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« Back to Feeling Secure in a time of Terror main page    Transcript for: Feeling Secure in a time of TerrorWATTENBERG: From urban guerrillas in the 1960’s to Islamicterror in the 1990’s, modern society has been threatened by terrorism. What have we learned? What can be done? To find out we are joined by Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation, one of the world’s foremost experts on terrorism and author of 'Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves.'The topic before the house – Feeling secure in a time of terror. This week on Think Tank. Brian Jenkins, welcome to THINK TANK. Delighted to have you here. We are taping this on the campus of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. This is our first visit here, it’s a remarkable place. We hope it’s not our last. Let me as you to give us a brief recounting of where you were born, when you were born, where you went to school, what go you interested in international terrorism. JENKINS: Well, a quick biography. I was born in Chicago in 1942, grew up all over the country in Illinois and Arkansas and the last place we got to before my dad shipped out overseas to be a soldier in World War Two -- also brought up in Arizona and then finally in California. I have and 18th Century education. My degrees are in fine arts and I have post graduate degrees in history and in humanities. WATTENBERG: Those are the best degrees for anything. JENKINS: They are, it’s a classical education. I -- in order to get through university I like many young man in the 1950’s cut a deal with the Army so that the Army would enable me to go to school, subsidize my education – WATTENBERG: Through the ROTC? JENKINS: Through the – WATTENBERG: I was in the Air Force through the ROTC. JENKINS: And a lot of fellows did it. That was the way you got through school and -- JENKINS: So, I then -- following spending a couple of years with the Army’s permission and studying abroad with a Fulbright scholarship -- went on active duty. Was in special forces, it was with the introduction of -- the US forces went into the Dominican Republic. When that was finished, I volunteered for Vietnam, served in special forces in Vietnam -- WATTENBERG: As a what? JENKINS: I was a captain then with an A detachment in the Northern part of South Vietnam on the Laotian frontier. That was the first tour. And then when I came back I was asked if I would return to Vietnam in a different capacity working as a member of a long range planning task group that was involved in special operations and served another two years in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. WATTENBERG: You were right in the middle of the combat. JENKINS: Yes. And finally joined RAND’s staff in 1972 directly from military service and it was at that time, really, that I first began to -- I shouldn’t say first, I have to correct myself-- I had already because of my experience in Latin America, because of the experience in the Dominican Republic -- because of the experience in Southeast Asia -- be fascinated by how conflict was evolving in the world. And one of the changes taking place at that time was the growing phenomenon of what was then called not terrorism but urban guerilla warfare, we were seeing the kidnappings and bombings in South American cities, we were seeing the hijackings, the -- in the Middle East we were seeing the first appearance of some of the terrorist groups in Europe. And, so, I wrote a memorandum – WATTENBERG: Let me just hold for a minute. When 9/11 hit everybody sort of -- not everybody, most people said, oh, my god this is brand new, holy smokes war of terrorism. It is as old as mankind isn’t it, terrorism. It’s the classic weapon of the weak against the strong. JENKINS: terrorism is not new. Terrorism -- you can find examples of terrorism in ancient history, except that we know about ancient history – WATTENBERG: And, of course, in 1914, that’s what triggered World War Two the assassination of the Arch Duke – JENKINS: That’s exactly right. What had changed though -- there was a difference on the contemporary terrorism that we see still evolving today and took place in the late 1960’s. And that was a confluence of both political circumstances and technological developments. The political circumstances were the proliferation of guerilla armies in Latin America, in Asia, of urban guerilla groups in Europe, the technological developments were the development of modern air transportation, the ability to get on a jet in any major city in the world and fly to 50 - 60 different countries. That meant the conflict was no longer local. WATTENBERG: except now you have to take your shoes off. JENKINS: Take your shoes off. WATTENBERG: [speaking over] and your belt, it’s got a metal buckle, hold your pants up JENKINS: The developments in communications, communications satellites, the spread of television, the ability to broadcast dramatic breaking news to a global audience -- if you think of terrorism – WATTENBERG: [speaking over] a lot of terrorism is designed for publicity isn’t it. That’s to get -- way to get your message out isn’t it. JENKINS: One of my most famous phrases was terrorism is theater. Terrorism is violence that is calculated to create a reaction among an audience. The actual victims are unimportant to the terrorists themselves. Their identities make no difference. Terrorism – WATTENBERG: [speaking over] they want what we call in the television business -- they want the eyeballs. JENKINS: Absolutely, terrorism is aimed at the people watching. WATTENBERG: You know it’s very interesting, it’s not only terrorism, it’s politics -- politics is theater and the good politicians know how to use it. Mahatma Gandhi -- if you saw that movie Gandhi with Ben Kingsley, he’s in South Africa trying to create some liberty for the Hindus, I guess. He’s setting up a demonstration way out in the [unintelligible] and there are thousands of people there. And the train from Pretoria gets in late with the British journalists -- a few hours late -- and they’re let’s -- we aren’t demonstrating until the press gets here. JENKINS: But fast forward from India in the 1940’s to South America in the late 1960’s. Here are these guerilla armies that proliferated, trying to imitate the success of Fidel Castro in Cuba -- had gone nowhere. They were confined to mountain tops in remote pieces of jungle. No one even knew they were there. And, so, there is this strategic debate and they move into the cities. And the reason they move into the cities is precisely the point that you just made and that is cities are the centers of communications that – WATTENBERG: [speaking over] That’s where the cameras are. JENKINS: That’s where the cameras are. So, if they carry out some attack on some remote jungle, who’s going to know about it except the local military garrison. And if they carry out a dramatic attack in a capital city, that news – WATTENBERG: What’s interesting Brian, Everything you say about high tech and airliners and high quality explosives and communications are all true. But it can also be extremely effective in the lowest tech sort of way. It does not take a genius to roll a hand grenade into an outdoor pizzeria and into the United States or London or Paris. You had ten such events in one day and not that hard to organize [noise] pull the pin, you have chaos, maybe as much as 9/11 Now, these democracies are pretty strong. I mean you’d be -- you’d have chaos and panic for a day or two or a week, and then they’d say hey you know we’re going to keep flying, we’re going to keep going to restaurants. I mean the Israelis have had it about as anyone.As soon as the terror attacks are over -- the next day you go out in the mainstream of Tel Aviv and there they are again. [speaking over] and truly good people understand that you can’t let them win by saying I’m not going to fly any more. JENKINS: That’s true but that requires a tremendous amount of will on the part of the people and here’s the real challenge. And I wrote this -- I wrote this 35 years ago: power -- power defined crudely is the capacity to kill, to destroy, to disrupt, to create alarm, to oblige us to divert vast resources to security. That kind of power is descending into the hands of smaller and smaller groups. Gangs whose grievances real or imaginary -- it’s not always going to be possible to satisfy them. Or to put it another way, the irreconcilables, the fanatics, the lunatics that have exited throughout history have become in our age an increasingly potent force to be reckoned with. And how we deal with that within the context of a democratic society and remain a democratic society is one of the major – WATTENBERG: I mean it’s clear that it’s important. Now, I want to ask you one question -- 9/11 -- if on 9/12 or 9/13 someone said, Brian Jenkins, let’s fast forward to late 2007 and after 9/11 there hasn’t been a single important terrorist act in the United States -- almost zero I guess a couple little tiny things -- and I said would you give me even money on that -- I mean my instinct would have been to say, no way. We’re going to have a lot of this and, yet, somehow it hasn’t happened I’m curious -- and you’re at the cutting edge -- is it because of what our Homeland Security did, the much maligned Homeland Security. Is it what we did with our allies -- the Brits have stopped a lot of stuff, the French are cooperating, certainly even more now with the new government. The Japanese are cooperating. Are the nations of the world pulling up their socks and saying, look, we know this is going to happen, but we’re going to minimize it and we can live with it if we have to. JENKINS: To a degree, yes. Those would have been -- those are part of the explanation. It’s always harder to explain why things don’t happen than to explain why things do happen. And in fact the analysts -- we’re still -- we are still struggling with the issue why hasn’t there been another terrorist attack in the United States and here are some of the reasons. In part we like to think it’s because of our improvements in intelligence, our improvements in Homeland Security -- not just in this country, but as you pointed out internationally. There has been since 9/11 an unprecedented unanimity of focus among the intelligence services of the world and law enforcement agencies that have made the operating environment for these terrorists a lot more hostile, a lot more dangerous for them. And we see this in a number of plots that have been interrupted. At the same time there’s no question that going into Afghanistan and dispersing those Al Qaeda training camps, removing some of the key operational plans, keeping that leadership on the run did degrade their operational capabilities. So, the environment got more hostile and their capabilities were degraded. Our security went up. Now, that did not prevent them from carrying out a string of attacks worldwide. Indonesia, to Tunisia, to Morocco, to Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, to Spain, to the United Kingdom -- and in fact after 9/11 they have kept up a fairly significant frequency of operations. They were averaging about one operation every two months up until just the beginning of this year. WATTENBERG: Of this year, 2007. JENKINS: Correct. And now that pace has slowed down a bit. We haven’t seen – WATTENBERG: So insofar as the metrics are concerned, insofar as we can define it, it seems to be getting less. We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. JENKINS: Right now it appears to be getting less and what we’re -- we’re not quite certain how to interpret that. Is it because they are devoting more resources to conflicts in Afghanistan, trying to exploit the situation in Iraq which they certainly have been doing. Develop new connections in the Horn of Africa and across Africa -- keep in mind they don’t measure time the way we do. We Americans are a typically impatient nation. And we talk about time tables. IN Bin Laden’s words, this conflict began centuries ago and will continue until judgment day. So, when we say metrics, that’s a reflection of our culture. They don’t worry about the metrics. We have degraded their operational capability but we haven’t dented – WATTENBERG: [speaking over] If you take some young kid coming out of one of those terrorist schools and he’s 16 years old, 17 years old and he’s been told, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming. We’re going to take over Israel, we’re going to take over the world, Allah’s going to take over the world. A year goes by, two years go by, five years go by. He either does get married or doesn’t get married, his life is in danger, doesn’t at some point he starts to say this isn’t quite adding up? I mean that’s what we want him to say. [speaking over each other] JENKINS: And to be sure, you know, we don’t know the degrees of disillusion that’s taking place within the -- within the ranks of our terrorist folks. I’m sure it’s taking place and we want to get better at being able to take advantage of that, exploit that. Because if our strategy is confined to simply killing them or arresting every one of them, then we’re going to be doing that for decades and decades. So, we have to -- we have to find some way of eroding their will, denting that determination, bringing some of these fellows, not the hard core dedicated radical, but bring some of the others around. And we can -- we can do that. But for the others, it’s not a matter of absence of progress, because this is -- their notion of fighting is process oriented not progress oriented. WATTENBERG: Let me ask you a question. I’m going to appoint you President of the United States. Mr. President – JENKINS: Heaven forbid. WATTENBERG: -- let me give you a veto proof majority in the Congress. I’m going to make the courts fairly loose. You hear through your intelligence services, maybe the Brits tell you, something’s cooking. We’re not exactly sure what. It may be big, it may be dangerous, it may be small. We think we have the following eight guys who know what it’s about, they won’t talk. Will you authorize some form of what is called torture, water boarding -- I don’t know what all these things mean. Mr. President, your call. JENKINS: No, I will not. I will not. WATTENBERG: Then I don’t think you’re a very good President. JENKINS: I’ll tell you why water boarding torture, whether we do it or whether we send them to another country knowing that it will be done is illegal. It is immoral. WATTENBERG: Excuse me, it is not illegal. What is going on -- I mean the new Attorney General, so far as we speak, has refused to rule on it JENKINS: It can never be authorized. It can never be authorized. Because that is the most fundamental violation of values for which this country stands. WATTENBERG: Can you -- if you’re President can you say, yes, to your trusted aide that, hey, don’t tell me about it, do what you have to do. JENKINS: I don’t want to get into a wink and a nod. Let me back off and say, let me be the person that knows. Any person that is faced with those specific circumstances -- and believes that by engaging in torture they’ll save a city, they’ll saves thousands of people, then they will do what they have to do, but they will do what they have to do knowing that they are committing a terrible crime to do it, fully cognizant -- [speaking over each other] WATTENBERG: If in 1942 you were the President and you authorized somebody to use torture to find you about Hitler and were able to assassinate Hitler and abort World War Two in 1942, would you go to your grave saying I committed a sin or I created something great? JENKINS: You know if I were in a position where I would have to decide, then I’d say I will decide to do it and I will take the responsibility for it. And I will be open about it and I expect to be impeached or after my term of office I will be prosecuted for it. WATTENBERG: My guess is that they would have built a statue to you, but go ahead. JENKINS: They may build a statue and send me to prison at the same time. But the fact is -- WATTENBERG: That’s happened before. JENKINS: But the fact is that we can never excuse it. It has to -- the principle -- the principle has to be upheld. That is our fundamental American values. You know in the long run -- and we’ve come through dark moments in our history – in the long run it’s not going to be the concrete barriers, it’s not going to be taking your shoes off at the airport. Quite frankly, it’s not going to be water boarding that is going to save this country. It is going to American courage, our continuing commitment to our basic values – WATTENBERG: All right, we can end that here. I don’t think those are mutually exclusive, but we don’t have to pursue that further. Now in a statistical the recent terrorist attacks on a statistical measurement are not terribly dangerous. I mean we’ve lost -- terrible tragedy three thousand people in World Trade Center, 35 thousand people a year are being killed in automobile accidents. JENKINS: Absolutely true. WATTENBERG: So, again it’s part of this wonderful aspect of a free press. We put everything out there, it scares the pants off of people but it’s also our job to say let’s put this a little bit in perspective without being callous. And you have to make a distinction between a risk to the community and a risk to the individual. An event like 9/11 does major damage to a community in addition to the three thousand lives lost, the hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and destruction. We’re in a couple of wars as a consequence of that. It had enormous impact on the psyche of the nation. That is a community cost. Of course we’re going to do everything we can as a community to prevent that from recurring. That does not translate into a significantly increased risk for the individual citizen and that’s what people have to keep in mind. The fact is your statistics are absolutely correct. The average American has about a one in seven thousand -- one in eight thousand change of dying in an automobile accident. Has about a one in 17 - 18 thousand chance of being a victim of ordinary homicide. Chances of being killed in terrorist incident in this country, even taking our actuarial chart only from 9/11 forward to today is about one in 650 thousand. Now -- so it’s not an individual risk, it’s a community -- [speaking over each other] WATTENBERG: I work in the press and the freedom of expression and I wouldn’t for a minute tell people not to cover these things. But the sad fact of it is when we give this massive publicity to these -- to the terrorist acts, we’re playing right into their hands. Because if we turned off the publicity spigot they’d say -- as you said -- with the -- you know that’s why we’re doing it. I don’t know how to answer that question JENKINS: 08:07:38:08 We can’t turn off the spigot without again fundamentally going against the basic principles that we believe. So, what you end up doing is the following -- is you end up saying, look, obviously they exploit the media. We cannot make that media go away, so we’re going to have to learn how to exploit it as well. You know in jungle warfare school -- you go to jungle warfare school -- this old sergeant that was there many years ago that used to tell every incoming class exactly the same thing. The jungle is not your enemy, the jungle is not your friend, the jungle is neutral. Learn how to operate in the jungle and you can keep from getting hurt and occasionally turn it to your advantage. In today’s warfare the communications networks, the media -- that is another battlefield. We can’t make that battlefield go away, so what we have to do is become very very creative at learning how to operate in that battlefield, keep from getting hurt and occasionally turning it to our advantage and that we can do. WATTENBERG: Brian Jenkins, thank you so very much for being with us. We hope you’re back on THINK TANK again. And thank you. Please remember to send us your comments via email. We think it makes THINK TANK a better program. For THINK TANK I’m Ben Wattenberg. Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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