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Posted on 09/15/2001 8:03:08 PM PDT by NorthernRight

NATIONAL POST ONLINE | America under Siege

The U.S. government is currently involved in a wrenching redefinition of how to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

The standard U.S. response to such attacks has been to criminalize them. The actions are deemed violations of U.S. law, and the intention of the government is to treat them as one would any other crime -- to identify the criminals and bring them to justice. Ideally, as in the case of the African embassy bombings, this would mean bringing them to trial. In other cases, it would mean staging air attacks on the bases of those responsible.

There are two defects in this strategy. First, it imposes rules of evidence that are entirely impractical under the circumstances. The nature of the action makes it impossible to identify particular perpetrators or conspirators as guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." Rules of evidence assume investigatory powers like subpoenas and grand juries. Although that is possible in some cases, it frequently leaves the majority of decision-makers untouched.

Second, this approach essentially falsifies reality. Consider Pearl Harbor. Had the United States attempted to criminalize the attack there, it would have focused on hunting down those who carried out the bombing and those who ordered it while leaving other "innocent" Japanese unharmed. The actor at Pearl Harbor was the corporate entity of Japan. Individual responsibility was not at issue -- at least until after the war. What was at issue was that the Japanese Empire had committed an act of war against the United States.

Treating Pearl Harbor as a matter of criminal justice would have been insane. It is equally inappropriate for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Bush administration has already signalled a shift away from the criminal model. In his address to the U.S. nation hours after the explosions, George W. Bush used the word "war" and stated clearly that any nation that harboured or aided the attackers would be regarded as an enemy of the United States. This view seemed to be reinforced Sept. 12 by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

This evolution clearly makes sense. The rules of war are more applicable than the rules of criminal proceedings. But the shift opens up serious geopolitical and politico-military questions. There are some obvious candidates here: Afghanistan tops the list, of course, with Iraq a near second. Other governments or elements in governments, however, might have been aiding the attackers. Iran, Pakistan and Sudan all come to mind.

Assume that it is determined, in the extreme case, that all of these countries -- in one way or another -- participated in aiding the attackers. By the logic of this theory of responsibility, the United States could find itself in a state of war with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This would not be a war the United States could win in any conventional sense. Indeed, the national effort required even to try would be overwhelming. Or assume that it was only one country, like Iran. Is it in the national interest or national capability to wage an effective war against Iran?

These are all speculations, but they point to the essential problem. If the United States will hold a country responsible for the attack, how does it wage war? One option is the classic cruise missile/air attack. If Americans attack the base camps, the probability of missing the attackers' infrastructure is, based on history, quite high.

If, on the other hand, the United States carries out air attacks against the host country independent of the attackers, what are the goals and limits of such air attacks? No country has ever capitulated solely because of air attacks. Somewhere, a ground intervention is needed. And intervention on the ground in Eurasia takes too much time, too many resources and runs too much risk.

The problem is in defining the corporate entity with whom the United States is at war. Identifying attackers with nation-states can quickly get the United States in over its head. Treating those nation-states as criminals clearly doesn't deal with the problem. A third course is necessary: one that recognizes the corporate nature of the attackers and the state of war that exists but which does not commit the United States to waging war against a given nation-state -- at least not without a conscious choice.

There is a model available from Israel's operations following the Munich Olympic massacre in 1972. Although a number of Arab countries clearly supported the attackers, Israel did not attack those countries directly. Nor did it tie its own hands by treating the massacre as a legal matter. Rather, the Israelis accepted the amorphous nature of the attackers but nevertheless imposed on them a corporate identity -- accepting them as an entity and holding the entire entity responsible, including all individuals regardless of what they knew, when they knew it or what they did.

Israel launched a global attack on the entity, using its intelligence services and covert forces. The primary goal was destroying the operating capacity of what Israelis called "terrorist groups" through killing key operatives and members of the command and control system. They did not strike in response to any particular act, nor did they constrain their actions by legalities. At the same time, the Israelis did not hold responsible the states that harboured the attackers, since some of them were countries such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia with which Israel was in no position to wage war.

What Israel did was to accept that there could be entities that lack geographical definition and whose membership is not clearly defined but that nevertheless can wage war against Israeli national interests. Israel also accepted that errors would occur, innocent people would be killed and their own operatives would die. It also accepted that further attacks in Israel and against Israeli interests would result. Nevertheless, the Israelis defined a corporate entity and launched a war against it with substantial success, if not a permanent solution.

The war included air attacks on training bases in Lebanon, commando raids on facilities elsewhere, counterattacks -- as in the case of Entebbe -- and a back alley war in Europe. The war-fighting process was designed to be congruent with the geographical structure of the enemy. It neither overstepped Israeli capabilities and interests nor constrained them. Israeli fighters went where they needed to go and did the things they needed to do.

Although the United States is currently shifting from the criminal to the nation-state model, STRATFOR strongly expects that what can be called the Israeli model has already been placed on the table and may well emerge as the solution of choice. The key to this model will be systematic air attacks on bases wherever they are located, if the United States can afford to strike there. In other cases, it will involve the use of CIA Directorate of Operations and U.S. Special Operations Command -- combining intelligence gathering capabilities from throughout the intelligence community but using covert operations as the primary means of implementing policy.

The United States cannot go to war with every Islamic country that harbours or aids the attackers. It is simply not feasible militarily. The United States can go to war against the attackers themselves, making it clear that neither geographical barriers nor unproven guilt will protect them. It is not a perfect model, but it is a model that can work: Define the attackers as an entity, seek them out by any means and destroy them.

This challenge will require a level of trust in the intelligence community that has been severely shaken by this and other events. It requires that they be given powers that they had prior to the 1970s but which have since been taken away from them. You cannot wage a war of permissions. Therefore, this is where the intelligence failures and lack of trust come home to haunt the United States.

The United States needs a superb covert operations capability -- of unquestioned skill and moral virtue -- to wage this war. Whether the United States has such a capability is what will have to be decided. But the other choices are between wild overcommitment and impotence.

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