Times of Terror

“Terrorists and those who support them must and will be held to account,” President Reagan vowed as survivors of TWA Flight 847 returned to freedom. The words sounded familiar, and so they should have. Since the day he took office Reagan has been warning that the United States would not be passive or compliant when confronted with international terrorism. That theme has found frequent and sometimes imprudent echo from other officials. Yet, 4 1/2 years into the Reagan presidency, there are still no signs of a coherent and plausible U.S. strategy to combat terrorism.

Why? There are a lot of reasons, but basically they add up to this: The Administration has discovered that it’s easier to talk tough about terrorism than it is to act effectively. It has found that being able to identify those who are responsible for terrorism is not the same thing as being able to locate, isolate and precisely punish them. And it has perceived that while the demands of justice and the objective of protecting national honor may be clear, acceptable means to satisfy those aims are not always at hand.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz said the other day that sound intelligence had helped thwart scores of threatened terrorist operations in recent years. That is good to hear. But, given the number of anti-American terrorist episodes that have occurred, the fact that scores may have been prevented also underscores the magnitude of the problem. The victories against terrorism, taking Shultz at his word, have been largely silent. The defeats have been in full public view, and sometimes humiliating.

Military efforts to strike back at terrorism have tended to be inept. The United States tried to retaliate for attacks on the Marines in Lebanon by sending the battleship New Jersey to bombard suspected terrorist targets. The New Jersey had been recommissioned at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars--part of an Administration defense buildup that has so far cost more than a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, as it turned out, none of that money had been spent to upgrade the battleship’s 30-year-old ammunition. When fired in Lebanon, the New Jersey’s shells ended up far off target. When two carrier planes were sent on the same mission, they were shot down. In the end, attempted military retaliation neither harmed the terrorists nor did anything to enhance the credibility of American military power.

The very nature of terrorism helps explain the problems of responding to it. It is not a discrete entity, it is not a centrally directed force, it is not the weapon of a single enemy, it is often not even a predictable response to a specific cause or a claimed provocation. Because of this there can be no single countermeasure, no expectation that if terrorism is prevented or punished in one place it will not emerge somewhere else. Wisdom about terrorism begins with the recognition that in combating it there can be no quick fix, no sure preventive, no moment when the flag can be run up over an enemy’s camp and victory proclaimed.

The locus of terrorism now and probably for years to come is the Middle East. It is the arena of greatest threat and the place from which many terrorist acts carried out elsewhere originate. The active national sponsors of terrorism are known; among them are Iran, Syria and Libya. The motivations of these countries are also known. They include Islamic zeal that has been mobilized behind an effort to undercut and destroy whatever is secular, modern or Western-oriented, and they include the pursuit of radical political influence at the expense of more moderate neighboring countries.

Because it is both the examplar of the West and deeply involved in the Middle East, the United States is and will remain the primary target of terrorism. So will countries with which it is allied and friendly. An excuse can always be found or invented to justify anti-American terrorism and embarrass the United States or undercut its policies. It is what the United States is and what it supports that make it a continuing target.

The visceral urge is of course to strike back. But the policy imperative is to know just whom to strike at and--at least as important--to weigh responsibly what the costs of such actions could be. Doing something dramatic as a sop to emotions may be momentarily appealing, but doing something that is likely only to prove ineffectual--such as trying to close the Beirut airport or lobbing 16-inch shells at supposed terrorist enclaves--could count for less than doing nothing at all, because in the end such actions may be perceived as reflections of weakness rather than as demonstrations of strength.

There has been too much of that already. And there have been too many bold threats out of Washington about responding to terrorism, while too little real work has been done to carry out effective anti-terrorist actions. The clear need to improve security at U.S. embassies has been slow in getting started. Cooperation with other countries on airport security and tracking the movements of suspected terrorists needs to be increased. American intelligence efforts directed specifically against terrorism and the countries that support it have to be intensified.

Terrorism can’t be eliminated as a threat. But certainly there is a lot that can be done, with no need for accompanying rhetoric, to make terrorist acts less attractive to think about, more costly to carry out, and less certain of success.