What the study discounts is the connection to Islam.
B
*
On the surface, what this study appears to discount is the role that
drying up Soviet, East German and Cuban financial and other forms of direct
support to the groups had in the groups' exposure to local police and
intelligence operations.
<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/07/new_rand_report_on_terrorism_r_1.ph
p> New Rand Report on Terrorism: Reminders of Reagan Administration
Today, July 29, 2008, 5 hours ago | Michael Kraft
<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/07/new_rand_report_on_terrorism_r_1.ph
p> Go to full article
<http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/07/new_rand_report_on_terrorism_r_1.ph
p>
http://counterterrorismblog.org/2008/07/new_rand_report_on_terrorism_r_1.php
A new <http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html> Rand
Corporation report on the end of terrorist organizations supports the views
that police and law enforcement tools are generally more effective than
military force in countering most options.
<http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html> The
Associated Press version emphasized in its lead that "The United States can
defeat al-Qaida if it relies less on force and more on policing and
intelligence to root out the terror group's leaders."
The AP report noted that the Rand report said that the use of military force
by the United States or other countries should be reserved for quelling
large, well-armed and well-organized insurgencies and that American
officials should stop using the term "war on terror" and replace it with
"counterterrorism."
This useful report focuses on how various terrorist groups have ended their
activities. It said that by analyzing the 648 terrorist groups that existed
worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that 268 terrorist groups
ended during that period. 40% ended because of operations carried out by
local police or intelligence agencies. Meanwhile, while 43% reached a
peaceful political accommodation with their government. In 10% of cases,
terrorist groups ended because they achieved victory, while the application
of military force led to the end of terrorist groups in only 7% of cases.
Seth Jones, the lead author of the study was quoted by AP as saying that
"terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy
warriors, and our analysis suggests there is no battlefield solution to
terrorism."
Actually the emphasis on describing terrorists as criminals goes back to the
Reagan administration. This has been largely overlooked in recent years as
the use of the law enforcement tool became a political points scoring issue.
Republicans recently criticized Senator Obama emphasis on the use of the
criminal justice system as one of the weapons against terrorism. Senator
Kerry also was criticized in the last election.
There are legitimate arguments either way about the ability of past
administrations in tracking down and prosecuting terrorists. But ignored and
forgotten in the criticism is the fact that it was the Reagan Administration
that refined and pushed the concept of strengthening and applying the rule
of law against terrorists.
After the bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and the U.S. embassy in
Beirut in the early 1980's, the Reagan administration developed an
interagency public diplomacy campaign with the intent of deglamorizing
terrorists and countering perceptions among some Europeans and Middle
Easterners that terrorists were romantic "freedom fighters." True, the
Reagan administration did use military force in a spectacular way, the
bombing of Libyan targets after the Libyans orchestrated the 1986
<http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/11/13/discobombing.htm> bombing of
the La Belle disco in Berlin that killed two American soldiers and a Turkish
woman. There has been speculation however that the bombing of Pan Am 103 in
December 1998 by Libyan agents was prompted in part as retaliation for the
U.S. bombing of Tripoli.
At the same time, however, the Reagan administration pushed the theme that
hijacking aircraft, blowing up buildings and taking hostages is a criminal
act, regardless of the cause and that terrorists should be tracked down,
prosecuted and imprisoned. It also helped develop additional international
counterterrorism conventions requiring nations to prosecute or extradite
terrorists.
I know this first hand from my involvement at the time in these efforts as
an officer at the time in the State Department counterterrorism office. I
had been recruited from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff partly
because I had been a foreign correspondent before working on the Hill. I
served on an inter-agency team, that included the State Department Public
Affairs Bureau, USIA, and the Defense Department, and developed a
counterterrorism public diplomacy campaign.
The group developed talking points, speeches and testimony using the themes
cited above. Major "target" groups were writers and "intellectuals" who
justified as "freedom fighters," groups such as the Red Army Faction in
Germany and the Palestinian and Lebanese terrorist groups that were involved
in hijackings and kidnappings.
The State Department Legal Advisor's office and the Justice Department
meanwhile stepped up efforts to strengthen the regime of international
conventions against terrorist acts, such as hijacking ships (after the
hijacking of the Achille Laura passenger liner in 1985) and mutual
assistance treaties.
The public diplomacy effort later faded and was dropped after James Baker
became Secretary of State in 1989. An official in the State Department
Public Affairs Bureau told me that Baker did not believe in Public
Diplomacy.
Nonetheless, the use of legal instruments against terrorists continued even
though the public spotlight focused more on the military options since 9/11.
Although military tools have their use when appropriate, I have not seen any
explanation of how American military force could be applied to terrorist
cells in Britain,
Spain, Turkey or other countries that have been hit by home-grown
terrorists.
Touching on the disputes over labeling the effort to counter terrorism, the
Rand report also said that "Calling counterterrorism efforts a war on
terrorism raises public expectations that there is a battlefield solution.
It also tends to legitimize the terrorists' view that they are conducting a
jihad (holy war) against the U.S. and elevates them to the status of holy
warriors. Terrorists should be perceived as criminals, not holy warriors."
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