Here's a little punditry to start the week. This article appeared in yesterday's SF Chronicle (all the gossip that's fit to print). It presents an analysis of and solution to terrorism different from the administrations. All you hawks should be satisfied since it does have a military component.

Quote:

While our hearts go out to the victims of the terrorist bombings in London, our minds inevitably turn to one question: After nearly four years, why hasn't al Qaeda returned to attack America again?

There are two possible answers. One is that terror networks have been hit so hard by our military overseas and our defenses are so improved that they can't come back to prey upon our homeland. Another, more troubling possibility is that al Qaeda has deliberately chosen a strategy of striking elsewhere and that it will turn its sights on us when it is ready.

Both answers must be considered, but the first explanation falls apart quickly when we look at al Qaeda's actions in the past few years.

For example, in April 2003, the month after the United States invaded Iraq, al Qaeda mounted a major assault in Saudi Arabia. By August 2003, it had expanded its attacks into Iraq, where it still wages a vicious insurgency. Osama bin Laden's minions are still fighting in Afghanistan and have even gone after the Pakistani military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, coming close to assassinating him on a couple of occasions.

Beyond these major offensive moves, al Qaeda and its affiliates also have mounted substantial strikes in Spain, Tunisia, Turkey and Indonesia. Now they have attacked in Britain. And if official government statistics are to be relied upon, the number of significant terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, 2001, has skyrocketed to a total of 651 in 2004, according to the State Department. That's an all-time high, except for revised 2004 figures just put out by the National Counterterrorism Center, which puts the number at 3,192.

No, terror networks are not too crippled to continue to fight us and our allies. But perhaps they haven't come back to attack America because our defenses have become too good, sharply reducing their chances of success in any new terrorist venture.

This is not likely either. We do pay more attention now to patrolling our long, unfortified borders, and we have gotten better at protecting our vulnerable power and transportation infrastructures. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants still arrive every year.

Our local transit and long-range rail systems remain at risk. And, despite the advance warning provided by earlier terrorist attempts to shoot down planes using shoulder-mounted missiles in Mombasa and Baghdad, airliners remain vulnerable to this form of attack.

Thus, it seems that the answer to our nagging question must be that al Qaeda has made a strategic choice not to bring the war back to America -- yet.

What does the logic behind such a decision look like? At the broadest level, taking the war elsewhere, as al Qaeda has, follows the concept of the indirect approach championed by the great British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart. This method consists of trying to knock away the props upon which even the strongest combatant must rely.

For example, if al Qaeda succeeded in toppling the Saudi government and replacing it with radical Islamists, they would have their finger on the oil pumps feeding the global economic pulse. Similarly, if Pakistan fell to the terrorists and their supporters, they would inherit an arsenal of nuclear weapons, upsetting the whole strategic calculus of the war.

Then there is Iraq, which seems to afford nothing but room to maneuver for al Qaeda. If U.S. troops were ever to leave, as everybody including President Bush wants them to, al Qaeda would claim credit for having driven us out. That would be a public relations bonanza for bin Laden. But if we stay, al Qaeda has a handy, easy-to-reach location for fighting Americans and sapping our will to continue the terror war.

In its March 11, 2004, attacks in Madrid, al Qaeda drove a powerful wedge between the Spanish people, who opposed the war in Iraq, and their pro-U.S. government, which fell from power after those strikes.

Now, threats have been made against Italy and Denmark, two other coalition members whose publics have opposed the war on Iraq.

It remains to be seen how the British public will respond to these latest attacks, but it seems clear that the terrorist choice of London as a target is yet another aspect of the indirect approach. For if staunch British support for the U.S. intervention in Iraq were to falter, our whole policy there might come undone.

So it seems that the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which many of us opposed beforehand, have become both our Achilles' heel and the single most important reason al Qaeda has chosen not to resume its terror campaign in America. Iraq provides our principal enemy with a place to fight us directly and a reason to mount an indirect campaign against our allies.

Some might now say that this makes our presence in Iraq worthwhile. As the president has put it, "We fight the terrorists in Iraq so that we do not have to face them at home."

Perhaps. Yet for a small fraction of what our involvement in Iraq has cost us in blood and treasure, we could have shored up our homeland defenses and made it well-nigh impossible for the terrorists to attack America again.

The rerouting of an even tinier fraction of these vast resources in support of a proactive campaign by small teams of special forces hunter networks would keep the terrorists perpetually on the run, unable even to think about coming back here or about striking elsewhere.

But we're still in Iraq, and we'll be there for years to come. Oddly, this probably means few, if any, attacks will be attempted on American territory. It also means there will be more Madrids and Londons. This should remind us that, in a war fought for all that we call civilization, feeling more assured about our own safety is hardly a sign that victory is near.

John Arquilla is professor of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. His views do not represent official Defense Department policy.


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