We are starting to get some more solid casualty estimates now. It seems likely that the total will not exceed 6,000, although perhaps I am optimistic - the New York Port Authority reportedly still estimates 20,000. If the estimates are correct, we can, perhaps, thank the skill of the engineers of the buildings, the courage of the rescue workers who went into them, and the presence of mind of the people in the building themselves, who managed to escape. There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, no real sentiment that we should not do something. The question is, well, what? There are two major frameworks that are usually considered in response to terrorism. They are the crime model and the war model. I'll try and supply some (unbiased, as best I can) elaboration of what both entails, as well as an explanation of why I now (as opposed to before this incident) prefer the second. The crime model is what we usually use to pursue terrorists. It's fairly obvious. We send out the FBI, they sweep for evidence, and construct a court case. We then pressure whatever country is harboring the targets of our prosecution until they agree to give the terrorists up for extradition. Sometimes, when that doesn't seem possible, we have chosen to kidnap our targets and bring them before an American court. American courts, as I have written before, make no distinctions between how a fugitive from justice is brought before the court. The advantages of the crime model are also fairly obvious. First, we do not dignify terrorists by calling them soldiers - we treat them as petty criminals, distinguishable from pickpockets only by the severity of their offense. Second, we gain certainty. Anyone convicted by an American court, defended by the best lawyers money can buy, is virtually certain to be guilty of the crimes of which he is accused. Third, we gain precision. Police operations are, by their very nature, more selective than military operations. Thus we create a much smaller risk of the loss of innocent life by engaging in a police framework. Tuesday's tragedy, however, has convinced me that the police model is fatally flawed. The reasons are, I think, compelling. The first is relatively simple. It looks like something in the range of 6000 people died on Tuesday at the hands of foreign nationals who have explicitly stated their intention to destroy the United States. London on the worst day of the Blitz did not suffer anything comparable. Pearl Harbor itself saw less than half as many casualties. If the people who did that had been soldiers of an enemy nation, it is the American military that we would use to respond. Even the FBI, formidable as it is, is not really institutionally competent to deal with something of this magnitude. The second is that the advantages of the crime model are also disadvantages. The level of proof necessary for a criminal conviction is incredibly high. There does not seem to be any compelling reason that we need that level of evidence before choosing to retaliate against someone like Bin Laden for an attack on this scale. Even if (for example) Bin Laden was somehow not responsible for this particular assault, he has attempted to do something similar in the past, has expressed a desire to do something similar in the future, and applauded the fact that this was one was done. Given those facts, I believe that the national security of the United States requires that he be eliminated, even if we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was responsible for 6000 murders on Tuesday. The alternative approach is thus the war model. President Bush seems to be moving towards this approach in the last 24 hours or so. To paraphrase Charles Krauthammer, when Pearl Harbor was bombed, FDR did not ask the FBI to arrest Admiral Yamamoto. He told the American Army and Navy to bring Japan to its knees. More than twice as many people died two days ago as did on Tuesday. They did so at the hands of foreign nations who almost certainly received support from foreign governments. It does not seem to me that the FBI is the national organization best suited to dealing with that assault. The war model is an entirely different level of action than the police model. Our first priority would become, not arresting suspects, but destroying the terrorists, their organizations, and anyone who tries to support them. The war model would assume an unrelenting pursuit of any person involved in this, or any other attack upon American citizens and our allies, without respect for the sovereignty of any nation that chooses to harbor them. Our watchword would, in essence, be what President Bush said in his speech Tuesday evening - that we would make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them. The crime model involves policemen attempting to arrest Bin Laden. The war model involves using the American military to obliterate him and his organization. Given the scale of this attack, the international support for our actions, and the obvious threat to national security that future actions like this imply, the war model seems, to me, the definite choice. I have no military training, nor do I know the actual extent of the information available to the United States government. Anything I say about the specific nature of the response thus involves pure speculation. I would surmise that should the United States government choose to adopt the war model, it would demand that the Afghan government hand over Bin Laden and all members of his organization immediately. If they refuse to do so, their first notification would probably be a B-2 strike out of Missouri, fueled by tankers out of Diego Garcia. At that point we would begin an unrelenting strategic bombardment campaign, similar but more intense and less risk-averse than that launched against Serbia. The Washington Post reports that the American military is investigating options ranging from a cruise missile strike to a fully-blown invasion using ground forces. My own guess would be that we would opt for a special forces operation, probably involving seizing an airfield in Afghanistan and using it as a staging base to launch ground assaults against Bin Laden and his organization. If he escapes to another country, we would then have to immediately turn our attention to that country and begin there. The key to the war model is that our assault must be absolutely unrelenting - we would have to pursue Bin Laden until we were certain that he and his organization had been destroyed, then turn our attention to any other terrorist organizations that threaten to do something similar. This, it seems to me, is the appropriate response. What happened two days ago vastly exceeds the parameters of any normal response. There has, quite literally, been nothing like it in anyone's history. What we must understand is that we face not a handful of individuals but a large, well-organized, and financed group that actively seeks to kill American civilians. Its objective is to do as much harm to the United States as possible, at least as much as it is to cause us to abandon our allies. Faced with such an enemy, our response must be to destroy our enemies before they can kill more thousands of our citizens - before, even worse, they acquire nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. It is possible, even likely, that there will be further attacks against the United States on a scale of what has just happened. We will probably be told that such actions are "retaliation" for our actions. It is important to remember, first, that we will not be _seeking_ to kill civilians, which in and of itself is sufficient to create a huge distinction between our actions and theirs. Even more important is to remember that these attacks would have happened anyways - we are opposed by enemies who seek to destroy us, and they would do so whether or not we attempted to protect ourselves. In seeking to attack them first, however, we may be able to forestall some attacks, prevent them from launching others as they devote resources to their own protection, and eventually be free of the threat of such activities. The clock is ticking. God Bless America, Gautam Mukunda Administrator Fifth Annual "Jubilee" Russian Investment Symposium Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Direct: +1.617.495.3043 Fax: +1.617.495.8963 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free."
