I think the discussion on getting to a more sensible perspective on terrorism and counterterroism is an important one.

Just as it is important to understand what is insurgency, role of the energy source of the nature of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed, as well as the role of those external to those dynamics (such as AQ today) who seek to leverage that energy to their own ends.

Dayuhan mentions that there are many Muslim populaces who still have high levels of this "energy," or what I call conditions of insurgency across the Pacific. That is very true and I am very encouraged by recent actions by the government of the Philippines to change their approach in their Bangsamoro program to better address those conditions. But AQ's agents have not had much success with their UW campaign in the Pacific. Indonesia and Malaysia are primarily Muslim, and both of those countries have, since addressing the colonial problem, been largely stable. Are these works in progress? Absolutely, revolution brings change, but typically also brings ineffective and chaotic government. These things take time. I don't think they are very vulnerable to AQ exploitation, nor do I think they need much US help in dealing with the few agents of AQ that do show up, or those small internal movements who still act out within their current systems. Less is more. We need to focus, as we have in the Philippines, on respecting host nation sovereignty and helping to build partner professionalism, rather than capacity.

And while I appreciate that there are some few individuals over the course of history who have created terror for terror's sake, that certainly does not apply to what governments called the "Anarchist" movement of the last century. That was not much different than what is going on now. A movement intended to force government and society to evolve to change with the tremendous changes that were occurring with the rise of the industrial age and electronic communications. Old systems of entitlement were being challenged to make room for rising classes. Did a few wingnuts join the cause? Certainly. I am sure there are a few wingnuts sitting around AQ campfires as well.

But by and large, in the middle of the bell curve, terror is a tactic. Which leads us to CT. We keep trying to expand CT to make it encompass every aspect of the current terrorist problem. In some ways its just a name, so why worry if so many activities that have very little to do with the tactic being countered are bundled together.

For me this is one of those important nuance issues. CT is threat centric. So inevitably when one bundles activities under a CT banner they all have an ultimate purpose of making some particular threat go away. I think that is far too symptomatic, and results in an endless series of short-sighted tactical approaches, driven by intel and led by the threat. I believe we are better served by keeping CT narrowly defined, and then coming up with a better name for a more holistic approach that CT would be a mere sub-set of.

Not only is CT far too symptomatic and threat focused, it also leads us too easily down the slippery slope of getting into actions of questionable legitimacy that are very abusive of the sovereignty of the nations where these CT activities take place. When one appreciates that in most of these places what we are calling "terrorists" is typically 8 parts nationalist insurgent movements and perhaps 2 parts external non-state UW actor one gets to why a different framework is so important. CT approaches tend to conflate those all as one "terrorist" problem, as that facilitates easier targeting. Far better if we take approaches that force is to break these organizations down by the nature of their relationships and by their primary purposes for action, rather than conflate them by their shared tactics, associations and ideology. Once we do that we can begin to out compete AQ for influence with the populace groups these insurgents emerge from, and also get to approaches with the governments involved that support, rather than degrade, perceptions of sovereignty and legitimacy. The lead should be policy and diplomatic approaches designed to help convince key partners they are better served by engaging their populaces more professionally, and by creating vehicles to give the people more effective ways to legally address their grievances within the context of their own cultures. This may mean that some in power will be legally replaced with new leaders, and it will certainly mean that many in power will need to evolve to stay in power.

Or we can just do CT to keep those pesky people in check and sustain governments we think will best support our interests. I don't recommend this. Conditions of insurgency grow for a reason. Insurgent organizations form and act out for a reason. Organizations with regional agendas form and wage UW for a reason. We need to focus more on understanding what those reasons are and how to best encourage or assist as necessary those governments in addressing those reasons. Currently we apply CT, and we attack the symptoms.