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| THE COMING WAR | |
 August 25, 1998  |
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Following military strikes on a suspected terrorist camp in Afghanistan and an alleged chemical weapons plant in Sudan, the Clinton administration declared that it intends to wage war against international terrorism. Following a background report, Margaret Warner and guests discuss America's continued efforts to fight terrorism. |
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MARGARET WARNER: We get four views now. William Perry was Secretary of Defense during President Clinton's first term. Paul Bremer was ambassador-at-large for counter-terrorism at the State Department during President Reagan's second term. Robert Oakley directed the State Department's Office of Counter-terrorism in the Reagan administration. And Charles William Maynes was Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs during the Carter administration. Amb. Oakley, is the attack we saw today in South Africa, is that the kind of thing we should come to expect if we're going to engage in a high-profile war against terrorism?
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| A new phase? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Amb. Bremer, you've heard the administration, various administration officials call this a new war on terrorism, but as the resumes of all of you indicate, we've been fighting this war for quite a while. What's new about this phase?
MARGARET WARNER: Explain that. What do you mean by the same pressure points? L. PAUL BREMER: A state, for example, has diplomatic and political and commercial interests, which are vulnerable to concerted international pressure. A guy like bin Laden doesn't care about embassies, whether people withdraw their ambassadors. He's not worried about his trade deficit at the United States. We don't have very many political and economic things we can do directly to him. And we're sort of forced towards the sharp end of the stick, if you will, that is to say, covert action and military force when we deal with a guy like him. MARGARET WARNER: Secretary Perry, would you agree with that assessment of how the war on terrorism has changed?
MARGARET WARNER: And when you say soft targets, what do you mean? WILLIAM PERRY: Targets which have not been protected. The bombings in West-in Eastern Africa, for example, were against embassies that did not have all the protection measures recommended by the Inman Commission, therefore, they were relatively soft, easier targets. As we harden more and more targets, make them harder to bomb, then the terrorists will turn to other targets. In a society, an open society such as ours, we're just fundamentally vulnerable. We cannot protect every restaurant, every government building around the world. MARGARET WARNER: Bill Maynes, what do you see as new about this war now?
MARGARET WARNER: So then do you agree with the premise Amb. Bremer said that because it's no longer state terrorism but it's an individual, that in a way we have to, I think his phrase was "sharpen our use of covert action" and steps like that? CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES: Well, I don't think we can rule them out, but I think it would be a mistake if the United States had as its main response to terrorism surprise attacks, almost, you know, mini Pearl Harbors against states that were-that happened to have a terrorist group in their country. I think we have to fight to keep this a state-to-state issue and hold states responsible for the activities of groups that are on their territory. And I think we should be not only working on those states but on neighboring states to bring pressure on them. |
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| A change from the past? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: What do you think, Amb. Oakley, this war calls for now? And is it different from the past?
MARGARET WARNER: What do you mean? ROBERT OAKLEY: Well, for example, one of the things which helped us bring an end to terrorism-not an end but a sharp reduction in terrorism in the late 1980's was a lot of work on the peace process. By the time we got the Madrid Peace Conference, that was a big plus, and it increased the incentive of the Arab governments to work with us against terrorism. At the same time in the Gulf we began to protect the Arab states there who were under threat from first Iran, then Iraq, rather than shipping arms to the Iranians, which also gave them incentive to work with us. So we have to take these sort of things into account as we go along, otherwise, we're not going to get the sort of cooperation that we want. MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Bremer, do you read it that way, that we have to be willing to address the grievances or the problems or issues of some of these governments if we want to get their cooperation in curtailing activities of terrorists, whether they're individuals or otherwise?
MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree, that with someone, Bill Maynes, like bin Laden there is no political solution?
I don't think that outrage would have taken place had the British not reached the agreement with the Irish on that fundamental agreement. And so they lost their allies. They lost the acquiescence of their community. And it's that kind of-we have to have a strategy that tries to deprive bin Laden of allies. Just today, the vice president of Chechnya denounced Americans and defended bin Laden and said that Muslims should attack Americans. We want to deny that kind of support. |
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| A religious war? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Secretary Perry, that raises a question which is: How do we prevent this war that we're waging from being seen by the rest of the world as really a war against Muslims, some what 20 percent of the world's population? WILLIAM PERRY: We have to be very clear and straightforward about our goals here. Our goals are to prevent the murder of innocent women and children. This is not, in our view, a religious war. It is people who are murdering civilians to achieve political objectives, and we should be very clear that that's how we see it and that's how we're functioning. We do not have-we have no problem-the Muslim religion-we have many hundreds of thousands of Muslims living happily in this country. So we need to be very clear on that point. But in the war that we're talking about to the extent the diplomatic actions that are described are not successful, we still need a multi-dimensional action program, which includes improved intelligence and includes improved passive defense, improving the structure of the embassy buildings and military bases. It includes preventive defense, trying to keep nerve gas and anthrax out of the hands of terrorists. It involves improved ways of what I would call consequence management, so that if something like nerve gas is used against us, which the policemen and fire department may not be able to cope with, that we have ways of moving very, very quickly to help the people who have been injured and attacked. MARGARET WARNER: And what role-staying with you for a minute-do you see for the U.S. military in this? I mean, it's kind of-
MARGARET WARNER: Would you agree, Amb. Oakley, that the military steps are really last resort, or to be used sparingly? ROBERT OAKLEY: Well, as Bill Perry was pointing out, in some cases they can be preventive; they can help protect installations; they can help with intelligence; at the same time they can help strike, as they did against the camps in Afghanistan. You had the military-has a broad range of capabilities, which are really invaluable, and we have to use them all, together with the civilians, so it has to be a combined effort, I think. MARGARET WARNER: Amb. Bremer, I'd like to go back to something you raised earlier about the use of covert operations. What are you talking about really?
MARGARET WARNER: I noticed you didn't say assassinated. Would you say that the executive order that still exists against assassination by anyone who works for the U.S. Government applies not only to foreign leaders but to foreign individuals, in general? |
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| The assassination ban | ||||||||||||||||||||
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L. PAUL BREMER: I have never quite understood the moral and ethical arguments for this assassination ban. After the Marine Corps barracks-the Marine bombing in Lebanon in 1983, the United States responded by putting a battleship offshore of Lebanon and lobbing Volkswagen-size shells into villages in the mountains in Lebanon as our retaliation, killing villagers who were not even from the same tribe of the people who had planted the bomb. I don't understand why that should be somehow a legitimate response to terrorism, whereas if we know somebody who's guilty-and we know bin Laden is guilty-he, himself, declared war on us-as Secretary Perry mentioned-I don't understand what the ethical argument is that we shouldn't be able to go kill him. MARGARET WARNER: You want to take that up, Bill Maynes?
MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, gentlemen, thank you all four very much. We have to leave it there. |
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ROBERT OAKLEY, Former State Department Official: I suspect this was
an isolated event by someone who wanted to improve the image of their
organization by claiming it's hooked to bin Laden, but, yes, this is
the sort of thing one can expect, and we have to be prepared for it,
and I think we are reasonably well prepared for it. But, above all,
we have to get other governments to work with us in order to prevent
this from happening.
L. PAUL BREMER, Former State Department Official: I don't think it's
a new war, especially since I'm not aware that we ever had a peace with
the terrorists. It's a continuation of a war. What is new now is that
we are seeing less involvement directly by states in terrorism and more
involvement by autonomous or freelancing groups, who don't have the
same pressure points that states have, and, therefore, it makes it a
more complicated battle for us.
WILLIAM PERRY, Former Secretary of Defense: Well, first of all, I think
we're going to see many more attacks of the conventional type, using
car bombs, pipe bombs, truck bombs, typically against soft targets.
Now, I'm more concerned about the introduction of weapons of mass destruction,
nerve gas and anthrax. In my judgment it's not question of whether but
when and where. And we may also see attacks on our cyber networks, that
is, the information infrastructures, which control our communications,
transportation, power networks, and we may even seen the introduction
of nuclear bombs. So what is changing is the intensity and scale of
the attacks, and I'm very much concerned about that. And that means
that we have to increase the intensity and scale of our defensive efforts.
CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES, Former State Department Official: Well, I think
the others have identified it as the fact that we thought in the past
that some governments were directly funding, directly encouraging, even
directing various terrorist groups. Now they're acquiescing in their
presence, in their country, but I would point out that the terrorists
we're after are basically in what you might call fatal societies, or
societies that are on the verge of failure. So that also makes it difficult
to bring pressure on those governments, because the governments basically
don't control anything more than the capital city or maybe even a couple
of buildings inside of it.
ROBERT OAKLEY: Well, in some ways it's not different from the past.
Remember that Lebanon was almost as much of a no-man's land in the 1980's
as Afghanistan is now. You had terrorists from all over the world who
were taking refuge and operating out of Lebanon. But we used a combination
of things during the late 1980's-we used occasionally a military attack
on Libya-we used a lot of very good intelligence work. We were able
to get other governments to work with us in disrupting-first identifying
and then disrupting the terrorist networks. But, above all, we have
to give other governments an incentive to work with us. We have to show
that we're attentive to their problems at the same time they're going
to help us with our problems.
L. PAUL BREMER: Well, of course, there's obviously a place in the counter-terrorism
strategy. It has to be the central place for a broad political and economic
effort. And it's only when you run out of those kinds of mechanisms
that you have to turn to covert action and military action. And it's
of course helpful to address other people's concerns. But I would say
in the case of people like bin Laden, there really is no-there's nothing
we can do politically to satisfy him. There's no point in addressing
the so-called root causes of bin Laden's despair with us. We are the
root cause of his terrorism. He doesn't like America. He doesn't like
our society. He doesn't like what we stand for. He doesn't like our
values. And short of the United States going out of existence, there's
no way to deal with the root cause of his terrorism. So we need to be
clear on where we use the political and military and where we have to
take covert action and use political or economic elsewhere.
CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES: Well, in the narrow way that Paul described
it, I do agree with that, but the issue here is trying to deny him allies.
What we want to do is adopt the kind of strategy that the ambassador
was mentioning to get the kind of result that we just had in Ireland,
where the two people who are seen as leaders of the real IRA were shouted
down by their villagers, could not reach their shop, could not open
up because there was such outrage over what had happened with the recent
bombing.
WILLIAM PERRY: That is the last resort and when military action is used,
it is used primarily, it seems to me, as a preemptive measure. The attack
on the Khartoum plant was a preemptive attack because we wanted to destroy
that plant before the nerve gas it was producing could be used against
other innocent civilians. In addition to that, the military has probably
the best expertise anywhere in the country in how to detect and deal
with nerve gas or biological attacks. And, therefore, they need to assess
law enforcement officials in that regard.
L. PAUL BREMER: Well, it seems to me there's a whole broad range of
things that we can do to play on the terrorist's natural paranoia. Every
terrorist is afraid that he's going to be betrayed by even his closest
associates. And there are all kinds of things one could do like putting
out a notice that we'll pay a very high ransom for bin Laden, dead or
alive. We could put out stories in the press that he's actually not
a good Muslim, that he has-was guilty of a lot of very high living early
on life. We could put out stories along the lines of something Mr. Maynes
is mentioning, that we're in very serious conversations now with the
Taliban Government of Afghanistan about turning him over to us. He may
get nervous enough from a variety of these kinds of stories to leave
Afghanistan, and when he hits the road, he is very vulnerable to being
intercepted, arrested, and brought to justice. I think we've got to
try to keep him off balance. That's our objective at the moment.
CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES: It's mainly a prudential argument. The Israelis
and the Palestinians have had a terrible struggle with one another over
the years, and they finally reached an agreement privately that they
would not go after one another's leaders. We have the experience with
Cuba that is a very unfortunate one, and, in fact, just this week we've
arrested a number of Cuban-Americans apparently who were plotting the
assassination of Castro. We are such an open society that for us to
follow such a policy would be very self-destructive.
