17 October 2001
Byliner: Ambassador Richard Haass on U.S. Response to Terrorism
(Remarks to New York Council on Foreign Relations October 15) (3250)
(Following is the text of an address by the Director of the State
Department's Policy Planning Staff, Ambassador Richard N. Haass, to a
meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on October 15.
No republication restrictions.)
The Bush Administration's Response to September 11th - and Beyond
By Ambassador Richard Haass
(The author is Director of the State Department's Policy Planning
Staff.)
There is little need for me to recite once again to people who live in
New York the events of September 11th and the destruction that
occurred in the financial district downtown-where fires still smolder
and the grim task of clearing the wreckage of the World Trade Center
continues day and night. The images of that terrible day are seared in
all our minds. The import of the terrorist attack was perhaps best
captured in the simple, heartfelt eloquence of Mayor Giuliani in his
address to the UN General Assembly. "This was not just an attack on
the City of New York or on the United States of America," he said. "It
was an attack on the very idea of a free, inclusive, and civil
society."
The barbarous acts of September 11th shocked us all. They reverberated
around the world. They were intended to do just that. They were
designed as a warning, in the most brutal terms, that those who wish
us ill can visit death and destruction upon us and our institutions
anywhere in the world. We cannot live in a cocoon even if we want to.
We did not seek a fight with the terrorists; they came to us.
International terrorism exemplifies what can be called the dark side
of globalization.
In international terrorism, we face a true transnational threat.
Al-Qaida and its cousin terrorist networks have twisted the benefits
and conveniences of our increasingly open, integrated, globalized
world to serve their destructive agenda.
Usama bin Laden is a man without a country. His al-Qaida network is a
multinational enterprise with operations in over sixty countries. Its
camps in Afghanistan and its bank accounts have been a veritable trust
fund for terrorism. Its global activities are coordinated by not only
personal couriers but also the communication technologies emblematic
of our era-cellular and satellite phones, encrypted email, Internet
chat rooms, videotape, and laserdisks. Like a skilled publicist, bin
Laden knows how to exploit the international media to project his
image worldwide.
Members of al-Qaida travel from continent to continent with the ease
of a vacationer or business traveler. In an age marked by
unprecedented mobility and immigration, they readily blend into
communities wherever they move. They pay their way with funds raised
through front businesses, drug trafficking, credit card fraud,
extortion, money laundered from covert supporters, and possibly even
the manipulation of stock markets. They use ostensibly charitable
organizations for funding and recruitment. Money for their operations
is transferred surreptitiously through numerous banks and money
exchanges around the world-some legitimate and unwitting, others not.
And in their hands the airplanes that connect families and businesses
became human guided missiles that snuff out thousands of innocent
lives.
These terrorists are also transnational in another, more fundamental
way-their victims. Belgium, El Salvador, Germany, Greece, India,
Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United
Kingdom all lost at least seventy citizens in the September 11th
attacks. Some eighty nations suffered casualties that one horrific day
alone.
There has been confusion in some quarters about the basic causes of
al-Qaida's ongoing campaign of terror, about the stakes in our
conflict with international terrorism. Let me try to clear up this
confusion because it is fundamental to how the Bush Administration is
responding to this threat.
Al-Qaida is not fighting for Islam. Its victims have included
thousands of Muslims-in Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, and the U.S.-as
well as Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews. Islamic scholars and
leaders throughout the world have condemned Usama bin Laden's
perversion of their faith to justify his crimes. Last week, for
example, the final statement of the Organization of Islamic
Conference's meeting of foreign ministers "rejected any attempts that
claim a link between pure Islam and the acts of terrorism." We
understand this. President Bush and Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld
have repeatedly emphasized that Islam is not our enemy. Nor are the
people of Afghanistan. In the past decade, we have fought to protect
Muslims in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Even before September
11th, the United States was already the largest donor of humanitarian
aid to the Afghan people. Our current campaign against terrorism will
help Muslims and Afghans as well as ourselves and others who desire to
live in peace and security.
Al-Qaida is not fighting for the Palestinians. Bin Laden's recent
opportunistic attempt to drape himself in the Palestinian flag should
fool no one. He was never before committed to helping the Palestinian
people find peace. And even if he had been, his crimes could never
find justification in the Palestinian cause or any other. The
Palestinian leadership does not welcome him. As Yasir Abu-Rabbuh, the
Palestinian Authority Minister of Information and Culture, explained
last week, whatever may happen in the West Bank or Gaza, it "doesn't
justify or give a cover for anybody to kill or terrorize civilians in
Washington or New York or any other place."
Al-Qaida is not fighting for the poor. Usama bin Laden, his
lieutenants, and many of those who conducted the terrorist attacks of
September 11th certainly are not of the poor. They are educated, some
at universities in the West. They tend to come from the middle-class
or, like bin Laden, from some of the world's wealthiest families. They
did not strike at America because they were deprived of life in the
suburbs-indeed, some of them enjoyed such a lifestyle along with
afternoons at the gym, rum and cokes by night, and trips to Las Vegas.
Moreover, al-Qaida has not focused its resources on alleviating the
suffering of the poor masses. Rather, it has spent millions of dollars
in fueling hatred and spreading its web of destruction, mayhem, and
murder in the Middle East, Central Asia, and around the world to
further its quest for power. If anyone doubts this, just ask one of
the thousands of Kenyans or Tanzanians injured or maimed or left
orphaned by the bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam.
The causes of al-Qaida's terrorism won't be found in scriptures, the
Palestinian cause, or poverty. Instead, they are political and
ideological. We are attacked because of our political, economic, and
military power and because we stand by our friends in the region,
Israeli and Arab alike. We are also targeted because of our ideals.
We should take Usama bin Laden, his minions, and their Taliban
supporters at their word. They seek to drive the United States out of
the Middle East so that they can topple regimes throughout the region
and destroy Israel; then they aspire to impose their rule. They cannot
abide by the personal freedoms we take for granted-freedom of speech,
freedom of religion, even the freedom of women to be educated. They
want to make Afghanistan under the Taliban a model for the rest of the
Islamic world and beyond. They call for planes to fall from the sky
and for innocents to be murdered because they believe such acts will
advance their hateful, destructive ambitions.
The threat posed by al-Qaida and other such terrorist networks is
existential and their goals cannot be met by traditional foreign
policy means of negotiation or compromise.
Our response to this challenge, therefore, is two-fold.
In its first dimension, we are focusing our campaign against terrorism
upon al-Qaida and its Taliban sponsors. President Bush demanded that
the Taliban regime turn over the leaders of al-Qaida and dismantle its
terrorist network in Afghanistan. The Taliban refused, repeatedly.
Their intransigence is hardly surprising. Long before September 11th,
the international community had branded the Taliban an outlaw regime.
The Taliban have waged war on the people of Afghanistan and their
neighbors, impoverished them, and denied them the most basic human
rights. And the Taliban have accepted substantial financial support
from and proved themselves subservient to the ambitions of a foreign
terrorist-one who has been repudiated by his family and stripped of
his citizenship by his native land.
The first dimension of our campaign, therefore, will root out the
al-Qaida terrorists, punish those who aid them, and ensure that
Afghanistan will no longer be a haven for terrorism. Furthermore, we
want to ensure that conditions inside Afghanistan do not generate
millions of refugees in the future. Again, our fight is not with the
Afghan people but with the terrorists and their supporters. We hope a
government emerges in Afghanistan that both represents the interests
of its people and does not threaten its neighbors. This is the goal of
our integrated operation of non-stop diplomacy and relentless military
strikes. And that is why we have begun marshaling international
humanitarian aid and working with our partners to develop strategies
to assist the Afghan people rebuild their society so that it never
again becomes a sanctuary for the likes of Usama bin Laden. We cannot
yet say when this first set of operations will end. But it will. And
it will be a success.
However, as President Bush has stressed from the beginning, "Our war
on terror begins with al-Qaida, but is does not end there." We cannot
become fixated on one person or organization. The threat is not just
Usama bin Laden or al-Qaida. It is much broader and we will still
confront it even after we have completed our operations in
Afghanistan. This means that the scale and scope of the campaign
against terrorism will change. In addition to the al-Qaida-Afghanistan
dimension, we will direct our efforts at other terrorist groups with
global reach-as well as their supporters wherever and whoever they may
be. We have already begun. For instance, our attack on terrorists'
financing has not been limited to al-Qaida alone. The second dimension
of the campaign will last for years or even decades.
We must therefore begin creating the machinery to fight, in President
Bush's words, "terrorism in general." We must work to establish the
frameworks for cooperation that will make us and our partners less
vulnerable to terrorism in the future and better able to fight it when
it does appear. We must be prepared to use the full range of tools of
statecraft-from law enforcement and diplomacy to intelligence and
military operations-now and in the future. The challenge of terrorism
is not transitory. Neither can be our response.
We have demonstrated that we will act alone when necessary. Our right
to self-defense is unquestioned.
But we recognize that despite our immense power, we will not be able
to achieve our objectives-ending the threat from those responsible for
the September 11th attacks and those who aided and abetted them,
destroying root and branch al-Qaida's global network, crushing other
terrorist organizations with global reach, and keeping in check future
terrorist threats-we won't be able to do all that without the help of
others.
The terrorist threat is global. It demands a global response.
And the campaign against terrorism must be multidimensional. It will
be waged on many fronts-diplomatic, military, intelligence, legal,
economic, technological.
That's why forging a worldwide coalition to combat terrorism is
critical. Quite simply, in such a broad, global effort, we will need
lots of help. Coalition-building is not an end in itself, but it is a
necessary means to our ends.
American leadership will be critical. In building this coalition, we
have shown clarity of purpose and firm resolution combined with an
appreciation of others' interests.
We are trying to forge a coalition that will be as broad as possible.
As the President has said: "If you want to join the coalition against
terror, we'll welcome you in."
This means that we are open to discussions with countries that have
had-shall we say-a checkered past when it comes to support for
terrorism. For instance, President Bush explicitly acknowledged in his
new conference last Thursday night that we have been talking with the
Syrians-despite some of their past conduct-about how they can help in
the campaign. As he said, "we take that seriously and we'll give them
an opportunity to do so."
The President's bottom line is simple: he's "more interested in action
and results."
We do not expect every country to make the same contribution to the
coalition. Differences in capabilities, location, foreign policy
outlook, and domestic concerns make this impracticable. Great Britain
and Greece, for example, can't offer the same kind of support. And the
coalition will be dynamic and flexible. It will evolve as the campaign
progresses and the fronts change.
Again, no single tool will define our approach, as President Bush and
Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld have all stressed. Different tools
will be used at different times as this sustained campaign progresses
in the months and years ahead.
We are using all the tools of statecraft in an integrated manner for
maximum impact. The campaign began with intelligence and law
enforcement cooperation; information was shared and suspects
interrogated in the United States and abroad. We moved to choke off
the financial lifeblood of terrorist networks. At the same time, we
advanced on the diplomatic front, forging a robust, broad-based
international coalition, opening lines of communications with the
Afghan opposition to the Taliban, and laying the foundations for our
military response by securing basing and overflight rights around the
world. Eight days ago our military began striking al-Qaida and the
forces of the Taliban inside Afghanistan in conjunction with a
redoubling of our humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered Afghan
people.
We are now engaged in-in President Bush's words-a "different kind of
war. It's not the kind of war that we're used to in America." So our
traditional language of "war"-and the images, metaphors, and memories
it conjures up from a previous era-does not fully capture the
challenge posed by international terrorism. A decisive, permanent
"victory" over international terrorism is unlikely. The language of
war might lead some to unrealistic expectations and sow the seeds of
later frustration. Moreover, it implies that we will use primarily
military means to confront this challenge when other tools of
statecraft will sometimes predominate.
Another way of looking at the challenge is to view international
terrorism as analogous to a terrible, lethal virus. Terrorism lives as
part of the environment. Sometimes dormant, sometimes virulent, it is
always present in some form. Like a virus, international terrorism
respects no boundaries-moving from country to country, exploiting
globalized commerce and communication to spread. It can be
particularly malevolent when it can find a supportive host. We
therefore need to take appropriate prophylactic measures at home and
abroad to prevent terrorism from multiplying and check it from
infecting our societies or damaging our lives. We need, for instance,
better border control regimes and improved international
counterterrorism cooperation across the board. We also need to make
sure that the virus does not mutate into something even more deadly
through the acquisition of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of
mass destruction.
The challenge of terrorism is thus akin to fighting a virus in that we
can accomplish a great deal but not eradicate the problem. We can take
steps to prevent it, protect ourselves from it, and, when an outbreak
occurs, quarantine it, minimize the damage it inflicts, and attack it
with all our power. Therefore, the ultimate goal of our campaign is
progress through the steady accumulation of individual successes.
Patience and persistence will be the watchwords for this campaign.
American leadership will be key. As the campaign progresses, we will
work with our coalition partners to develop long-term strategies and
mechanisms to address the terrorist threat in all its forms. Our
approach will be comprehensive. We will use all the tools in our tool
kit. And we will tailor our response to the diverse challenges that we
will face in this sustained and shifting multidimensional campaign.
Our goal is to foster a world where terrorists find it hard to ply
their trade and where people can lead their lives in peace, without
inordinate fear.
We are working with our allies to ensure the alliances forged in the
past century continue to be relevant and powerful in this one. Witness
NATO's unprecedented invocation of Article 5 of its Treaty,
Australia's invocation of Article 4 of the ANZUS Treaty, and our
Western Hemisphere allies' invocation of the Rio Treaty. And witness
our allies' active support of the military operations now underway in
Afghanistan.
We are also working to integrate countries like Russia, China, India,
and Japan, as well as the EU, into the international campaign against
terrorism. Similarly, we are seizing this opportunity to recast our
relations with Pakistan and other frontline states in this campaign.
Together, these efforts are helping to redefine key relationships in
terms suited to this post-Cold War, global era.
We will strive to integrate the world in such a way as to protect our
interests and ensure that the values we believe in are embraced as
standards, not exceptions. And by integrating new partners-countries
like Russia, China, and India-into a shared international order, we
will expand the reach of practices and institutions that both uphold
our values and interests and, at the same time, protect against those
actors and forces that threaten our peace and prosperity.
Stepping back from the challenges immediately before us, we see how
the campaign against terrorism provides a model for U.S. foreign
policy in this new century. American will continue to lead. But no
matter how much we may want to solve all the problems we face entirely
by ourselves, we cannot single handedly triumph over enduring,
transnational challenges like international terrorism. We will,
therefore, forge coalitions to respond to such transnational
challenges. We will seek to bring new partners into our efforts to
create a better future. "Results," President Bush has stressed, are
what matter. Countries' and organizations' willingness to work with us
in the future-not the animosities of the past-will guide our efforts.
And just as the challenges we face will not be surmounted quickly, we
will build structures of cooperation that will last for the long haul.
I have, therefore, one final thought I want to leave you with.
Counterterrorism is our top priority-but it cannot be our only
priority. We simply don't have the luxury of ignoring important parts
of our foreign policy agenda. So even as we confront the challenges
ahead, we cannot lose sight of the opportunities of this era. We must
use the cooperation against the threat of international terrorism to
find common ground on how to respond to a host of other bilateral and
transnational challenges and opportunities, such as developing a
strategic framework that transcends the legacies of the Cold War,
stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, fighting
infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, and promoting world trade. We also
now have real prospects for making meaningful progress in ameliorating
tensions between regional rivals in South Asia and the Middle East.
As President Bush said during his recent visit to the State
Department: "In our grief and in our sadness, I see an opportunity to
make the world a better place for generations to come. And we will
seize the opportunity."
Thank you.
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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