How We Lost the War on Terror: Part III

How We Lost the War on Terror

Part III: The Right Men in the Wrong Place

"The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world."

-The G-Man, Half-Life 2

For those of you who are not Half-Life aficionados, the G-Man is speaking of Dr. Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist with an inexplicable knack for functioning as a one-man army and using whatever he can find to get out of the sticky situations he finds himself in.

For the purposes of examining the War on Terror, a lesson in Half-Life mythology is not necessary. For this article, should suffice to understand that the G-Man has a habit of inserting Freeman into "the wrong place" intentionally, letting Freeman wreak havoc on his foes.    

I bring all this up because I like the idea behind the G-Man's thinking, and I'd like to look at a some other cases of "the right men in the wrong place."

Case Study Number One: A young man named Ahmed Bouchiki is gunned down by assassins in Lillehammer, Norway as he walks home from a theatre. The Norwegian police capture five people in connection to the murder, all agents of Israel's secretive intelligence organization, Mossad. Bouchiki had been mistaken for a terrorist involved in the Munich massacre. 

Case Study Number Two: May 2, 2011. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives scoot across the Pakistani border in helicopters, crash one of them in Osama bin Laden's front yard, kick in the door and shoot bin Laden. They then scoot back across the border, mission accomplished without any friendly casualties.

Both operations are examples of covert operations, "black ops," as it were. Israel's Operation Wrath of God is a prime example of that country's longstanding policy of "terrorizing the terrorists," carrying out assassinations and sabotage far beyond their borders. Israel is not as militarily strong as the United States, and it does not have the luxury of invading nations because it believes terrorists have taken up residence there, which is why it relies heavily on intelligence and targeted killings.

But even the Mossad makes mistakes, as the Lillehammer Affair makes clear. The killing of bin Laden and the assassination of Bouchiki are almost polar opposites, in this regard: one a worst-case scenario, a mistake ending in compromise and embarrassment; the other a carefully-planned and well-executed raid that eliminated the world's most wanted terrorist. In both events, a government sent "the right men," spies and special forces, to "the wrong place," another state, to exact retribution for crimes committed against its citizens. 

This, in my opinion, is how we should carry out our counter-terrorism operations. Sure, I have some reservations, but before we delve into the downside of black-ops, let's look at some of the plusses.

1) Special Operations is just Cool

This is cool!

Let's just all admit it: special operations is really, really cool. This is possibly the worst reason for using these guys to do all our dirty work, but things like this matter to some people.

2) The Cost is Lower

It's not hard to make a case that running around whacking people with secret commando assassins and a secretive intelligence organization costs less money than, say, invading a couple of nations, killing a bunch of their people and blowing up their cities, then rebuilding the cities and bribing all of their leaders to get along with us. But that's not the only cost involved.

This is also cool. 

Looking back at the Lillehammer affair, we realize that the Mossad's massive blunder resulted in a single innocent death. Far be it from me to minimize this tragic loss of life, or present the Mossad as a squeaky-clean paradigm of niceness and butterflies. But, to put things in perspective, a similar "oops" moment carried out by conventional forces–say, drones–could very likely result in ten to twenty dead. Not only do drone strikes tend to cause a lot of collateral, but they are also comparatively easy to carry out (once you've invaded a country, or smooth-talked their leaders into thinking it's a great idea.) I suspect that the ease associated with drone strikes and our suspect methods means that we've had quite a lot of "my bad" moments in the War on Terror so far, even leaving out cases where genuine targets have been successfully killed along with a whole lot of "collateral damage." To put it shortly, we kill fewer people by putting boots on the ground. And I think that's a good thing.

Knives don't create collateral damage.
Usually.

3) Wise Investing

Our current tool of choice when dealing with terrorists is a drone. Drones are cheap, they can stay in the air for practically forever, and they never have to use the restroom or suffer conscience attacks. They are pretty effective as long as you are killing people whose best anti-air weapon is an AK-47 (and even then they are so predictable that said people will scrape together a must-read list of ways to deal with them.)

This is not cool. But it is cheap.

However, once you start fighting anyone with modern technology like refrigerators and 1960s era surface-to-air missiles or jet aircraft your drone is probably going to die like this one:

(The exception would seem to be Iran, but I suspect strafing one of our recon drones with a ground-attack aircraft was probably a spur-of-the-moment-Republican-Guard-macho sort of a thing.)

My point to all of this is that drones are of limited use outside of the narrow spectrum of terrorist killing.  That's not a call to scrap every last one of them by any means, but I suspect most of the drones we use now will be superfluous once (and if) the War on Terror winds down. Special Forces, on the other hand, are as useful in a conventional war as they are in asymmetrical combat. 

Besides their lack of flexibility, drones also bother me for another reason: they represent (in my mind) an increasing focus on technology-centered intelligence operations. From the NSA to the NRO, American intelligence is often derived from satellite pictures, intercepted communications, and, of course, drone surveillance videos. That's not to say that such technology is bad, but HUMINT should not be neglected. While traditional spycraft has its own shares of pitfalls, the more technical types of intelligence-gathering can be circumvented with amazing ease, especially by a technologically advanced enemy. (Or, to use Al-Qaeda's phrase, an enemy with $2500 and someone who is a "computer know-how.") 

In summary, I believe that running counter-terrorism operations using Special Forces and the like builds a robust capability that does not go away in a time of conventional war. Rather than planning around America's traditional "dissect-the-state-looking-for-baddies" model, I think that the US Military should be building and cultivating tactics and resources–including human ones–that are robust and versatile and can weather a conventional conflict with a well equipped and modern foe.

Some disadvantages:

I've laid out some reasons why I think that using Special Forces to, er, impede terrorist activities is a better idea than invading multiple nations in a clumsy and ham-handed attempt to catch a handful of perps, so I'd like to set aside some time for the downsides of targeted killings, midnight raids and the like.

Obviously, it is both expensive and it requires a capable intelligence network to selectively target terrorists in the way I am suggesting, but I dealt with those issues above. So let's start off with what I think is the biggest problem with the strategy I am suggesting.

1) It Takes Time

It's called extraordinary rendition, and the CIA is good at it.*

It seriously does take a lot of time. We ran around pacifying whole nations for a decade before we finally caught up to bin Laden. Now, I don't mind waiting ten years if that is what it takes to get the job done–and I would prefer to see the job done with as few casualties as possible–but some people care about these things. It's really pretty simple. People want justice (or revenge) after a terrorist attack, and they want it now! It looks weak to say "we're gonna pursue these terrorists to the ends of the earth, if necessary, and we will bring them to justice, if they don't die of old age first." It looks much better to say, "Oh look! Afghanistan! He's hiding in Afghanistan! Let's invade it!"

*Most of the time.

If you stop to think about it, of course, it's pretty stupid–we wouldn't invade any state that could stand up to us if we thought they harbored a terrorist–we would ask nicely, and if they said no, we would grumble about it and take him anyway, or grumble about it and decide it wasn't worth it. But, because Afghanistan and Iraq were kinda the equivalent of a large-scale live-fire exercise to invade, we had no problems doing so. This means two things. One, a lot of people die. Two, politicians look like they are doing something.

I, personally, dislike this method of capturing individuals by invading countries and would much rather we wait and take the time needed to do the job right. (Don't worry, your ratings will probably plummet that second term anyway.)

2) It Violates National Sovereignty

Nations take their territorial integrity pretty seriously, so flying in a couple of helicopters to shoot somebody you don't like is a great way to start a war, or at least get a couple of towel shipments canceled. Knocking somebody off by having a spy (or other non-military asset) do it is a little less odious (especially if you don't tell anyone it was you) but it's still a great way to lose that embassy and a bit of your pride if you get caught doing it. However, it is generally considered a lot less offensive than actually invading a sovereign nation. It is also less expensive and fewer people get shot. 

To be clear, I don't think we should make a general habit of kidnapping or killing people in other people's countries without their permission. But I think that doing it when it is absolutely necessary, and with the full understanding that they are well within their rights to take action against us when their sovereignty is violated, is a much better approach to combating terrorism than, well, invading random nations and forcing them to adopt democracies.

How covert operations would fit into a broader counter-terror strategy

If the United States is really serious about reducing the threat of terrorism to its country, attacking terrorists should be viewed as only part of a larger counter-terrorism strategy. It is often not difficult to discern the motives of terrorists, and, as I pointed out previously, simple things like not bombing innocent people can contribute to undermining terrorist recruitment. This can be taken a step further. For instance, one could ask the following questions:
Is the US military presence in said country [e.g. Saudi Arabia] a factor in terrorist violence against the United States? 
If the answer is "yes," then
Does the US military have a compelling national security interest or obligation to be in said country? Is the US military presence there making the US more or less secure?
If the answer is "no," and "less secure," then perhaps a move is in order. Similarly, US foreign aid shipments, treaty proposals, etc. can all be scrutinized.

Of course, this sounds very much like "caving to terrorists." But objectively, any government that deliberately puts its citizens in harm's way just to appear "tough" is not doing a good job of protecting them. To draw the analogy further, who supports inviting war with foreign nations merely to keep up appearances?

I do think, as well, that distinctions should be drawn between being soft on terrorism and undermining terrorist propaganda and recruiting techniques. Disarming all of our nuclear warheads in response to a terrorist threat is one thing, but conducting US foreign policy in such a way as to render the US less likely to create enemies is another. Certainly some people will aways be at odds with the United States, but to give their complaints the air of legitimacy is unwarranted and unwise.

Some final thoughts:

Before I wrap this post up, I'd like to throw in a few closing reminders.

1) The United States of America is the only nation on Earth that has the luxury of being able to invade other nations halfway across the globe. Every other nation has to deal with terrorists by doing arduous things like not letting them into their country or asking other nations to please send them back to be tried for their crimes, thank you. Every single one.  And many other nations have far worse terror problems than the US.

We have 10 of these...

2) Terrorism is a big deal because it kills people. However, all people die, so terrorist's achievements are limited unless they can force a society to change its behaviors and capitulate to their goals. To return to Clausewitz, terrorists "win" by forcing a society to bend to its will. As long as people react–as long as citizens or governments freak out when a terrorist attack happens–the terrorists are winning. In my humble opinion, ignoring them, hoping they will go away, and shooting them quietly in the face are good ways to deal with terrorists, and should be used in concert.

3) This series is not a book, and it is not exhaustive. I'm sure I missed some stuff. However, I welcome feedback, questions, comments, or concerns, and if enough of them pile up, perhaps I can scrape together another blog post full of the stuff I missed.

The right man in the wrong place.