WASHINGTON -- Looking back on eight years as commander in chief, President George W. Bush saw the absence of another terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland after Sept. 11 as his greatest legacy. Yet within hours of entering the Oval Office, Barack Obama began dismantling key tenets of Bush's "global war on terror," abolishing "enhanced" interrogation techniques, suspending military tribunals, and ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within one year (see GSN, Jan. 26).
(Feb. 2) -
A range of measures has prevented Osama bin Laden-led al-Qaeda from conducting any attacks in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, experts say (Getty Images).
The sense of rebuke among Bush loyalists was palpable. "If Obama weakens any of the defenses Bush put in place and terrorists strike again, Americans will hold Obama responsible," Marc Thiessen, a Bush speechwriter, warned on Jan. 22 in The Washington Post. "And the Democratic Party could find itself unelectable for a generation."
Thiessen may have a point. With President Obama recasting U.S. counterterrorism policy, the question of which counterterrorism initiatives and policies are most responsible for thwarting another terrorist attack is on the minds of not only administration officials and Democrats but all Americans. Recently, some of the country's foremost counterterrorism and national security experts shared with National Journal the lessons they've taken from the past eight years.
Taking the Fight to Al-Qaeda
Despite Osama bin Laden's narrow escape from Tora Bora in 2001, the Bush administration's Operation Enduring Freedom -- as the war in Afghanistan is formally called -- is seen by many counterterrorism experts as critical. In a matter of months, the Taliban was toppled; al-Qaeda's training bases were destroyed; and most members of its leadership were killed, captured, or forced into hiding.
"I would put most emphasis on the fact that when it comes to military action, the United States has gone from the 'object' to the 'subject' of operations," wrote retired Army Col. Joseph Collins, a professor at the National War College, in a posting on National Journal's National Security expert blog. "As the 'doer,' we have seized the initiative and forced the leadership of al-Qaeda to live in caves. We have taken the battle to them. We have severely restricted their ability to freely communicate and to train new cadres."
Certainly the lesson of keeping the pressure on al-Qaeda has been impressed upon the Obama administration, which plans to increase U.S. forces in Afghanistan by as much as 30,000 troops this year. In the past week, Obama has also reiterated his intention to "do everything in our power" to eliminate safe havens for al-Qaeda's leaders inside Pakistan.
"Even though the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated rapidly, from al-Qaeda's perspective it is still less able to plan terrorist operations than when it enjoyed the haven the Taliban offered," Dan Byman, director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, wrote on the National Security blog.
Leaving Behind a Stable Iraq
Obama's presence in the Oval Office partly reflects the unpopularity of the Iraq invasion, which remains by far the most controversial action in the Bush administration's war on terrorism. Fortunately, there has been considerable convergence between Obama's pledge to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq in 16 months and the recently signed status-of-forces agreement that calls for U.S. troops to leave by the end of 2011.
The Obama administration's ability to refocus the U.S. military on Afghanistan and Pakistan will depend at least in part, however, on keeping a substantially weakened al-Qaeda in Iraq from regaining a foothold. In the meantime, the costs of invading Iraq before al-Qaeda was defeated in Afghanistan and Pakistan have become increasingly clear.
"Like most Americans, I think the decision to invade Afghanistan was a correct one," retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, a military intelligence expert on the Middle East, wrote on the blog. "The men who had attacked us were present there in concentrations that made retribution inevitable. Sadly, there is little doubt that preparations for the invasion and occupation of Iraq shifted both resources and attention away from Afghanistan. Over several years, that has produced a marked deterioration in the situation there."
Indeed, the government's own National Intelligence Estimates for 2006 and 2007 noted that the Iraq war further radicalized the Muslim world and produced numerous new terrorist recruits, even while al-Qaeda regrouped in Pakistan and was again capable of attacking the United States.
"As with much else in the Bush administration's 'war on terror' (e.g., Guantanamo, the disdain for our allies and the rule of law, the invasion of Iraq, the neglect of Afghanistan and Pakistan), long-term progress was sacrificed for short-term expediency," wrote Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at Georgetown.
Improving Intelligence-Gathering and -Sharing
Although aspects of the post-Sept. 11 USA PATRIOT Act covering the interception of private communications have proved controversial, many experts believe that enhanced electronic surveillance is a crucial piece of the counterterrorism puzzle. "The most effective intelligence tool available in the war on international terrorism is electronic surveillance. The new president would be mad to diminish the effectiveness of this capability," wrote Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense consulting firm.
In fact, Obama has already had a say on the issue, having voted along with 69 other senators in 2008 for passage of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, changes that increased judicial oversight and codified aspects of the surveillance program. "There were numerous programs and policies that led to [Bush's] success against terrorism, but one of the most important was the terrorist surveillance program," wrote Senator Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "I have seen, firsthand, evidence of how vital that program was in uncovering and disrupting terrorist plots."
Hardening U.S. Borders
Although still a work in progress, the increased screening of people and cargo at U.S. borders and entry points -- most administered by the Homeland Security Department -- was cited by experts as a vast improvement over lax pre-Sept. 11 defenses.
"Putting aside the issue of targeting terrorists overseas, the greatest homeland achievement has been to make it considerably harder for terrorists to travel to the United States and to enter our physical territory," wrote Stewart Verdery, founder of the Monument Policy Group, a consulting firm. "While no set of defenses is impenetrable, we have come a long way from 9/11, when a terrorist known to the CIA was able to obtain a visa, fly to the U.S., clear immigration processing, obtain U.S. identity documents, obtain flight training, be stopped by local law enforcement, and board a commercial airliner -- all without arousing suspicion." Verdery was referring to Mohamed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Maintaining the American Melting Pot
Many counterterrorism experts now conclude that al-Qaeda lacked "sleeper cells" of would-be terrorists living undercover in the United States that some feared after Sept. 11. Nor is there convincing evidence that the group successfully recruited members of the Muslim population in the United States or used them to build such an infrastructure. That suggests that the traditional American "melting pot" may prove to be the nation's most potent line of defense.
"America's Muslim population is less susceptible to radicalization and recruitment to violence than Muslims in other parts of the world because Muslim immigrants to the U.S. have integrated more successfully," Brian Michael Jenkins, a longtime terrorism expert and senior adviser to the president of the RAND think tank, wrote. "Successful absorption is one of America's primary antiterrorist achievements."
Rejecting Complacency
Several experts reject the idea that the absence of an attack on the U.S. homeland since Sept. 11 implies that the United States is winning the war on terrorism. "The question is misleading because it suggests that the occurrence or nonoccurrence of terrorist incidents in the recent past can be equated to a higher or lower level of threat from terrorism ... it cannot," wrote Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst for the Middle East. "Consider that eight years separated the first attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 from the second in 2001."
Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, goes a step further, suggesting that al-Qaeda has not struck the United States again because its original plan is working in terms of exhausting the country militarily and economically, and another attack would only risk reuniting what has been a nation badly divided over Iraq.
"Why would al-Qaeda bother to attack inside the United States again?" Scheuer wrote on the blog. "For less than $500,000 and 19 fighters killed in action, al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks set America firmly, and so far unrelentingly, on the road to defeat."