CQ HOMELAND SECURITY
June 30, 2011 – 9:42 p.m.
Critics Say New Counterterrorism Strategy Has Weaknesses
By Jennifer Scholtes, CQ Staff
While the newly unveiled White House counterterrorism strategy emphasizing the need to disrupt al Qaeda and its affiliates has largely been applauded in the security world, some have begun to criticize the narrowed plan as deficient in some key aspects.
The proposal laid out Wednesday was billed as consistent with many of the goals of the George W. Bush administration but unique in its mission to solely hone in on dismantling al Qaeda and related groups by applying targeted and surgical pressure. Although there are benefits to the approach, such a singular focus will likely make it easier for the al Qaeda to evade U.S. efforts to dismantle it, said James Jay Carafano, director of foreign policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
A good plan complicates an enemy’s strategy, forcing it into taking defensive action, Carafano said. The Bush administration’s tactics were more balanced, he argued, while the current White House’s approach is more of a “whack-a-mole strategy,” cutting down the scope of the defensive efforts al Qaeda must coordinate.
“In a sense this strategy has kind of made the enemy’s life more simple, because it’s basically saying we’re going to do one thing, we’re going to come and hunt you down,” he said. “Basically, what it seems is that everything else in the strategy is being dropped off. So it strikes me more as a strategy by subtraction.”
Pinpointing terrorist hotbeds, instead of sending forces into wider territory, requires reliable intelligence, but doesn’t provide as many opportunities to gather critical information on the battlefield, Carafano said.
“It kind of seems like it’s turned counterterrorism into a video game,” he said. “We’re going to sit here, somebody’s going to go out and tell us where these guys are. And we’re going to go out, and we’re going to take it out.”
The approach seems politically convenient, painting the narrative the administration wants — one in which efforts in Afghanistan and working with troubling allies are unimportant, he said.
But the White House has made clear that it will continue to work with allies and that the new counterterrorism blueprint recognizes that stifling terrorism depends on foreign policy efforts. John O. Brennan, assistant to the president on homeland security and counterterrorism, said the administration will be focus on specific regions such as Yemen, Iraq and Somalia, where al Qaeda’s affiliates have proliferated as the United States has targeted the organization’s core.
With al Qaeda’s recruitment expanding beyond the Middle East as it attracts supporters in Western nations through the Internet, the new strategy seeks to address the possibility of domestic terrorism. Brennan said the plan is the first to focus on the ability of al Qaeda and its network to inspire those within U.S. borders to attack the nation.
But there is a missing dimension to the plans for countering ideology, said Frank Cilluffo, head of the George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute.
In Britain, Cilluffo noted, there is a national plan for combating radicalization, called the “prevent strategy,” which lays out efforts to thwart the spread of terrorist ideology, such as providing support to prisons and other institutions in which individuals are at a higher risk of being recruited.
Cilluffo said he is eager to see the administration officials further explain intentions for taking on the issue of ideology.
Jennifer Scholtes can be reached at jscholtes@cq.com