- A few days ago Queen Elizabeth II of England delivered
a traditional Speech from the Throne. The speech centered - as is traditional--on
the main elements of Prime Minister Tony Blair,s program for the coming
year. One of the key points in her recital was the Blair plan to greatly
increase British devotion to the War on Terrorism. As a rule, one of the
purposes of this speech is to put a Royal seal of approval on the politically
developed programs of the ruling party, but for the British, priority attention
to international terrorism is obviously borrowed, mainly from the US Bush
team. For decades Britain has experienced little foreign terrorism, and
the attacks that occurred were largely, if not entirely, the work of the
IRA or sympathizers. As a matter of fact, Britain may have far more trouble
with disgruntled devotees of the now outlawed foxhunt who, numbering an
alleged 400,000, may storm London and harass the Parliament to get the
ban repealed. The irony of it is that the number of British souls grieving
the loss of that sport of horse and hound far exceeds the number of known
terrorists in the whole world.
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- Just what lesson might one draw from that situation about
the nature of national priorities in the early 21st century? The first
casualty of the new priority is the misdirection of leadership. The second
is the misallocation of resources. The third is the mistreatment of the
public interest.
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- Why is that? Simply put, the main purposes of government
center on three essential functions: The first is to identify and provide
reliable systems to meet the common service needs of the entire public.
That covers a range of subjects from life styles and health to house pests,
and the managers of towns, cities, even villages appear to understand this
mission far better than most national governments. The second is to catalog
and figure out how to deal with, hopefully restrain and reduce the normal
aberrations of society, and that covers a range from petty crimes and simple
civil disputes to capital crimes. The third is to identify and prepare
for contingencies ranging from natural disasters to war, and except in
extremis, this mission should never have a priority that overshadows the
other two.
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- The British problem, and the American problem is that
the overweening national priority is in the wrong box. How can that be
determined? By careful review of the normal aberrations of society, and
then, of course, by acting sensibly about what one learns from the process.
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- It is safe to say, here and now, that neither government
has done its homework. Both should start by asking, and of course getting
good answers for ten simple questions. (1) Where in the world today are
the worst threats to humanity? (2) Who or what is responsible for those
threats? (3) What is now being done about them? (4) What is not being done?
(5) What should be done about them? (6) Who should be doing that? (7) Who
can do it best? (8) What resources are needed, including skills? (9) What
organization is required or best suited for the tasks? (10) Where, on what
aspects of the threats should maximum effort be concentrated? Since these
questions are everybody,s concern, everybody should know the answers of
their government and those of any other government working the problems.
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- There is no visible evidence of workable answers to these
questions in either capital. Rather both are proceeding on a set of apriori
assumptions the proofs of which are mainly assertions and repetitions.
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- Take the problem of terrorism and run it through the
questions. How does it compare to other threats to humanity?
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- In the past six years up through 2003, terrorism - as
reported in the US Department of State Patterns of Global Terrorism --resulted
in approximately 22,000 casualties worldwide, mainly outside of North America.
As reported in the same database, terrorism in North American resulted
in 4,463 casualties, all in 2001. In that same period, data from the Centers
for Disease Control indicate that AIDS alone caused close to 95,000 deaths
in the US; according to the FBI, homicides caused close to 90,000 US deaths,
MADD data indicate that drunken driving caused upward of 100,000 US deaths,
and suicides, mostly of men and boys, caused close to 100,000 US deaths.
Aside from 9-11, in that six-year period, there were no casualties in North
America from terrorism. In 2002 alone, the year after 9-11, homicides
took upward of 16,000, suicides took around 17,000, highway accidents took
26,000, and drunken driving accounted for over 15,000.
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- All of these data shout the message: The main threat
to American life and limb, anywhere in the world, is not terrorism.
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- Iraq does not figure in these calculations because the
Iraqi people are at war with the United States and its coalition partners.
They are not terrorists, even though US officials all too often label them
as such, and US media generally and carelessly go along. If the tables
were turned, and we were battling an invading Iraqi army at the gates of
New York - as the Iraqis fight against us in Baghdad, Fallujah and elsewhere
- we would refuse to accept the label terrorist.
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- Only one form of potential terrorism deserves inclusion
among the potential high-end hazards included in government contingency
planning: The risk of terrorist acquisition and use of a weapon of mass
destruction. That is not just an environmental risk; it grows almost automatically
out of the patterns of manufacture and use of such weapons by the known
WMD powers, most notably the United States and Russia, but including Britain,
France, Israel, China, India, and Pakistan. But it is only a risk, because
a threat, properly defined, consists of both capability and intent to use
it to do harm to people and/or property. Capability, in this case, means
most likely covert acquisition of a weapon by a terrorist group or individual,
along with a plan to use the weapon on a specific target. At that point,
a threat would exist.
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- What this means is that Britain and the United States,
both under allegedly sane and well-informed leadership, have committed
their countries to protracted military conflict, not against a defined
and capable (in possession of WMDs) enemy, but against a verbally threatening
one whose capability is yet to be determined. It has been determined that
this enemy is capable of attacks on the scale of 9-11 and possible larger
ones with only conventional weapons. However, those attacks, as shocking
and tragic as they were, do not approach the annual death tolls of the
common hazards of modern society.
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- Is the threat of a weapon of mass destruction in the
hands of a terrorist a greater threat than such weapons in the hands of
ambitious or ruthless national leaders? Hardly. The United States has
used more heavy weaponry, including toxic, nuclear and high explosive,
in Iraq than any other owner of such weapons has employed since Vietnam
- when the United States again was the main user. Is it likely or even
possible that a terrorist organization can equal those assaults on the
human condition? Small arms have been sold by developed country makers
- including the leading WMD powers-- and smuggled into Africa and other
unstable regions of the world on a scale that equates their destructive
power with weapons of mass destruction. Since the sale of such weapons,
including assault versions, is considered legal in the United States, does
one really need to resort to theft or terrorism to be so empowered?
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- The starting points for these problems are the legal
manufacture, acquisition, sale, and careless distribution of such weaponry
by nation states. In a perverse sense, the terrorists are only benefactors
of the self-serving policies of the WMD powers that be. As of now, any
such weapon, likely to be acquired and used by a terrorist, will probably
come from one of those nations. Therefore, the real attack for preventing
future use of such weapons by anyone must be made on the availability of
such weapons anywhere to anybody. Limiting the accepted, if not necessarily
legal, possession of such weapons to the countries that already have them
will not work. The risk that the "wrong" people will acquire
one or more exists because the weapons exist. Non-proliferation is actually
an option that failed with first possession.
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- Terrorism occurs in one form or another in 60 or more
countries every year. That situation reflects the normal state of political,
social, and economic under-development in many societies. Political violence,
in the forms of terrorism, is a predictable part of this landscape. As
reliable UN data show, the propensities to politically motivated violence
decline with improvements in the human condition, especially more equitable
distribution of the benefits of growth.
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- In the meantime, developed country possession of weapons
of mass destruction is effectively paired with instability and underdevelopment
in at least a third of the world,s nation states. The combination itself
is a key part of the problem. This is the most compelling aberration in
modern society. That key can be exploited by Osama bin Laden as well as
by other terrorist leaders. They are using the deplorable conditions of
the developing world against us. They are aided by our aggressive military
approach. Bush and Blair are helping them by failing to consider the normal
aberrations of developing societies and dealing with terrorism where it
belongs among them. Not only is the current military strategy likely to
fail, the longer it is applied the closer our country will be taken to
the self-fulfilling prophecy of a major terrorist attack.
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- The writer is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer
of the US Department of State. He is author and co-author of four books
on terrorism and related subjects. He will welcome comments at wecanstopit@charter.net
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