Reuters October 24, 2003
Rumsfeld heralds shift to "war of ideas" on terror
By Mark Trevelyan
PARIS - Questioning whether the United States is winning the war on terror, Donald Rumsfeld has set the stage for a policy shift that will put more emphasis on the struggle for hearts and minds.
In a leaked memo and in public comments this week, the U.S. defence secretary stressed the importance of defeating terrorism not just through military victories but in a "war of ideas".
In the memo, where he asked top defence officials "Are we winning or losing the global war on terror?", Rumsfeld referred three times to the danger from madrassas -- religious schools in the Islamic world which he said were recruiting young militants.
And in an interview with the Washington Times, he floated the idea of a "21st century information agency in the government" to help wage the battle of minds.
"The overwhelming majority of the people of all religions don't believe in terrorism. They don't believe in running around killing innocent men, women and children. And we need more people standing up and saying that in the world, not just us."
For critics of U.S. policy, this shift in emphasis cannot come soon enough.
French terrorism expert Xavier Raufer said Washington's strategy to date "is not working, it's stupid".
He said the key failure was precisely its inability to counter the power of Osama bin Laden's exhortations to jihad or holy war, spread via recorded messages broadcast on Arabic media, including one as recently as last Saturday.
Washington was focusing too much on the man and not enough on the message, treating the al Qaeda leader as though he was an army commander or the head of a traditional guerrilla group.
"Bin Laden is not the chief of the IRA (Irish Republican Army)," Raufer said. "His only power is to preach...He has the power to disseminate, to incite people to go into jihad, but he cannot force them. He can push people, he can inflame them but he cannot give any orders. He is not the general of an army."
LIMITED RETHINK
Many critics have long urged Washington to reappraise its wider Middle East policy to address the deeper underlying causes of Islamic terror, but Rumsfeld's comments did not suggest such a rethink was likely.
Ivo Daalder of the U.S.-based Brookings Institution said it was simplistic to suggest the key to the problem lay in the madrassas.
"He ought to be looking at the question of our policy towards the Middle East, our policy of supporting repressive Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt," he said. "It struck me it was a little too narrow a framework."
U.S.-based security analysts said the leaked Rumsfeld memo was not a sign of panic, but showed the Bush administration accepting the need to update its thinking in the light of setbacks in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
"We've been in Afghanistan nearly two years now and they're still shooting at us. And there may not have been an al Qaeda connection in Iraq a year ago but there sure is now," said John Pike, head of the GlobalSecurity.org think-tank.
"The perception is that the memo was leaked by Rummy and intended to demonstrate he's on the ball, he's not an idiot and he realises they need to continue to update their planning."
IRAQ PULLOUT 'NOT AN OPTION'
Nor do analysts see any sign of a fundamental rethink of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, which President George W. Bush has described as the central front in the war on terror.
Despite daily attacks on U.S. forces, Pike said the United States could sustain the current level of violence indefinitely and the strategic stakes in oil-rich Iraq were too high for it to walk away.
"Declaring victory and going home is not an option in Iraq the way it was in Vietnam," he said.
"If they inaugurated (former exile Ahmad) Chalabi as president and wished him well and left, some man with a moustache would show up a few days later, shoot him in the head and say that he was in charge."
Pike said any switch in Iraq policy was likely to involve intensified counter-terrorist operations by U.S. special forces. He said Washington could hope to cut its troop presence from 130,000 to 50,000 within 18 months, if within that time the Central Intelligence Agency could build up a loyal Iraqi secret police apparatus to reinforce control.
But Daalder said the temptation to scale back the U.S. occupation would increase as next year's presidential election approached, and especially if former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein were captured.
"The sign to look for is the day they get Saddam," he said. "There will be an extraordinarily large temptation to use the killing or capture of Saddam Hussein as the signal that we can now reduce our presence."
© Copyright 2003, Reuters
