Terrorism

“Islamists leave Israel no choice”

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An excellent column from The Australian:

On Monday night, the ABC’s Lateline program ran a report on the suffering of civilians in Gaza, an absolutely legitimate subject. Among the heart-rending footage there was an interview with a Gazan civilian who understandably complained bitterly about Israel’s actions. But the ABC reporter didn’t ask the absolutely obvious question: Do you wish your leaders would stop firing missiles into Israel, which make inevitable both the economic blockade and the Israeli military response? The ABC, as usual, was following more or less exactly the terrorists’ preferred script for the Western media. Islamist terrorists have always been centrally concerned with the Western media and their understanding of its story presentation dynamics is acute, as this episode demonstrates. Hamas gets to sheet all blame to Israel.
 
[…]
 
Israel is always told to retreat to the 1967 borders. The two places where it has done this – southern Lebanon and Gaza – have been disasters for Israel and have not produced peace. The 1967 borders only work for Israel if its neighbours don’t make war on Israel any more. There is no indication at all that either Hamas or Hezbollah, or indeed Iran, which soon enough will possess nuclear weapons, is on a trajectory towards accepting Israel’s right to exist.
 
And finally, Hamas may well be operating in very close concert with its sponsors, Iran and Syria. There is tremendous Sunni Arab concern about the growing power of Iran, evident not least in the bloody political vacuum in Lebanon.
 
A crisis in Gaza forces the forthcoming Arab summit to focus on the Palestinians, rather than Syria’s murderous campaign to prevent the emergence of a democratic Lebanon.
 
After the situation in Lebanon becomes clearer, a huge Israeli operation in Gaza, to take control of the Gaza-Egypt border and to set up new intelligence mechanisms within Gaza, all to prevent the increase in rocket firings, is perhaps all but inevitable.

(via Real Clear Politics)

A Couple of Good Self-Defense Posts

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Both of these struck me as very well put:

Steve H.

James Rummel

Lessons From Ulster

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The long struggle of the British government against the IRA can help us to understand the nature and requirements of anti-terrorist struggle more generally. Once a conflict has been pushed down to what could be called a sub-military level, victory of an unglamorous and even invisible sort can only come at the end of a very lengthy process.

This review essay is a good overview. RTWT.

Overwhelming military superiority was useless unless you could see inside what Republican euphemism specialists called the “physical force wing”. In the late 1970s, the messy improvisations which regulated rivalries between police, military and civilian intelligence agencies were decisively overhauled.
 
… what really mattered was penetrating and disrupting the Provisionals; in that specific and secret area, the ambition was anything but limited. A past Director of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, told an academic audience some years ago that it had taken governments a very long time, a decade or so after violence began, to grasp that defeating the Provisional IRA would require the slow cultivation of deep-penetration agents whose handling was MI5’s unique skill.

It is apparent that language skills and cultural skills are critical for the US Government personnel who will be involved in those sorts of activities, in Iraq and in other places. Everything I have read suggests our military and intelligence personnel are deficient in these areas, though perhaps the situation is improving. Cultivating deep-penetration agents, it seems to my layman’s understanding, would be impossible across cultural and linguistic barriers, unless we subcontract it out, which presents its own problems.

This overhauling of “inter-agency” rivalries and turf-defense takes time, and leadership. Then the process of cultivating “deep-penetration agents ” is slow, quiet, tedious and secret. It is like undercover police work, though occasionally punctuated by the swift and brutal employment of military-scale force.

In 1987, at Loughgall in East Tyrone, the SAS ambushed and killed an eight-man IRA unit attempting to demolish a police station, killing more “volunteers” in a single incident than at any time since 1921. Up to the year 2000, the IRA in Tyrone had lost fifty-three people; but twenty-eight of those died between 1987 and 1992.

The goal in Iraq, it would seem, is to get the situation stablized to the point that the Iraqi government, with our help, and the help of others in the coalition, can get itself coordinated, then infiltrate the hardcore terrorist groups, and kill them off. That will be the stick. Situation-specific carrots must also be on offer. This will leave open the prospect of bringing the rest of the opposition into the political process. (For the former terrorists who survive and become politicians, violence will have paid off. That does happen in history, even if the seeming injustice of it is grating.) This process will take a long time.

The author concludes:

If there are lessons from counter-terrorism in Ulster, they seem to be this. Recruit very good spies; then hire some more. Then give it time to work. The murders, the long wait and the compromises of the exit strategy may well grind the moderates to dust. Then wait some more. After that, the politicians can make their entrance.

Not a prospect which has much appeal, but like an unpleasant medical diagnosis, at least it is plain and unsentimental reality, and possibly a roadmap to recovery. It has the virtue of having worked once, as well.

More on Communications Intercepts

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On Friday, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey sent a letter to House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes. Note this sentence:

We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress’ failure to act.

My previous post on this subject is here.

At the Stroke of Midnight

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At midnight on Saturday, certain statutory authorizations for the interception of terrorist communications were allowed–by congressional inaction–to expire. See the National Review article with the headline: When the Clock Strikes Midnight, We Will Be Significantly Less Safe; also President Bush’s radio address here.

A couple of months ago, Shannon Love addressed some of the issues involved in commuications intercepts. This seems like an appropriate time for some additional discussion on the topic.

Some other useful resources:

1)The White House fact sheet

2)A fairly long article (PDF) which discusses some of the technical complexities which affect this debate.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Robert Novak says: The true cause for blocking the bill was the Senate-passed retroactive immunity from lawsuits for private telecommunications firms asked to eavesdrop by the government. The nation’s torts bar, vigorously pursuing such suits, has spent months lobbying hard against immunity.

The recess by House Democrats amounts to a judgment that losing the generous support of trial lawyers, the Democratic Party’s most important financial base, is more dangerous than losing the anti-terrorist issue to Republicans.

I’m not much of a Robert Novak fan, but in this case, I’m afraid his statement contains a strong element of truth.

UPDATE 2: William Kristol on Orwell, Kipling, and the responsibilities of governing, with particular reference to the communications-intercept issue.

See also this post and discussion at Neptunus Lex.