The National Strategy for Counterterrorism was posted on the White House website June 29. While the classified version is, of course, not available to the public, the unclassified version explained in simple terms how the president and his closest security advisers view the terrorist threat and how they intend to defeat it.
For this administration, to a greater extent than its predecessor, the al-Qaeda network, its affiliates and adherents, is the principal focus of the counterterrorism strategy. There are a lot of bad guys out there— for example, Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, but al-Qaeda “poses the most direct and significant threat to the United States,” according to the report.
To explain the strategy, John O. Brennan spoke June 29 at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). With the official title, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, Brennan, 55, is Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and generally confers with the president every day. He had a long CIA career, from 1980–2005, and has served many presidents.
Brennan said that the document formalizes the approach that has evolved in the previous two and half years to prevent terrorist attacks and “to ensure al-Qaeda’s demise.”
“This is war—a broad, sustained, integrated and relentless campaign that harnesses every element of American power. And we seek nothing less than the utter destruction of this evil that calls itself al-Qaeda,” Brennan said.
Brennan said that specific counterterrorism goals in the Obama administration mostly continue the goals of the Bush administration. But there are some changes. For example, President Obama wants the world’s nuclear materials secured in four years’ time to prevent al-Qaeda from acquiring or developing weapons of mass destruction.
Brennan emphasized President Obama’s ban, from his first days in office, of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. Brennan said they do not work and “America does not torture.”
Brennan called for “aggressively” confronting the al-Qaeda ideology, which he called “medieval,” because it divides people by faith and gender rather than our approach, which assumes “Muslims and Christians, men and women, secular and religious,” can all work together.
He often contrasted the ideological difference between al-Qaeda and the United States. Brennan says that the United States promotes the peaceful resolution of political disputes and grievances, while al-Qaeda asserts the only way to achieve change is through violence.
“Now that claim has been thoroughly repudiated … by ordinary citizens, in Tunisia and Egypt and beyond, who are changing and challenging their governments through peaceful protest, even as they are sometimes met with horrific brutality, as in Libya and Syria,” Brennan said.
Brennan said that members of al-Qaeda portraying the group as a religious movement defending the rights of Muslims is a sham; al-Qaeda are “murderers.” He said, “There is nothing Islamic or holy about slaughtering innocent men, women, and children.”
Next...‘Al-Qaeda Is in Its Decline’
‘Al-Qaeda Is in Its Decline’
Brennan touted the recent successes in killing key al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Its leadership ranks have been decimated, and it will be forced to replace the slain leaders in nearly all of its affiliates with less experienced individuals.
He rattled off the names of many high-ranking al-Qaeda leaders who have been killed, including al-Qaeda’s third-ranking leader; three “operatives” of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen; the leader of the Pakistan Taliban; and a dangerous al-Qaeda commander. He also mentioned the killing by Somali security forces June 7 of Harun Fazul, the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa and the mastermind of bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
“All told, over the past two and half years, virtually every major al-Qaeda affiliate has lost its key leader or operational commander, and more than half of al-Qaeda’s top leadership has been eliminated.”
The terrorist organization can’t simply replenish their leaders from its ranks when they are being eliminated at a high rate.
Maj. Gen. Richard Mills in an interview May 2 by the Institute for the Study War (ISW) said that he saw al-Qaeda commanders in Helmand Province of the equivalent of the battalion level with an age of about 35—seasoned, experienced commanders—being replaced typically by an inexperienced 23-year old because the special forces killed so many of their commanders. “It meant the promotion of younger, more inexperienced people and it really took away some of the real motivators, if you will, who could come up from Pakistan, deliver a message, and inspire people around them,” said Mills.
The greatest blow to al-Qaeda has been the death of Osama bin Laden, a symbolic and charismatic figure that inspired many to identify with al-Qaeda and take up arms against the United States and other nations. It left the organization without an effective operational commander, according to Mills.
Brennan also was pleased that al-Qaeda only had as a leader “Ayman al-Zawahiri, an aging doctor who lacks bin Laden’s charisma and perhaps the loyalty and respect of many in al-Qaeda.” Too, the fact it took so long to settle on Zawahiri may indicate dissension in the organization.
Brennan painted a pathetic, demoralized picture of bin Laden’s final days. “There he was, hold up for years, behind high prison walls, isolated from the world.”
The final image seen around the world is a lonely old terrorist, “hunched over in a blanket, flipping through old videos” of himself.
Based on information found at his compound, bin Laden was concerned about al-Qaeda’s future. “He saw his senior leaders being taken down, one by one, and worried about the ability to replace them effectively.” Brennan said bin Laden called for more large-scale attacks against America, but his followers resisted his entreaties. He even considered changing al-Qaeda’s name, said Brennan.
Brennan acknowledges that a serious threat from al-Qaeda will persists for some time. He particularly singled out AQAP as the most operationally active affiliate on the al-Qaeda network and “poses a serious, direct threat to the United States.”
AQAP in Yemen sent a Nigerian student on Christmas Day 2009 to detonate an explosive device on an airline bound for Detroit.
Late last year, AQAP attempted to place explosives in packages on a cargo plane, which could have blown up over the United States but for a tip-off from Saudi Arabia intelligence, said Brennan.
Also, an insurgent group in Somalia, al-Shabaab, with ties to al-Qaeda, calls for strikes against the United States.
“It will take time, but make no mistake, al-Qaeda is in its decline,” Brennan said.
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