Obama's New Counterterrorism Message Is Good, But the Messenger Has Problems

Obama's top national security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, outlined the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy in a speech to a packed house at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. The strategy calls for orienting all resources of U.S. foreign policy to address the social, economic, and cultural roots of terrorism, while minimizing the role of 'kinetic' U.S. power, such as the use of military force and covert action.

Aside from Obama's renunciation of torture and 'black site' prisons and his increasingly hollow-looking promise to close Guantanamo, Brennan nonetheless offered little indication that the role of intelligence and the armed forces in response to terrorism will change under the Obama administration. Brennan artlessly dodged questions about his role in questionable Bush-era operations, underscoring that retreaded Bush-era intelligence programs lurk beneath the ideals set forth in Obama's otherwise laudable counterterrorism policy.

Brennan began the speech by hailing the Obama administration's progress so far on reforming counterterrorism policy and highlighting the parallel efforts of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in re-establishing US foreign policy prestige and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in building up robust homeland security capabilities. He poignantly acknowledged that some counterterrorism strategies have contradicted fundamental US values:

I believe President Obama is absolutely correct: such practices [as waterboarding] not only fail to advance our counterterrorism efforts, they actually set back our efforts. They are a recruitment bonanza for terrorists, increase the determination of our enemies, and decrease the willingness of other nations to cooperate with us. In short, they undermine our national security.

Brennan dismissed critics on the right -- who maintain that Obama is making the U.S. defenseless in the face of the Al Qaeda threat -- and the left -- who maintain that Obama is retaining Bush-era intelligence policies. In making the case that Obama recognizes the gravity of the Al Qaeda threat and is leading a spirited charge against it, however, Brennan undermines his argument that counterterrorism policy under Obama is substantively different from his predecessor's. But leaving aside the Obama administration's backtracking on Guantanamo, extrajudicial detentions, accountability for counterterrorism excesses, reining in domestic surveillance programs, and the state secret privilege, the new Obama counterterrorism policy is major departure from earlier approaches to the scourge of terrorism.

The new Obama counterterrorism policy as outlined by Brennan is based on five major principles. First, terrorism will no longer be the defining characteristic of US foreign policy. "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism-whether they are with us or against us," said Brennan, "the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas."

Second, the paradigm or concept behind U.S. counterterrorism policy will no longer be the "global war on terror," and will not dignify the cowardice and inhumanity of Islamic extremist terrorists by referring to them as "jihadis." Indeed, Brennan drew upon his own experiences in the Middle East throughout his speech, calling for sensitivity and appreciation of Islam and Middle Eastern culture.

Third, U.S. counterterrorism policy will recognize and address the "upstream factors," such as poverty, corruption, and illiteracy, that provide fertile ground for the growth of violent extremism. The fourth principle builds off the third to provide for "a political, economic, and social campaign to meet the basic needs and legitimate grievances of ordinary people: security for their communities, education for children, a job and income for parents, and a sense of dignity and worth."

The fifth principle calls for a coordinated, integrated effort on the part of all elements of US power to address these upstream factors. "That is why," Brennan explained, "President Obama is committed to using every element of our national power to address the underlying causes and conditions that fuel so many national security threats, including violent extremism. We will take a multidimensional, multi-departmental, multi-national approach."

While Brennan's speech enunciated a sustainable, comprehensive, and coherent long-term strategy for how the U.S. can take on international terrorist threats, the defensiveness into which he retreated during the question-and-answer period afterwards emphasized just how problematic -- and emblematic -- a figure Brennan is for the Obama administration, whose policy of looking forward to future keeps getting dragged back to the unresolved past.

Brennan, a career intelligence officer, had been Obama's first choice for CIA Director, but concerns over his role in controversial torture and domestic surveillance programs, as well as his ties to a prominent intelligence contractor, derailed his nomination. Sure enough, questions for Brennan went to near-term counterterrorism strategy -- as in, what is US intelligence doing now -- touching on Brennan's involvement in torture and domestic surveillance programs.

First, Eli Lake of the Washington Post posed a question regarding the desirability of a classified annex to the US Army interrogation manual, a query that came uncomfortably close to the topic of torture. Brennan -- perturbed either by the weediness or the cheekiness of the question -- punted his answer to the White House's special interrogation task force.

Then came a question about the timetable for closing Guantanamo. Here, Brennan cited the dizzying array of contingent factors that are affecting the Obama administration's stated goal of closing Guantanamo by January 2010, such as pending US court cases, foreign government cooperation, and the US Congress, whom Brennan singled out for understated contempt.

But Brennan gave a halting, carefully parsed, lawyerly non-answer when Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman asked him directly about his role in domestic surveillance activity. Ackerman's colleague, Marcy Wheeler, even characterized Brennan's response to the domestic surveillance question as "Gonzales-like," a reference to the disingenuous answers provided to Congress by Bush Attorney General and sometime counsel Alberto Gonzalez.

Brennan's role as a top national security honcho in the Obama administration shows the limitations of Obama's "look to the future, not to the past" mantra. A well-informed, commonsense, and thoughtful counterterrorism policy is long overdue. The American people and foreign security partners need more than slogans and well-received speeches delivered at revered think tanks to know that the past is behind, a past marked by torture, botched renditions, and dragnet surveillance of US citizens' communications.

In his closing remarks, Brennan said, "Finally, as I described, we will harness perhaps our greatest asset of all-the power of America's moral example. Even as we aggressively pursue terrorists and extremists, we will uphold the values of justice, liberty, dignity and rule of law that make people want to work with us and other governments want to partner with us."

That moral example, which Brennan correctly cites as necessary in the fight against terrorism, is undermined by the persistence of bad old policies and, sometimes, the persistent architects of those bad old policies.

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Comments

[porsche996]

Is there such a paucity of vetted talent available in this field that the President has to use the compromised and bloodied hands of such as John Brennan? The President can't change or make adjustments to the Joint Chiefs, he can't change the SECDEF, he's not allowed to make any changes to NSA or DIA. Just exactly what powers and influence on the military industrial congressional complex does this President have?

My reading of this is that he's a captive.