The Evolution of US policies Against Terrorism

ELIOT E. SCHMIDT The Pennsylvania State Univeristy

Introduction Terrorism is the new buzzword in American politics. The fear of it has become so ingrained in our collective consciousness that seemingly every news story about an industrial accident or fire includes a question about links to terrorism. But what terrorism really means and what it means for US domestic and foreign policy are often lost in the rhetoric. To say that terrorism is a “new” threat would be an oversimplification. For as long as mankind has made war, terrorism has been used as a tactic by governments and resistances (call them what you like, freedom fighters, guerillas, insurgents, etc – the semantic debate is another subject entirely). What can be considered new is the scale, sophistication, and frequency of terrorist attacks. The attacks of September 11th were well coordinated and of unprecedented scale, as were the bombings in Bali on 12 October 2002, in Madrid on 11 March 2004, and in London on 7 July 2005. That said, the 1998 African Embassy bombings were well coordinated, as were the barracks bombings in Beirut in 1983. So what changed to make modern terrorism “new” or different from previous forms of terrorism? I argue that it is US policy towards terrorism, and not terrorism itself, that has changed. President Reagan reacted differently than President Clinton, who reacted differently than President G.W. Bush. Using a historical analysis of select terrorist strikes, I will show how US policy towards terrorism has evolved and grown more aggressive over time. I will first address the difficulties of defining terrorism and then provide a working definition from which to discuss US policies towards terrorism. I will then outline US policy towards terrorism across three administrations in the context of specific events: the Beirut bombings of 1983 during the Reagan administration, the African Embassy and USS Cole bombings during the Clinton administration, and the September 11th attacks during the Bush administration. While these four attacks represent a tiny fraction of terror attacks in the past three decades, I believe that they are four of the most informative for a discussion of US policy. Finally, I will show how September 11th represented a shift from generally reactionary policies towards a policy of prevention. Defining Terrorism Establishing a working framework is crucial to the study of something as complex and nebulous as terrorism. There is great debate among scholars, politicians, and pundits over what terrorism actually means. Benjamin Barber    

(2007) contends defining terrorism is easy; it is interpreting the definitions of terrorism is the hard part. But at times, it seems that there are as many definitions as there are people willing to define it. Two decades ago, a US army study found more than 100 different definitions of terrorism in use (Bauch, 2006). Some definitions are broad and general: Fred Halliday, for example, defines terrorism as a “set of military tactics that are part of a military and political struggle, and which are designed to force the enemy to submit by some combination of killing and intimidation" (Bauch, 2006). Other definitions seem to try to pinpoint every potential type of perpetrator, method, and victim such as the 1999 FBI definition: “Terrorism is defined as the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual… committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives” (Schmid, 2004). Internationally, according to Alex Schmid (2004), the United Nations has effectively resigned itself to the impossibility of achieving a consensus definition for terrorism. Even within the United States government, different agencies use different definitions. The definitions of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the State Department, for example, specify that terrorism must be “premeditated,” whereas the FBI and Department of Defense definitions do not (Schmid, 2004). Furthermore, the State Department’s definition does not consider the threat of violence terrorism, whereas the other three definitions do (Schmid, 2004). After reviewing a number of definitions used by academics, jurists, and statesmen, I have found some common themes: terrorism is not always limited to violent acts, but can often include the threat of violence; the victims of terrorism are most often defined as civilians or noncombatants (again, a semantic debate for another time); a terrorist’s intended target is almost never his immediate victim, rather it is the aim of terrorism to affect the decisions or actions of a government or larger population; the perpetrators of terrorism can be groups or individuals, but are often defined as non-state, subnational, or clandestine. As an aside, it is through this last condition that the United States was able to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization (Wright, 2007). The majority of definitions I reviewed, however, did not use the word “clandestine”, only words like “subnational” or “non-state.” This, of course, implies that states are incapable of committing terrorism, something we know not to be true. For the purposes of this paper, however, we too will disregard state and state-sponsored terrorism. Furthermore, since this paper concerns itself with specific incidents of terrorism and US policies towards terrorism, we can further narrow our definition to acts of international terrorism that have killed at least one person.    

US Policy: Reagan Administration Perhaps America’s first significant exposure to terrorism came in Beirut during the Reagan administration when the US Embassy and a US Marine Corps barracks were bombed by Hezbollah militants. As peacekeepers attempting to stop warring Christian and Muslim groups from annihilating each other, the United States was prepared for a level of violence in Lebanon commensurate to a civil war. The Marines were prepared for and took small arms and small artillery fire, which they responded to in kind (Beirut). The US was not, however, prepared for terrorist truck bombs. The Embassy was targeted first, bombed on April 18, 1983, killing sixty-three people including seventeen Americans. At the time, it was the deadliest terrorist attack ever against the United States (Bear, 2002, p.67). The Marine Corps barracks was bombed in much the same way six months later on October 23. This bombing represented America’s worst ever military loss during peacetime (Baer, 2002, p.72). These were the most audacious attacks during the US deployment in the Lebanese civil war, but they occurred against a complicated backdrop of civil war, sectarian violence, and anti-American attacks and kidnappings (Baer, 2002). Reagan took no overt action in response to the attack on the Embassy. In response to the barracks bombing, however, the battleship USS New Jersey was ordered to shell the hills near Beirut in an attempt to force the Lebanese to comply with the peace deal with Israel (Baer, 2002, p.76). The New Jersey’s original target, according to PBS Frontline’s Target America timeline, was the Sheik Abdullah barracks in Baalbek, Lebanon, where it was believed that elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were training Hezbollah fighters. That mission was aborted by then Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger because of concerns the attack would damage US-Arab relations (PBS, 2001). President Reagan pledged to remain in Lebanon, but the Marines were moved onto ships offshore and began withdrawing from the country four months after the barracks bombing. At the time of the bombings, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was actively involved in training and arming Lebanese Muslim militias (Baer, 2002). The United States knew this, as evidenced by the New Jersey’s original targeting orders, but took no direct action against Iran, either. Instead of aggressively pursuing the terrorists that attacked US interests, a criminal investigation was opened into the bombings that never led to any indictments. It took two more years, ten kidnappings and numerous small attacks against US and Western targets in Lebanon, and coordinated attacks by Abu Nidal against Italian airports for the Reagan administration to launch military strikes against Libya and add a new counterterrorism unit to the CIA (Baer, 2002, p.83). The Libyan campaign was against a state-sponsor of terrorism, not against terrorists themselves. And, again, no action was taken against the primary supporter of antiUS terrorists at the time: Iran. The Libyan campaign gave the appearance that the United States was acting in defense of its NATO allies while, two years earlier, the United States had not acted in its own defense. While this campaign denied terrorists some safe haven and financial backing, the administration never    

effectively reacted to the bombings in Beirut or the growing threat posed by Hezbollah. US policy at this time was almost wholly reactionary. The United States was not prepared for terrorism on such a large scale and certainly not for two such attacks in such a short amount of time. Direct responses to the attacks were ineffective at best and emboldening at worst. I say that it was almost wholly reactionary because the Reagan administration did strike a bargain to sell weapons to Iran in the hopes of securing the release of American hostages and stemming the tide of future abductions. That notorious affair would later become known as IranContra and is now widely regarded as an unethical abuse of executive power. US Policy: Clinton Administration Twelve years later, in 1995, American prosperity at home was rocked by a massive, home-grown terrorist assault in Oklahoma City. The reaction to this bombing was swift and easy. It was a domestic attack perpetrated by US citizens. It was an issue for law enforcement and was handled through police action. Three years later, however, American prosperity went relatively uninterrupted as coordinated attacks ripped through American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This attack technically did occur on US soil, as the targets were embassies, but few Americans felt affected by the attacks “over there.” Unlike in Beirut, there were no US troops present, there was no ongoing civil war, and the attacks were not planned from the same country in which they were carried out. Like Abu Nidal’s attacks on Italian airports in 1985, terrorists were able to reach out from a place of safe haven and inflict serious damage. This time, however, the perpetrators called themselves al-Qaeda and were led by Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden. President Clinton took more decisive action than Reagan had, ordering retaliatory cruise missile strikes against suspected al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan. Perhaps because of the popular reaction to the deaths of American serviceman in Somalia earlier in his presidency, Clinton did not risk a full-scale military response to the bombings. Unfortunately, due to faulty intelligence, some of the cruise missiles destroyed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, bringing international criticism. The missile strike became the subject of popular attention, not the fact that a terrorist organization had organized and executed simultaneous bombings just minutes apart in two separate countries. But, again, the US was reactionary. According to Peter Bergen (2008), though, the US had been directly warned by bin Laden a year earlier. In 1997, during an interview conducted by Bergen and aired on CNN, bin Laden had declared war on the United States. Bergen reported that at the time of the African Embassy bombings, the CIA’s “bin Laden unit” was staffed by fewer than a dozen people. His interview was conducted in a mud hut and broadcast from a remote part of Afghanistan; at the time, bin Laden simply did not seem like a credible threat. A year later, with two successful bombings to his credit, he absolutely was.    

Just before the Millennium celebrations, the Clinton government scored one of America’s biggest anti-terror successes. A terrorist with a car full of explosives was intercepted trying to cross America’s border with Canada (Globalsecurity, 2005). The target was Los Angeles International Airport, and the strike was to coincide with attacks on Biblical sites in the Middle East and a western hotel in Amman, Jordan (Globalsecurity, 2005). Again, the terrorists involved all had links to al-Qaeda. The attack was prevented, again through the actions of domestic law enforcement, and the Clinton government did not actively seek out the terrorist organization that, for the second time in a decade, planned mass murder on US soil. The successful interception of the Millennium Plot was more due to solid police work than a governmental policy of prevention. But, the threat was credible and the Clinton administration did not miss the opportunity to publicize its success. Later in 2000, the USS Cole was bombed in the Yemeni port of Aden on October 12th, killing 17 sailors. This attack, too, was perpetrated by al-Qaeda. This time, however, President Clinton took no action at all. There are a number of possible explanations for this nonresponse, most of them domestic. It was an election year; Clinton had been slammed for his missile strike on Sudan and the loss of life in Somalia; and, he was still feeling the effects of the Lewinsky scandal. His successor, President Bush also let the attack go unanswered. Whatever the reason for this lack of an overt response, it again gave the impression that terrorists could inflict serious damage on the United States without suffering effective reprisals. US Policy: Bush Administration Of course, the largest terror attack against the United States came less than a year later on September 11th, 2001. According to Peter Bergen, al-Qaeda’s original plan called for ten planes and ten targets but, on instructions from Osama bin Laden, the plan was cut in half to be “twice as effective” (Bergen, 2008). Again, despite earlier warnings directly from bin Laden and multiple agencies working on pieces of the puzzle, the United States was taken by surprise. This time the response was different, though. September 11th marked the first successful al-Qaeda attack on US soil after at least two known failed attempts. At home, the Bush administration reshuffled the government, creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Both moves were designed to improve interagency coordination and communication, particularly on issues of counterterrorism. In the legislature, the USA PATRIOT Act was passed, granting federal agencies sweeping surveillance and anti-terrorism privileges. Internationally, the September 11th attacks marked the first time in its history the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked the selfdefense clause of its charter. This clause states that an attack on one NATO member state will be regarded as an attack on them all (NATO, 2007). Less than one month after the September 11th attacks, the United States and Great Britain had Special Forces on the ground in Afghanistan and an aerial bombardment had begun. The Taliban, al-Qaeda’s governmental sponsor, was routed and bin-Laden himself was very nearly dealt a crushing defeat in the    

mountains of Tora Bora. Determined to deny al-Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan again, the United States helped to form a consensus government and hold elections. Unfortunately, the outcome of events since then has left something to be desired. The Tora-Bora mission did not end with the capture of Osama bin Laden, and the United States later handed over command of the Afghan campaign to NATO in order to focus on the war in Iraq. While American troops were still fighting in Afghanistan, funds and materiel were covertly being diverted to staging areas in Kuwait for the upcoming war in Iraq (Woodward, 2004). Bob Woodward (2004) outlined how the Bush administration used the Afghan war, and more broadly the war on terrorism, to “provide a noise level under cover of which forces could be moved” to the coming Iraq war (p. 62). Afghanistan was again put on the back-burner of US foreign policy1. According to many terrorism experts, Iraq had no direct connection with the attacks of September 11th. According to Peter Bergen (2008), al-Qaeda did not exist in Iraq until the fall of 2004, almost a year and a half after the announcement that major combat operations in Iraq had ended. He also reported that the number of claimed terrorist attacks killing at least one person increased “seven-fold” between 2001-2003 and 2003-2006 (Bergen, 2008). Similarly, Foreign Policy’s (2007) Terrorism Index reports that 91% of terrorism scholars surveyed believe that the world is becoming, in total, more dangerous for the United States since the war in Iraq. Another controversial counterterrorism policy enacted by the Bush administration is that of holding international terrorism suspects as “enemy combatants” and not prisoners of war or criminals. This policy, and the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is at the center of long running debates on human rights violations, prisoners’ rights, what constitutes torture, and the reach of the American legal system. These are not simple debates and both the policy and the detention facility have become a public relations nightmare for the Bush administration. The terror attacks of September 11th were unlike any before them in terms of scale and sophistication. Likewise, George Bush’s reaction to them was unlike any before. He restructured the American bureaucracy, signed into law sweeping new legislation, and launched two wars in response to these attacks. One of those wars was justified as a preemptive strike on a major weapons producing state and potential terrorism sponsor. The Iraq War, therefore, illustrates a shift in policy from reaction to aggressive preemption. Looking Forward Terrorism is not something new, not even for America, and it will not go away in the near future. American responses to terrorism have, for the most part,                                                              1 During the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan, the United States supplied and trained the rebels, but left them, for all intents and purposes, to fend for themselves after the Soviets were defeated.    

been reactionary and brief. In that regard, Bush’s response to September 11th marks a significant policy change. Post-9/11 American policy is focused on rooting out terrorism, attacking it where it feels safe, and stopping it before it has the opportunity to strike. Certainly, it can be argued that this policy has been misapplied in places, but it represents a fundamental shift from a policy of reaction to one of aggressive prevention. I grant that these two policies are ideal-types, but is one policy better than another? It certainly costs less to be reactive, but resigning to a policy of reaction – a sort of “do not fire until fired upon” approach to counterterrorism – leaves America looking idle and vulnerable. Being proactive may be more difficult and more expensive, but it can keep the enemy off balance and give America momentum. The devilish thing about terrorism is that it is nearly impossible to predict targets or specific methods of attack. As air travel has been hardened against terrorism, terrorists have moved to commuter transportation systems – Madrid 2004 and London 2005. As American embassies and military bases are similarly hardened against attacks, it is likely that terrorists will move to softer targets like nightclubs or hotels frequented by westerners – like in Bali in 2002 and Amman in 2005. The next American president will inherit multiple wars abroad and an expanded counterterrorism bureaucracy at home. When dealing with either war, the next President would do well to keep in mind American involvement in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Failing to stabilize either Iraq or Afghanistan can lead to the development of another terrorist safe haven, a policy outcome exactly opposite from both wars were launched to achieve. Similarly, the next President must be careful to weigh the strategies of reaction and preemption against each other. Of course, it is the hope that no new terrorist incidents will occur. But it is also the hope the decisions of the next President will be informed by the decisions of those before, resulting in increasingly more effective US policies towards terrorism.

   

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