Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves
Brian Jenkins, at RAND: Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves
Quote:
...This book began as a project to compile the briefings, memoranda, and essays that I have written over the past six years into a single coherent volume. Reviewing my own work, I find that certain basic themes recur:
The enemies we face have changed fundamentally. There is no single military power that can match that of the United States, but the diverse adversaries of today pose an array of security challenges. Each one is unique, requiring great adaptability on our part...
Patterns of armed conflict have also changed. While precision guided weapons have greatly reduced collateral casualties and damage, guerrilla wars and terrorist campaigns have paradoxically moved in the opposite direction, becoming more destructive, less discriminate, focusing the violence on civilian populations rather than military targets....
Unrelenting pressure on the al Qaeda organization and its terrorist allies has forced the jihadists to operate at a lower, but still lethal, level. However, the United States has neglected the political war. A wanted poster approach condemns us to a strategy of stepping on cockroaches one at a time. What we must also do is shatter the appeal of the jihadist ideology...
Although President George W. Bush warns Americans that “the war on terrorism will take a while,” it is not clear that either those in the administration or average citizens at home fully comprehend what that means—or the great challenge it presents, especially to an impatient society. We need to stop looking for “high noons” in a hundred-years war. One of the most common complaints from allied intelligence services is that the United States is determined to make visible scores in the short term, even at the expense of long-term intelligence gains...
Americans must be ferociously pragmatic for the long term. As a matter of principle, the United States opposes terrorism in all forms. However, that does not mean we should immediately attempt to take down every identified terrorist organization.
The invasion of Iraq was a dangerous distraction. Even if Saddam Hussein had been hiding weapons of mass destruction, he was boxed in once the weapons inspectors had returned, which had been accomplished only as a consequence of the threat of invasion. To invade was to risk great costs in return for marginal gains, costs that inevitably would fall mostly on Americans...
In the longer struggle against the jihadists and future terrorist foes, we will ultimately prevail. We will contain them, reduce their appeal, outlast them. This is not to say that there won’t be further costly terrorist attacks against Americans abroad or on U.S. soil. The greater danger is the reaction the attacks may provoke. Terror, not terrorists, is the principal threat.
America’s courage is its ultimate source of security. We cannot expect a risk-free society. While we must try to prevent terrorist attacks because of the impact they have on society as a whole, we should be realistic about risk: The danger to individual Americans is not great. We have in our history faced worse.
Homeland security begins at home. To empower the nation against fear, every citizen should have a role; all Americans should know what they can do to take care of themselves, their families, their neighbors, their community.
Whatever we do, American values must be preserved. The right response to terrorism is not unlimited surveillance and unchecked powers of arrest. There must be rules about what we can do with those who are in our custody. Torture can never be legal. American values are not luxuries. They are strategic resources that will sustain us through a long war...
