No, I don’t have a better word, but I understand clearly what you’re saying now and I largely agree.

Yeah, in general I trust the people on the ground (in aggregate, I surely don’t trust all individuals) but having grown up and worked with federal bureaucracy I’ve seen first hand how easily political rhetoric can lead to terrible policy when someone up the chain gets into trouble or decides they want more power. Maybe instead of focusing on the local/national element I should have addressed it in terms of policy coming from the day to day operatives vs the head office.

I also concede that when I say “primarily military” and “militaristic” I was talking about mentality, not necessarily function. A militaristic mentality is that there are two sides and you can hunt down and destroy/capture the bad guys and eventually win by eliminating them all through strength. To be very confusing, much of the military is actually not very “militaristic” right now because they are focusing as peacekeepers and are thus more concerned with nation building. Regardless of whether you think it’ll work or not, you can’t argue that Petraeus doesn’t understand and respect the subtleties of the insurgency and he’s stated that he believes the burden is on us to prove to the Iraqis that we aren’t a threat. Do you have a better word for what I’m trying to convey?

traditional intelligence and law enforcement will work here in the US, but what about overseas? There are obvious complications.

The reason local law enforcement don’t focus on terrorism is because they have more than they can handle already and most terrorism crimes are federal crimes. Additionally, groups like AQ get assistance from outside the US and the locals do not have the resources in manpower, equipment, and training to tackle the problem. Can they help? Sure. Can they detain suspicious people? Sure. But not much more than that.

Your definition of what is “militaristic” is much different from mine. Having served in the military, warrantless wiretaps, domestic surveillance of any kind, etc. have nothing to do with the military. Domestic surveillance is law enforcement by the FBI – how is that militaristic? We can debate the legitimacy of various types of surveillance, oversight, etc., but those things have nothing to with the military and are not “primarily military” functions in the fight against terrorists.

Furthermore, I don’t know anyone in any position of government with knowledge on the subject who would suggest that the terrorist threat is “monolithic.” Political rhetoric may be monolithic, but the people actually combatting terrorism know the difference – just like the people fighting in the equally misnamed “war on drugs.”

As for Pakistan, it’s a difficult problem. We must recognize geopolitical boundaries that the locals do not. Pakistan’s government was never able, and is increasingly less willing, to bring the tribal areas under control. There don’t seem to be any solutions except an indefinite presence in Afghanistan and a stable government in Pakistan to keep the cancer in the tribal areas from spreading.

But I should be more specific…I consider warantless wiretaps, increased domestic survelliance, enemy combatant status and a general us vs. them mentality as “militaristic” because they suggest an organized monolithic enemy that can be destroyed through attrition. I contrast this with traditional intelligence and law enforcement that is driven by citizen provided tips and followed up with very directed detective work.

To me the major mistake that they are making is trying to have a top-down solution where the national governments make all the decisions/information and completely hinder local agencies. I think it’d be more effective and safer for civil liberties to have investigations take place primarily on the local/state level and have the FBI help make links between domestic investigations and the CIA help draw international links.

I dunno how to tackle it, but Pakistan is the ultimate example of how the current mentality is misguided. We can’t use military force there and I have yet to read any suggestions about how to react to this. Like you point out, it’ll take decades to confront these problems but we have no coherent plan on how to contain the terrorists and relate to regimes that don’t have the same geopolitical goals.

What are the alternatives? Terrorism is only one of many reasons we’re in Iraq. Same with Afghanistan – we disabled the terrorist infrastructure and moved on to security, reconstruction, etc. The terrorist infrastructure moved across the border to Pakistan where we can’t touch it militarily.

I’m no fan of the “war on terror” phrase either, but with the exception of Iraq and Afghanistan, how are we prosecuting terrorism primarily through military means?

Nation state security is important and that’s exactly what we’re doing in Afghanistan, and it’s what we’re trying to do now in Iraq. In virtually every other part of the world we are assisting States in fighting terrorism with a variety of measures.

Reid was “captured” by passengers on the plane and arrested. Rassam was arrest by a border agent. If these aren’t law enforcement, then what are they?

Moreover these experts believe that the primary way to contain the problem is to maintain nation-state security and use soft power/police enforcement because terrorism can operate much more effectively in anarchy. (There is a fair criticism that these people support maintaining status quos that led to the anger and discontent that fuels terrorism in the first place.)

In general, helping the Philippines, etc. falls along these. I won’t say that the Reid and Rassam cases do — let’s face it, they were hardly captured because of what our law enforcement was doing. However, regardless of our policies I think it is hard to argue that our rhetoric about terrorism isn’t almost completely militaristic.

Mikkel,

This is precisely what anti-terrorism experts predicted would happen as long as we treated terrorism primarily as a military issue.

What experts? Terrorism is being fought from a variety of angles. Since there are a lot of terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq it naturally becomes a military problem in those cases. Richard Reid, Ahmed Rassam and others were arrested, tried and are serving time in the US for terrorist crimes. In places like the Philippines, among others, we are providing training, money and equipment so they can deal with the terrorists on their soil.

“Primarily military” really depends on your point of view. I’m not sure how one is supposed to use law enforcement to stop terrorism in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

It’s important to point out that AQ and associated/splinter groups and movement will never be completely wiped out – at least not within the next few decades. International terrorist groups are extraordinarily resilient. Even nationalist groups are difficult to destroy. The Red Brigades and others eventually were, but ETA is still alive and kicking, not to mention the Tamil Tigers.

Al Qaeda means “The Foundation” and the explicit goal from the start was to radicalize muslims and teach lots of people how to create their own independent cells. The centralized command and control was only suppossed to be the first stage — the second is where Al Qaeda the organization is destroyed or minimized but their operational philosophy of how to conduct attacks and rile up the populace has diffused globally.