What Will Barack Do About Terrorist Targets in Other Countries?
By Larry Johnson on December 4, 2008 at 10:00 AM in Current Affairs
One of the first policy battles in the new administration of Barack Obama will be what to do about suspected terrorist targets that are inside the sovereign territory of another country? I cannot tell you what the Bush policy is because it is classified. But let’s consider the logical possibilities:
Option 1–Do nothing, it is a sovereign country and is responsible for what happens within its borders. It is not our responsibility.
Option 2–Invoke international law and our right of self-defense and warn the country harboring the terrorists to act or else. Declare war if the country refuses to act.
Option 3–Invoke international law and our right of self-defense but conduct a clandestine military/intelligence operation against the target (is secret but not deniable).
Option 4–Invoke international law and our right of self-defense and conduct a covert military/intelligence operation against the target (note, covert actions – a legal definition for missions in which the United States government denies any role and that can be undertaken only by presidential directive and with formal Congressional notification). This could included recruiting natives of the country to conduct the operations inside the target country on their own.
We get some clues from the New York Times back in December 2005 about some of the steps the Bush Administration had taken:
Senior members of Congress said Monday that they would seek to determine whether the Pentagon had overstepped its bounds by creating new secret battlefield intelligence units within the Defense Intelligence Agency.
A senior military officer and a senior Defense Department official confirmed at a hastily called Pentagon briefing on Monday, after news reports had disclosed the existence of the expanded intelligence operations, that small teams of civilian intelligence specialists were being created to work with Special Operations forces and other troops worldwide on secret missions, including counterterrorism operations.
The officials said the teams had been formally established in the fiscal year 2005 defense budget using existing authority to replace ad hoc defense intelligence units that had been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan for more than two years.
In interviews, however, members of Congress from both parties questioned whether the secret missions being carried out by the units might amount to covert actions – a legal definition for missions in which the United States government denies any role and that can be undertaken only by presidential directive and with formal Congressional notification.
We also know from news reports that there have been military attacks inside Pakistan in the North West Frontier Provinces against suspected terrorists. While there is suspicions about who carried those out it is not surprising that the United States is considered a chief suspect.
Let’s agree on this point–if the United States had successfully used military force against a prominent terrorist target (e.g., Bin Laden) we would probably hear about it. Remember Zarqawi in Iraq? The U.S. took credit for that blow (and Zarqawi certainly deserved getting bombed). The reality is that it is very hard to find effective opportunities to use military force against terrorist targets. If it was easy don’t you think the Bush Administration would have used such an option more commonly and to greater effect?
Here are some of the problems confronting the Obama Administration in cobbling together a new policy. There are only a couple of completely non-functioning nations in the world–Somalia and maybe Sudan. Going militarily into a so-called “non-functioning” nation is not easy. Again, let’s use the Bush Administration as a benchmark. If there were viable targets I don’t doubt for a minute the Bushies would have taken them out. Do you?
Then there is the Pakistan problem. Here again, there are not that many countries who are harboring or protecting terrorist groups and use such groups as an element of their foreign policy. For starters the official Pakistani position is to eschew terrorism. Unfortunately there are pockets in the Pakistani government (I call them rogue elements) that support and encourage terrorism. If we launch a full out military strike in Pakistan we run the risk of emboldening the hand of the extremists and isolating those who support us. We are then likely to be confronted with a full scale military action. This leads to a more critical question–are we willing to go to war against a country that has nuclear weapons?
If you think the answer to that is easy then you have no business being anywhere near the decision making process.
I know this much for certain–there are individuals in this world who want to attack U.S. citizens and infrastructure but lack the personnel, resources, and access to do so easily. If that were not the case we would be seeing attacks on us on a daily basis. It is important that we dedicate resources to locate and neutralize those individuals without creating new, more vicious enemies for ourselves. These individuals–i.e. the terrorists–are not in locations easy to identify or to hit with military force. If there were easy to identify or hit we would have done so.
I would hope that the Obama administration takes a thoughtful, measured approach to this problem. Use military force where we can, minimize our public chest thumping and threats, and be quietly but deadly effective. We will know in about three months where the Obama team is headed.
by Ronald Scott
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