Back in October of 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked his leaders some fundamental questions:
Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?
Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?
Good questions. But he didn't stop there he also made a fundamental observation
The US is putting relatively little effort into a long-range plan, but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists. The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists’ costs of millions.
As is often the case, questions are easy while answers are tough. So tough that it took almost two years for the Pentagon to come up with a way to answer those questions. But as a result, we are soon to be introduced to a long range plan for defeating what the Pentagon is now calling "Islamic extremists". What's more, we now have a definition for who it is we are fighting.
The Pentagon document identifies the "primary enemy" as "extremist Sunni and Shia movements that exploit Islam for political ends" and that form part of a "global web of enemy networks."
It advises that the War on Terrorism is not just a military battle alone nor should it be a US effort exclusively. Much will be made of this, I'm sure, even though both have be recognized by the Administration from the outset.
So what is new?
The Pentagon's Special Operations Command is designated in the new plan as the global "synchronizer" in the war on terrorism for all the military commands and is responsible for designing a new global counterterrorism campaign plan and conducting preparatory reconnaissance missions against terrorist organizations around the world.
And
The new Pentagon directive, General Caslen told U.S. News , has unified the military behind one counterterrorism plan for the first time: "Prior to the release of this document, everybody had their own idea of what the enemy was. Therefore, everybody had their own idea of how to fight it. We had different ideas among the services, among the commands, among the different agencies. Heck, we even had different ideas among the different organizations within this building."
So what about the answer to Secretary Rumsfeld's question which started this whole thing?
The Pentagon will use a new set of metrics twice a year to measure its progress in the war against terrorism. Commanders are to report, for example, on successes in locating and dismantling terrorist safe havens, financial assets, communications networks, and planning cells for each of the target groups.
It is clear that the huge bureaucracy that is the government is doing what it can to analyze and adapt to the threat we face. And while some will say that it proves that we've been "wrong" up until this point, I say it proves that we can respond immediately and still question and correct our strategy and tactics in the face of learned facts.
Had we spent two years analyzing before taking any action after 9-11, I do believe we would be in worse, not better shape now. And the fact that the folks within the government are willing to question basic assumptions and re-orient themselves based on the answers indicates to me that they are doing as good a job as can be expected and doing the job I expect them to do.
Even so, things remain to be sorted out
While there may be consensus on the broad approach, the devil will be in the hard bargaining over "who's in charge." The most important document to come out of the National Security Council review will be a new presidential directive that reconciles the conflicts among four counterterrorism directives. Two are from the Clinton era; two were signed by President Bush. Clinton's Presidential Decision Directive 39, signed in 1995, for example, gives the State Department the lead role in counterterrorism efforts abroad, but after 9/11, President Bush gave the CIA the lead for disrupting terrorist networks overseas. National Security Presidential Directive 9, signed on Oct. 25, 2001, directs the Pentagon to prepare military plans for eliminating terrorist sanctuaries. Similar overlapping jurisdictions exist for the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the new intelligence entities created since 9/11. Since many planks of the Pentagon's new strategy require it to work with these other agencies, resolving these intramural issues will be essential.
Officials say that the Pentagon has proposed that the new National Security Presidential Directive include a mechanism that would allow the president to delegate a particular task in a particular region to whichever entity he deemed best suited to execute it. Would such an approach end the chronic turf warfare that cripples the Washington bureaucracy?
I don't know, but I'm feeling pretty confident they'll work it out.
