The Tough Approach to Countering Terror

No matter how much we bluster or bomb, terrorism will not vanish. It has become far too useful a tool of statecraft, embedded in the politics of small, corrupt nations where values on human life and compassion are strikingly different from our own.

Amplified by television, the tactics of terror take on ominous proportions. However, strategies can be designed to contain terrorist incidents and limit damage domestically and internationally, if U.S. leaders have the stomach for it.

The murder of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins is an outrage--whether or not connected to Israel’s capture of Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid. Israel at least took action in an attempt to free its own captured soldiers. By contrast, the United States was passive, daring nothing on behalf of Higgins. America has been stung into paralysis by the Iran-Contra affair and an institutionalized timidity.

America can relate more easily to Higgins and eight other U.S. hostages than it can to the blood of 270 victims of the bombers of Pan Am Flight 103. The CIA has determined that was the work of Iran, Syria and the PFLP-GC, a Syrian-dominated terrorist group. This mass murder was perpetrated nine months ago and yet no action has been taken short of evidence-gathering needed for a criminal case against those who built and placed the bomb.

Terrorists and the nations that sponsor them are not the same. While it may be satisfying to hunt down the hit men, no economic sanctions or military punishment has been meted out against sponsors. Again, institutionalized timidity. They recognize that timidity in Tehran and Damascus and in the councils of terrorist organizations. It costs us in lives.

Yet there is reason to laud the diplomatic skills demonstrated by George Bush in his continuing public and private communication with Iran and Syria. He has shown, too, how to use a 47-ship fleet to extort terrorist leaders into calling off a threatened second murder--of hostage Joseph J. Cicippio. But has Bush distinguished terrorism--at root a national security matter--from the “crime” aspect of the Higgins tragedy?

Terrorism is part of the shadowy universe of low-intensity conflict. Because it is an error to view international terrorism as less than a profound problem, contingency planning worthy of real warfare must start. Look how feebly the United States has responded to attacks. How would the government deal with assaults inside U.S. borders, or with more technologically sophisticated or violent attacks abroad?

Remember those truck-bomb barricades disguised as flower pots installed outside the White House? If that seemed vainglorious, consider that FBI officials recently informed Congress that dozens of trained Iranian terrorists, members of the elite and fanatical Iranian Revolutionary Guards, slipped past the Immigration and Naturalization Service earlier this year. More than 300 members of the guards and Hezbollah are now estimated to be in the United States.

On the assumption that Bush really means it when he says he wants to fight terrorism, here are 10 suggestions:

-- Anticipate far more serious attacks, some in the United States.

-- Launch more aggressive intelligence and covert operations. Some terrorist leaders may need to be targeted for assassination. If that violates current policy or law, change the policy, change the law.

-- Quietly develop counterterrorism policies less rigid than today’s declared rejection of negotiations with terrorists. While that policy sounds noble, it means little. As former White House intelligence coordinator Kenneth E. de Graffenreid said in a recent television interview, “The idea of not negotiating with terrorists was that if you didn’t they wouldn’t grab more hostages. Well, they did, anyway.” In addition, the official U.S. no-concessions policy could hardly stand up in the face of a terrorist threat involving nuclear or biological weapons. Such policies can prove embarrassingly brittle under pressure.

-- Devalue the holding of Americans as hostages by declaring that because terrorists are waging a war, U.S. citizens held captive will be considered prisoners of war. As in any war, the United States will not be coerced by threats against its POWs.

-- Engage in frequent, realistic crisis management exercises at the operational and planning levels of government. It would be helpful if the Cabinet and Bush himself were to take part in these secret scenario games. When our country is subjected to a major terrorist attack, there will be no time to invent effective policies and procedures.

-- At moderate cost, develop a first-rate research-and-development program to cope with everything from bombs to chemical and biological attacks. At this time, there is little on the shelf to help detect, let alone respond to, a wide variety of attacks that could be carried out by a handful of trained terrorists.

-- Protect the nation’s power, communications and data infrastructures. Imagine what Los Angeles would be like if terrorists crippled the electrical power system at several points on a hot summer’s night. New York City was enveloped in a nightmare of rioting and looting 12 years ago triggered by an act of nature--a lightning bolt--that struck one critical spot. Imagine, too, what life would be like if telephone service or the computer networks carrying financial transactions were hit by terrorists.

-- Develop realistic civil-defense programs capable of coping with serious emergencies that are less devastating than nuclear war but more likely to happen in a time of escalated terrorism.

-- Don’t baby the U.S. public. Tell the people about the real domestic and international risks attendant to an effective counterterrorism program and the risks of not having one--including more pervasive attacks by a growing number of foreign governments that will believe they can hide behind supposedly independent terrorist groups to commit atrocities.

-- At all costs, government must obey the law even if the law is short-sighted. Congress must be the executive’s true partner and if Bush offers bold leadership, the people must offer strong support.

While the actions of terrorists are horrifying, so is governmental inaction. It is time to do more than jump haphazardly from crisis to crisis. The warfare of the ‘90s will be combatting drugs, revolution and international terrorism amid a sea of well-armed, hostile nations that do not play by rules. In this new environment that includes cooperative arrangements with the Soviets, costly investments in massive conventional and nuclear armaments must be rethought.

In the hours immediately following the reported murder of Higgins, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole blamed Israel instead of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria. Dole’s rhetoric reflected a handful of other usually responsible public persons--including some in the White House.

By the end of last week, intelligence analysts who examined the terrorists’ video of Higgins hanging from a rope had determined he was placed in the noose by his killers after they murdered him. The date of his death remains uncertain, but analysts believe Higgins might have been killed soon after he was kidnaped in 1988.

So, the connection drawn between the Israeli raid and Higgins’ murder may be false. Dole and others who bashed Israel--instead of the terrorists--were wrong. The larger lesson: In the war against terrorism do not shoot at your allies when there are real enemies out there shooting at you.