In the wake of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing and the killing a few days later of seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan, Washington is, as it was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, obsessed with "dots" - and our inability to connect them. "The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots," the president said Tuesday. But for all the talk, two key dots have yet to be connected: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attacker, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the trusted CIA informant turned assassin. Although a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student and a 36-year-old Jordanian physician would seem to have little in common, they both exemplify a new grand strategy that al-Qaeda has been successfully pursuing for at least a year.
Throughout 2008 and 2009, U.S. officials repeatedly trumpeted al-Qaeda's demise. In a May 2008 interview with The Washington Post, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden heralded the group's "near strategic defeat." And the intensified aerial drone attacks that President Obama authorized against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan last year were widely celebrated for having killed over half of its remaining senior leadership. Yet, oddly enough for a terrorist movement supposedly on its last legs, al-Qaeda late last month launched two separate attacks less than a week apart - one failed and one successful - triggering the most extensive review of U.S. national security policies since 2001...
More at The Washington Post.
Comments
<b>"Although a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student and a 36-year-old Jordanian physician would seem to have little in common, they both exemplify a new grand strategy that al-Qaeda has been successfully pursuing for at least a year."</b>
So...AQ being limited to meaningless tactical terrorism of HAMAS during the intifada is a grand strategy?
Or is it a sign that AQ's operational capabilities have declined to that of any run of the mill terror group?
AQ is not forcing our stupid and counterproductive reactions. Those are being implemented because politicians believe they will look good to the public if the bureaucracies do a dog and pony show at the baggage counter that do little or nothing to improve security. Bureaucrats like it because they get more power to hassle ordinary citizens and larger budgets.
Well, that PR trick has just about exhausted itself with the Xmas underpants bomber. People are wising up that making air travel systematically aggravating and demeaning for everyone is not correlating with catching terrorists
<blockquote><em>"... two key dots have yet to be connected: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attacker, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the trusted CIA informant turned assassin... they both exemplify a new grand strategy that al-Qaeda has been successfully pursuing for at least a year."</em></blockquote>
Really? Does anyone not see a striking similarity between these two incidents with the shoe-bomber and Mosul chow hall bomber?
<blockquote><em>"... the United States remains preoccupied with trying to secure yesterday's failed state -- Afghanistan -- al-Qaeda is busy staking out new terrain."</em></blockquote>
I think he is suggesting that we are not doing anything, much, or enough in those failed states of "today," but I have no idea what he thinks we should be doing in those states (nor do I understand how Afghanistan is a failed state of yesterday, while Pakistan - presumably unrelated? - is a failed state of today).
He broke down the "new strategy" into five elements. Read element 1 and then skip immediately to element 5. Then begin scratching your head.
Can anyone explain how understanding "al-Qaeda's new strategy" would have prevented the "'systemic failure of intelligence analysis and airport security"?
<blockquote>"Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don't fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched."</blockquote>
Does anyone agree with that? I mean, on just about any given day one can read in the pages of the WashPo or some other major paper a story or op-ed touting how far we've come in our preference for pop-COIN and non-kinetic operations. Which is it?
Also - check the context of Hayden's statement in the third paragraph. Hoffman was really cherry-picking.
Well, I do agree with the title of the article.
After that I merely grew more concerned at how Washington DC still believes that positions like this have much merit.
Towards the end Bruce caps his position with:
"Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don't fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched. Al-Qaeda needs to be utterly destroyed. This will be accomplished not just by killing and capturing terrorists -- as we must continue to do -- but by breaking the cycle of radicalization and recruitment that sustains the movement."
Wow Bruce, what's remarkable to me is how after 8 years you can still be so focused on the need to defeat the SYMPTOMS of the problem facing our nation and write a passionate piece to that end without giving even the slightest indicator that you recognize that fact, or have an idea what the true root causes that a Presidential-level strategy should actually be focused on.
Terroism is a tactic and terrorist organizations (OK, lets start getting more accurate: Political Organizations which employ terrorism as a tactic) are a symptom of underlying political greivances that the actors believe cannot be resolved through legitimate means.
Is AQ still a serious threat to the US? Certainly. They are conducting a sophisticated UW campaign to incite and leverage many disparate insurgencies across the middle east. Their UW network includes a foreign fighter aspect that is very effective; bringing nationalist insurgents from their many respective insurgent efforts to mass on Western armies whereever they may go in the middle east; and also to recruit Western citizens with roots and empathies for their former homes and the people who live and struggle their against despotic governments.
So long as the US continues to support some of the most corrupt and despotic regimes in the world (most in the Middle East with Sunni Muslim populaces) there will be an endless flow of young men who are willing to strap one on for Allah to attack America and Americans to break our support to the regimes that oppress them.
So, I offer to President Obama that in search for a new strategy that he embrace an old one. That he disband State-CT and the NCTC immediately and direct the State Department to devise a new approach for US foreign policy that is more in tune with our founding principles as a nation, less designed to control and manipulate (ie rob the legitimacy of) the governments of others. We need not abandon our Ends as a Nation; but we must revamp significantly our Ways and Means to achieve them.
I also offer to the Commander in Chief that he take with a major grain of salt any apporach offered to him that is "proven" by its worth during the Cold War. It is the clinging to Cold War, bi-polar containment policies and approaches 20 years past their shelf-life that brought us here; it will be the creation of new policies for a post-Cold War, Globalized world that will take us out.
Do we need to manage actively symptoms like AQ? Without a doubt. But we need to do so in the context of an approach designed to engage the root causes.
My Opinion.
Is the Jordanian suicide bomber a sign of strength or one of weakness? It surely is a tactical success to infiltrate one of your operatives into a CIA base. I'm just not sure that, having infiltrated, it is a wise policy for him to blow himself up. How many personnel with that kind of acumen does AQ have (of course, I am assuming that our counterintelligence is adequate, and/or that said suicide bomber didn't just get lucky)?
I have been a fan of Bruce Hoffman for many years, but I frequently disagree with many of his assessments. However, unlike the others who responded I think Dr. Hoffman is generally on the money. One point I strongly disagree with though is what he is calling AQs "new" strategy. It is the same strategy they have been employing for years, but while we have been aware of this strategy for years, we seem to ignore and fall repeatedly into their traps of over extending and over spending, which ultimately results in very little return on our investment. In my opinion we have an unsustainable strategy based on a utopist view of the way the world should be (free markets, democracy, economic opportunity, etc. equate to peace).
I do agree that AQ has become increasingly effective at using the internet to radicalize and recruit new members, especially recruits from the West. So it gives old meaning to defending our constitution and country from enemies within, and one that will require increased focus on watching our own (as uncomfortable as that is).
I also agree with Dr. Hoffman that we are seemly stuck in the mindset that success in Afghanistan will defeat AQ. Maybe success in Afghanistan and Iraq will contribute to their eventual defeat, and unfortunately based on our national rhetoric premature withdrawal will now fan the flames of AQs morale and possibly their recruiting. I still believe this could have been avoided if we scoped our military response as a punitive raid, where we didnt state our success would be building a stable democracy in Afghanistan. Regardless of the outcome in Afghanistan, AQ has long since expanded their operations into old and new domains around the world, and we don't have enough resources to invade, occupy and transform every so called safe haven (failed or near failed state) in the world, so our current strategy must change.
Bruce Hoffman wrote,
"The national security architecture built in the aftermath of Sept. 11 addresses yesterday's threats -- but not today's and certainly not tomorrow's".
I would add we need the new strategy first, then design the architecture to support it. The strategies we post 9/11 are inadequate in my opinion because they divert too much of our security effort and treasury to swat at flies, while potentially ignoring threats that are more appropriate for the military to focus on such as the rapid expansion of Chinese influence, Irans nuclear weapon development, North Koreas instability, and other potential conflicts around the world that could threaten our interests, that are best deterred by capable and ready conventional forces.
Our strategy against AQ and similar threats (any terrorist or transnational criminal organization that threatens our interests) specifically needs to be more agile and much less expensive than our so called population centric COIN approach. Part of that new strategy will involve empowering partners around the world with the capability to find and destroy the threat on their soil, and sometimes it will involve working with unsavory characters (so we'll need the authorities to do this as part of our strategy). The new strategy also must facilitate a better process for us to find and defeat these irregular threats, which will only be facilitated by changes in law and policy that allow/encourage our law enforcement, intelligence services and special operations forces to operate seamlessly around the world in this effort. No more loud rhetoric that creates the misperception that were attacking Islam, but a very quiet and aggressive war in the shadows. This will be much cheaper than deploying large contingents of conventional forces to swat at flies, or worse in expensive and often ill founded attempts to reform societies through population centric COIN.