Fighting Terrorism in an Information Age, by General Richard B. Myers
(JCS Chairman says al-Qaida has full political agenda) (2980) This byliner by Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is adapted from his recent speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. (begin byliner) The First Global War of the Information Age is Against Terrorism By General Richard B. Myers Today, as we fight the war on terrorism we need to continue to mobilize for what will be a long fight. Within the U.S. government, we must organize ourselves for war. Within industry, we must build upon an already outstanding public-private partnership to fight terrorism. We need all Americans to recognize that they individually have a critical role, both in defining how we defend ourselves and how each of us can contribute to a common defense. The great Prussian philosopher and student of war Karl von Clauswitz once observed that: "Every age has its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions and its own peculiar preconceptions." Some might argue that this Clauswitzian observation doesn't apply to our war on terrorism. After all, terrorism is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, the term "terrorism" goes back more than two centuries to the French Revolution. The British accused the Jacobins of using the guillotine to "terrorize" the French public into accepting a new social order. The Jacobins agreed, and then sent many more innocent people to their deaths. More recently, we remember the terrorist movements of the 1970s. The Red Army Faction and Bader-Meinhoff Gang struck periodically throughout Europe. Here in California, the Weathermen and Symbionese Liberation Army also attempted to paralyze society. And like these past terrorists, the al-Qaida network knows that we'll have a difficult time striking back at them, since they're not a traditional nation state. There are four key factors that separate al-Qaida from the terrorists of yesterday. First, terrorists three decades ago sought a relatively limited political agenda. Today, al-Qaida seeks something much different. In the short term, they want the United States out of the Middle East and, some say, the destruction of Israel. But in the longer term, I'm convinced that al-Qaida wants to topple pro-Western or moderate Muslim governments from North Africa to Central Asia. I also believe that al-Qaida feels that the Muslim world is threatened by our freedoms, our political structures, our economic success, and our way of life. They have a deep and extremely intense hatred of our society and the West in general. They feel completely free to murder innocent people in any nation, any society, and at any time. They seek nothing short of the destruction of our society and our way of life. Second, al-Qaida differs from past terrorists by their sophistication. Today's terrorist networks have shrewdly adopted many of the technologies provided by a $3 trillion-a-year telecommunications industry. They can use the Internet to communicate with dispersed cells in practically any nation. They can use these tools to recruit followers and raise funds. They can use these tools to gain information on the vulnerabilities of a potential target. The third way that al-Qaida differs from terrorists of the past is the most worrisome: they are determined to obtain and to use weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear. This process of acquiring weapons of mass destruction is also made easier thanks to Information Age technologies and the availability of suppliers. Let's remember how close Nazi Germany came to developing atomic weapons during World War II. We don't know how close al-Qaida is to acquiring such weapons; but we do know that they are vigorously seeking them. We're essentially in a race against time. The critical question is: how much time do we give them? And finally, the al-Qaida terrorists commit suicide in order to achieve their objectives. In a sense, they have transformed themselves into crude but effective precision-guided munitions. When you combine all these factors, you realize that not only has the nature of terrorism changed, so has the calculus of conflict. In the last century, warfare was fought primarily with conventional weapons. Hundreds or perhaps thousands of combatants could die in a single attack or battle. As a result, a combatant nation could absorb a surprise attack or even several attacks, and then react. That's essentially what we did after Pearl Harbor. We knew the risks, based upon factors of geography and the nature of the threat, and then prepared as best we could. Today, in a single act, terrorists using weapons of mass destruction could cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands -- or even millions of people. Moreover, they have multiple options to bring about such a catastrophic event. Therefore, with the risks so much higher, the urgency of defense becomes even more important to our survival as a nation. It is because of these factors -- the combination of the terrorists' extreme bloodthirsty agenda, their informational capabilities, their quest for weapons of mass destruction -- that we realize that Clauswitz was right. Our age has indeed generated our "own kind of war," and the melding of these factors makes the ongoing war on terrorism truly the first global war of the Information Age. Now, during the Cold War you'll recall that we used to say that intentions can change overnight, but capabilities cannot. We felt that we had to focus on countering the well-known military capabilities of the Soviet Union because our knowledge of their intentions was imperfect. Today just the opposite is true. The intentions of the terrorists are crystal clear: they mean to destroy the great American experiment in personal freedom. Their capabilities, however, are much more difficult to define. This is an enemy that can change and adapt in a relatively short period, precisely because of information technology. In response to this very different threat, President George Bush observed early in the conflict: "it's essential that we use all of our instruments of national power." We can multiply the effectiveness of those instruments by our use of the tools of the Information Age, albeit in a very different manner from our opponents. Our comparative advantages in terms of exploiting bandwidths, new sensor technologies, digitization, miniaturization, classified computer networks and shared databases, all helped to ensure military success in the first part of our counter-terrorism campaign. These resources allowed us to launch a major operation, in a remote area of Central Asia, only four weeks after September 11. We exploited our intelligence capabilities and enhanced sensors to create an extensive target database. Our command-and-control networks allowed us to integrate air, land, sea and special operations forces. Our navigation and command and control networks also allowed us to employ these forces and guide ordnance with pinpoint accuracy in a timely manner, and I must note with the least amount of collateral damage and fewest civilian casualties in history for this type of warfare. After six to seven weeks of fighting, and with only a few hundred of our forces on the ground, we watched a battle-hardened enemy collapse in Afghanistan. We then exploited our information superiority to ensure that the Taliban forces couldn't return as a threat. In the process, we freed the Afghan people from oppression and averted a growing humanitarian disaster. Today, no one seems to remember the predictions of mass starvation involving millions of Afghans. Well it never came to pass. It was our great people enabled by information technologies that allowed us to orchestrate such a complex, multi-dimensional and dispersed operation. As a result, al-Qaida has been forced out of their largest safe haven: they are now on the run. The other result is that our military operations in Afghanistan enabled a shift to a new phase in the global war on terrorism where other instruments of national power are now much more effective. In March we picked up a top al-Qaida operative by the name of Zubayda in Pakistan. That was the result of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies working together with the Pakistani government. In the same manner our Moroccan coalition partners recently arrested some al-Qaida operatives reportedly planning to attack naval units in the Strait of Gibraltar. The men they detained had recently fled Afghanistan. This shows how all our instruments of national power, and those of our allies, are working together to achieve our objectives. Today, it may appear that we are in a lull; but let me emphasize that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines aren't taking a break. We have 8,000 troops in Afghanistan providing security, helping to train the new Afghan National Army, and searching for remaining pockets of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the region. It's still a very dangerous place, as our forces are attacked with mortar rounds, rockets, or sniper fire about once a day. We're also working with the militaries in the Philippines, Georgia and Yemen. Specifically, we're providing training and some equipment to help them to defeat terrorist networks inside their own countries. You can see how technology is changing the face of warfare in the Information Age -- for our friends, for ourselves, and also for our enemy. But winning the war will require additional change. Within government, we're making organizational changes to streamline and focus our efforts to meet this new challenge. We're looking carefully at how we can better coordinate the efforts of diplomats, the military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies and so on. President Bush's proposed Homeland Security Department is the single biggest governmental reorganization since World War Two. Within the Defense Department, we plan to stand up the U.S. Northern Command on 1 October. This new command will be under a single commander who is responsible for the military contribution to our homeland security in the air, on land and at sea. The new command will also provide military support to civil authorities for consequence management in the event of any weapons of mass destruction attack. We are also going to take what is currently called the U.S. Strategic Command, responsible for our nuclear forces, and the U.S. Space Command, and form a new command out of two. This new command will retain the name U.S. Strategic Command however. It is going to have some new missions added to the old ones. It is also going to have a global perspective as we've never had before. We're hoping this new organization will also help in fighting the war on terrorism. My major point is that within the military, we're organizing for both offense and defense. In the war on terrorism, we must be able to do both at the same time. As examples, we have had the National Guard augment airport security, fighter aircraft continue to protect American cities, and the Coast Guard has established over 100 security zones around ports, harbors and other critical infrastructure sites. These actions are matched by new screening procedures at airports and many other activities by a whole host of federal and local agencies. But to achieve victory against an elusive, dispersed terror network, we must make changes to give us the organizational agility and proper focus to take the fight to the enemy, and win. The second level of effort in the fight against terrorism is to continue our public-private partnership. This partnership must exploit American technological advances and ingenuity, both to defend the American homeland from future attacks and to take the fight to the terrorists. Such partnership will have positive results for both the military and our nation's economy. The 3G [Third Generation] plan announced by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration in July is just one example. It calls for the military to shift some of our unique defense communications systems to a new bandwidth freeing other parts of the frequency spectrum for commercial development and use. We must continue to explore closer cooperation between the military and our computer technology sector. Our military forces and intelligence agencies have a very real interest in understanding the vulnerabilities of current and future computer hardware and software applications. This public-private partnership must also extend to our business and banking sectors, part of which has been in place for some time. The financial sector also continues to play a critical role in tracking down the terrorist's money supply. In today's electronic commerce environment there are few paper trails. So it is important to use computer expertise to follow the electronic trail of our adversaries. While financial business is outside my military lane, it is important to realize that the idea of public-private partnership isn't limited just to activities directly related to the military. It extends to all instruments of our national security -- military, law enforcement, intelligence and so forth. These partnerships are just one way in which Americans can play a key role and help us to exploit potential terrorist vulnerabilities. The war effort must also mobilize the individual and all citizens must be active participants in two ways. We all must remain alert to the possibility of terrorist attack here at home, be it cyber attack, terrorist bombs, or the use of weapons of mass destruction. The second role that all Americans have to embrace is a public debate on how we, as a nation, should defend ourselves against the terrorist threat. Remember that al-Qaida deeply hates us and our way of life. We can't ignore the fact that they are actively seeking weapons of mass destruction. They are determined to end the American experiment in freedom. So what is the responsible course of action? Well, there are a series of questions to be asked and debated. Do free people have a responsibility to take steps to prevent a future attack? Can we, or should we, accept the inherent risks of terrorists having weapons of mass destruction? To what lengths should we go to defend ourselves? These are not questions for just public officials, four-star generals, talk show hosts and pundits. They are questions for dinner tables and board rooms. These are issues for all Americans to express their opinion on. And we need to have that debate early in this war. We need the computer and technical expertise from places like California's Silicon Valley to help us defend our country. We need financial expertise and tradition of innovation in business to deliver the tools we need for this new kind of war. We need Hollywood to produce another film like Frank Capra's wonderful "Why We Fight" series. We need the media to help the public examine and debate how best to protect our way of life. Finally, we need energy, ideas, expertise and initiative to transform ourselves into a new "Arsenal of Freedom" that is so critical to winning a new global struggle. We face four challenges in the hazardous times ahead. First, the enemy we face is determined to do us great harm. Second, we cannot risk a "business as usual" approach to this war. Third, we must continue a closer public-private partnership in industry. And finally, all citizens must be involved and participate in a thorough public debate on how we should defend ourselves. The solutions to all our challenges, I believe, are inside great minds, labs, factories, industries, and universities waiting to be unleashed. (end byliner) (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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