S. should spend more time and attention dealing with the security threats from Tehran than those from Baghdad. That is not meant as an argument for invading Iran. Having once looked at that option in detail in 1996, I have no desire to revisit it. It is, however, an argument for paying attention to real threats. Many of these threats, like Iran, require thoughtful, imaginative, and careful responses. There are strong, active democratic forces in Iran. Without destroying their credibility by making them agents of the CIA, the United States, working with other nations, should be able to strengthen these democratic forces in Iran to the point where they can take control of the national security apparatus from the ideologues. It will not be an easy task and it will require the persistent devotion of high-level U.S. attention, not unlike what is being devoted to Iraq.

I
F WE DO NOT SHIFT ATTENTION
back to where it should have been after September 11, we face the prospect of the following scenario by 2007: a Taliban-like government in Pakistan armed with nuclear weapons, supporting a similar satellite nation next door in Afghanistan and promoting al Qaeda–like ideology and terror throughout the world; in the Gulf, a nuclear-armed Iran, promoting its own version of Hezbollah-styled ideology, and Saudi Arabia after the fall of the House of Saud, creating its own version of a fourteenth-century theocratic republic. Under those circumstances, even if we had created a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq, America and the world would still be vastly less secure. Moreover, it appeared early in 2004 that Iraq would be shaped more by the thoughts of Shi'a leader Ayatollah Sistani than by Jefferson.

September 11 brought both tragedy all too painful and an opportunity unexpected. You could see it on the streets of Tehran, as tens of thousands rallied spontaneously to show their solidarity with America. You could see it on the streets of America, where flags sprouted from almost every house. There was an opportunity to unite people around the world around a set of shared values: religious tolerance, diversity, freedom, and security. With globalism rushing upon us, such a restatement of basic beliefs, akin to the U.N. Declarations after World War II, was much needed. It did not happen. We squandered the opportunity.

Many around the world also feared that the world's only remaining superpower would lash out, destabilizing nations and regions. America, after all, spends more money on its weapons and military than the next seven nations combined. Would a system that tolerated such spending act like a muscle-bound cowboy or, as the French feared, a hyper-power? Many in the Muslim world feared that America would, despite its promises, strike out against Islamic regimes and make Professor Sam Huntington's Clash of Cultures theory a self-fulfilling prophecy. They feared that America would give only lip service to the Palestinian problem that was a litmus test for so many Muslims. Many in America sought ways of demonstrating patriotism. We knew there would be heightened security measures and greater expenditures, but we put aside our fears of Big Brother and were prepared to unite as one people in the face of irrational hatred and unspeakable violence. Our leadership fell into the trap, fulfilling all of the worst fears of many around the world and here at home. Rather than seek to cultivate a unified global consensus to destroy the ideological roots of terrorism, we did in fact lash out in a largely unilateral and entirely irrelevant military adventure against a Muslim nation. Just as many nations thought we would, America pointedly snubbed the counsel of Arab friends and NATO allies, and sought security through the use of military muscle. It has left us less secure.

After September 11, Americans were asked to shop, not to sacrifice. Far from being asked to pay additional taxes to fund the war on terrorism, Americans were told that they would pay fewer taxes and we would pay for the war and additional security by passing on the costs to our grandchildren. The consensus against terrorism was shattered by such overreaching as the arrest of American citizens in the United States and their designation as “enemies” to be denied lawyers and due process. The Attorney General, rather than bringing us together, managed to persuade much of the country that the needed reforms of the Patriot Act were actually the beginning of fascism. Rather than seriously and systematically addressing the real security vulnerabilities in this country, the Administration succumbed to political pressure to reorganize agencies amid the “war on terrorism” and created an unwieldy bureaucracy. Unwilling to fund security upgrades at necessary levels, the Administration funded pork barrel procurement of high-tech weapons for small towns while police and fire personnel were laid off in high-threat cities.

September 11 erased memories of the unique process whereby George Bush had been selected as President a few months earlier. Now, as he stood with an arm around a New York fireman promising to get those who had destroyed the World Trade Center, he was every American's President. His polls soared. He had a unique opportunity to unite America, to bring the United States together with allies around the world to fight terrorism and hate, to eliminate al Qaeda, to eliminate our vulnerabilities, to strengthen important nations threatened by radicalism. He did none of those things. He invaded Iraq.

There were no longer any excuses after September 11 for failing to eliminate the threat posed by al Qaeda and its clones, for failing to reduce America's vulnerabilities to attack. Instead of addressing that threat with all the necessary attention it required, we went off on a tangent, off after Iraq, off on a path that weakened us and strengthened the next generation of al Qaedas. For even as we have been attriting the core al Qaeda organization, it has metastasized. It was like a Hydra, growing new heads. There have been far more major terrorist attacks by al Qaeda and its regional clones in the thirty months since September 11 than there were in the thirty months prior to that momentous event. I wonder if bin Laden and his deputies actually planned for September 11 to be like smashing a pod of seeds that spread around the world, allowing them to step back out of the picture and have the regional organizations they created take their generation-long struggle to the next level.

President Bush asked us soon after September 11 for cards or charts of the “senior al Qaeda managers,” as though dealing with them would be like a Harvard Business School exercise in a hostile takeover. He announced his intentions to measure progress in the war on terrorism by crossing through the pictures of those caught or killed. I have a disturbing image of him sitting by a warm White House fireplace drawing a dozen red Xs on the faces of the former al Qaeda corporate board, and soon perhaps on Usama bin Laden, while the new clones of al Qaeda are working the back alleys and dark warrens of Baghdad, Cairo, Jakarta, Karachi, Detroit, and Newark, using the scenes from Iraq to stoke the hatred of America even further, recruiting thousands whose names we will never know, whose faces will never be on President Bush's little charts, not until it is again too late.

The nation needed thoughtful leadership to deal with the underlying problems September 11 reflected: a radical deviant Islamist ideology on the rise, real security vulnerabilities in the highly integrated global civilization. Instead, America got unthinking reactions, hamhanded responses, and a rejection of analysis in favor of received wisdom. It has left us less secure. We will pay the price for a long time.

T
HIS BOOK IS,
as I said in the Preface, my story, from my memory. It has helped me to tell it. I needed to tell you that we tried, tried hard to stop the big al Qaeda attack, that the professionals who sat at the Counterterrorism Security Group table cared, and would have given our own lives if that could have stopped the attacks. I had to admit that, strident as I was about the al Qaeda threat, I did not resign in protest when my recommendations to bomb the al Qaeda infrastructure were deferred by the Clinton administration or my appeals for “urgent” action were ignored by the Bush administration. Perhaps I should have. I needed to tell you why I think we failed and why I think America is still failing to deal with the threat posed by terrorists distorting Islam.

That threat is not something that we can defeat with arrests and detentions alone. We must work with our Islamic friends to create an active alternative to the popular terrorist perversion of Islam. It is not something that we can do in a year or even a decade. We cannot be lulled into thinking we are succeeding because we have dealt with “the majority of the known al Qaeda leaders,” or because there has been no major attack for some time. Their recruitment goes on, aided by our invasion and occupation of Iraq. Time is slipping by in which the new, follow-on al Qaedas are gaining in strength in scores of countries. Time is passing, but yet our vulnerabilities to attacks at home remain.

Terrorism, which never once was addressed by the presidential candidates in 2000, will be a major topic in the 2004 campaign. Already, as I write before the candidates have been nominated, President Bush is telling fund-raisers, illogically, that he deserves money for his reelection because he is “fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to fight them in the streets of America.” He never points out that our being in Iraq does nothing to prevent terrorists from coming to America, but does divert funds from addressing our domestic vulnerabilities and does make terrorist recruitment easier. Nonetheless, the Las Vegas oddsmakers and Washington pundits think that Bush will easily be reelected. One shudders to think what additional errors he will make in the next four years to strengthen the al Qaeda follow-ons: attacking Syria or Iran, undermining the Saudi regime without a plan for a successor state?

A week before September 11, I wrote that the decision the Administration had to make was whether al Qaeda and its network was just a nuisance to the great superpower or whether it represented an existential threat; if it was the latter, then we had to act like it was. Despite September 11 and the many al Qaeda network attacks around the world since then, most Americans and most in the American government still think that the great superpower cannot be defeated by a gang of religious zealots who want a global theocracy, a fourteenth-century Caliphate.

Never underestimate the enemy. Our current enemy is in it for the long haul. They are smart and they are patient. Defeating them will take creativity and imagination, as well as energy. It will be the struggle of the friends of freedom and civil liberties around the world.

What happened to that team that tried to get the Bush White House to pay attention to al Qaeda before September 11 and then stayed in the Situation Room on that day holding things together, even though they thought the White House was about to be hit by a hijacked aircraft? Where are Lisa Gordon-Hagerty and Roger Cressey and Paul Kurtz? They all left the Administration, frustrated. They were never formally thanked by the President, never recognized for what they did before or on September 11. Lisa is working on the safety of nuclear materials in the United States. Paul is busy promoting cyber security. Roger and I are consulting with private sector companies concerned with security and with information assurance; we appear regularly on television, still trying to warn about al Qaeda.

And the others? Mike Sheehan gave up a cushy job to go to work for the NYPD as Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism, to try personally to protect the city he loves. You may see him on Wall Street, or on the Brooklyn Bridge, or at the Lincoln Tunnel checking the defenses. Randy Beers became the national security coordinator for the John Kerry campaign.

Cressey, Beers, and I are also teaching graduate students, hoping that we can help the next generation of national security managers to understand the dangers of simplistic and unilateral approaches to counterterrorism. Some in our classes may have to make tough decisions for our country in the fight against terrorism someday, because it is going to be a generation-long struggle.

As Americans, it is up to all of us to be well informed and thoughtful, to help our country make the right decisions in this time of testing. We all need to recommit ourselves to that ancient pledge “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, Against All Enemies…”